An English Qur’an translation inflated mentions of Jews and Christians to manufacture animus

Evidence

In NQEL, however, the Qur’a¯nic references to them are made out to be far more numerous – with more than 100 instances of “the Jews” and, according to the glossary entry for the 1996 printed edition, as many as 600 instances of “the Christians.” NQEL thereby trains the eyes, ears, and minds of readers and Internet searchers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, to perceive “Jews” and “Christians” as targeted for opprobrium in a wide variety of passages where they are never mentioned. And by portraying all Christians and Jews as deceitful by nature, the translators signal to Muslim readers that anything they might hear or learn from Jews and Christians about what specific adherents practice and believe, beyond the generalizations on Christianity and Judaism presented in NQEL, might be a falsehood meant to undermine Islam. — Nadim N. Rouhana and Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian, When Politics Are Sacralized, 1887

Categorization

• XREF: A concrete instance of manufactured external enemy: the interpolation amplifies an out-group threat several-fold (11 actual mentions inflated to 100+; Christians into 600) to harden Muslim in-group solidarity against outside threat. — connects to: Christian polemicists distorted Qur’anic verses with small, impactful translation shifts; Muslims absorbed anti-Semitic animus redirected from Jews in Orientalist discourse — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 402; Biblical Jews served as the medieval model for Christian depictions of Muslims (+1 more)
• SEED: An essay angle: ‘the inflation of the enemy’ — how textual translation/interpolation mechanically amplifies a perceived out-group as a deliberate technique of in-group boundary maintenance, transferable beyond Wahhabism to other propagandas.
• SHARE: Narrow enough that only a specialist in Qur’anic translation or Islamist propaganda would delight in this particular fact — the specific interpolation counts.

Broader Connections

• Christian polemicists distorted Qur’anic verses with small, impactful translation shifts #exemplifies (0.85)
• Muslims absorbed anti-Semitic animus redirected from Jews in Orientalist discourse #complicates (0.72) — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 402
• Biblical Jews served as the medieval model for Christian depictions of Muslims #complicates (0.72)