US Paper to Discard Faulty Qur’an Spelling

Washington, DC: The Chicago Tribune becomes the first American newspaper to decide that Qur’an is no longer to be spelt as Koran but the way it is pronounced in Arabic and by Muslims all over the world.
Some Muslims, most notably Omer bin Abdullah, the Pakistani-American editor of Islamic Horizons magazines published by the Islamic Society of North America, has been campaigning for years – though until now without much success – to have Qur’an spelt in the American and international media as Qur’an and not Koran. He hopes that the lead taken by Chicago Tribune would be followed by others.
The US newspaper said that it is changing the way it spells the name of the Islamic scripture to “Quran” to reflect a growing consensus about the best transliteration of the Arabic word. For decades, the Tribune and most English-language publications called the Muslim holy book the “Koran.” But language and religion scholars widely share the opinion that “Qur’an” more closely renders the Arabic word, and common usage is changing to reflect that understanding.

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