TL;DR: Crowdsourced translation project for works of writers such as Farag Foda (
Al Haqiqa al-Ghaib), Dr. Badawi (
Tarikh al-Ilhad fi al-Islam), Nabil Fayad (
The Mother of the Believers Eats Her Children and other shorter works), Saeed al-Qemany, and Mustafa Geha (
The Crisis of Islamic Thinking) is looking for volunteers. Post or PM if interested.
Ahlan wa sahlan everybody,
I write to you today seeking to launch the second, larger portion of the FreeThought Wiki (
http://freethought.wikidot.com/): the one dedicated to translating works from Arabic.
Although you may never guess it from present discourse, quite a few Arab writers have made the case for re-evaluating religion and its history. Not all fared well: Foda was assassinated in 1992. Others got off more easily: Nabil Fayyad has had books banned, been arrested by the Syrian government, and [most recently claims an attemped kidnapping](
http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/anti-assad-forces-in-syria-are-growing-more-islamist-1.461295).
Some are incredibly interesting. Saeed al-Qemany deems himself part of a modern Mu'tazila, keeps a blog (
http://quemny.blog.com/), and still makes TV appearances (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbuUT240KPs). Let's hope nothing happens to this guy!
Perhaps even more interesting (although I have not yet acquired his books) would be Abdullah al-Qasemi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_al-Qasemi, Salafi turned atheist - before atheism was popular! What a hipster! Survivor of two assassination attempts, he eventually died of cancer.
Gone seem to be the days in which Ismail Adham could publish
li madha ana mulhid and read the counter-response
li madha ana muslim before philosophy supposedly led him to suicide.
Some weeks ago redditor SkepticShaykh asked for a translation of Dr. Badawi's book (
http://www.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/127mcq/highly_valuable_translation_needed_history_of/). At 250 or so pages it is a long project, but with community support it can go quickly, as evidenced by Apostasin's posting of the synopsis (
http://www.reddit.com/r/exmuslim/comments/127mcq/highly_valuable_translation_needed_history_of/c6t4dtq).
The current project underway is Mr. Foda's
Al Haqiqa al Ghaib. As a mere 80-page word document the project should be quick, but with only one volunteer on it at the moment progress has been slow. Let us work together to change this.
How is this to be done? Well, it is simple. As a volunteer you can choose or be assigned a section of the work currently under translation. PDF bookscans are provided. As progress is made, or when you are done, you may post your translation either to the forum, our dedicated subreddit (
http://www.reddit.com/r/freethoughtwiki) (if you are a redditor), send me a file, or edit it directly into the wiki.
Are your Arabic to English skills not up to par? Well don't worry! You can still help out. You can share the project with Arabic ladeeni/il7ad forums that you may be part of or help proofread translated bits.
Post here or send a PM if you are interested so that I may allocate project chunks accordingly.
I also understand that you like parrots
Please accept my
tribute.
Topic: Arabic readers: an opportunity for action. FreeThought Wiki seeks translators