Why Islam?

[reepicheep]

OK, here is what I've learned about surah 4:11.


One correct translation of the first half of this verse from Arabic into English is as follows:


<b>PICKTHAL: Allah chargeth you concerning (the provision for) your children: to the male the equivalent of the portion of two females, and if there be women more than two
, then theirs is two-thirds
of the inheritance, and if there be one (only)
then the half.
Surah 4:11a</b>


So, then, if a parent dies, then the daughters receive:


- half the estate, if there is one daughter


- no inheritance, if there are two daughters


- two thirds of the estate, if there are more than two daughters.


Islamic scholars realized that this is not fair, since if there are two daughters then they receive no inheritance. So, obviously, this verse must have been corrupted at some point (or, perhaps, it was revealed to Mohammad in corrupted form).


There are two reasonable ways in which this verse can be corrected:


(1) the phrase "more than two" can be changed to "two or more", or


(2) another phrase such as "if there are two daughters, then they receive XXX of the estate" could be inserted into the koran.


The problem with option two is that there is no indication of what share two daughters should receive. One possibility is that we take the share of one daughter (1/2 the estate) and three daughters (2/3 the estate) and do an average of these two numbers to come up with a share of 7/12 of the estate. But this would be conjecture only and little more than a guess.


So, Islamic scholars decided that the easiest solution is solution 1 above (i.e., correct this verse in the koran so that "more than two" becomes "two or more"). That is why some translators such as Yusuf Ali and Hilal Khan use the english phrase "two or more", rather than the erroneous phrase "more than two" which appears in the Arabic version of the koran.