Some Qur’anic translations for Sydney

What follow are verses from the Qur’an that I intend to quote during my remarks at the University of Notre Dame Australia School of Law in Sydney on 27 November.  In order to include them in my speech, I’ve translated them afresh — which has made me acutely aware, as such exercises always do, of how inadequate translations inevitably are:

Say: O unbelievers, I do not worship what you worship, and you are not worshipers of what I worship, nor am I worshiping what you worship, and you are not worshiping what I worship.  You have your religion and I have my religion.  (109:1-6)

We made you peoples and tribes that you might come to know one another.  (49:13)

Every individual has a direction to which he turns.  So compete with one another in good works.  Wherever you are, God will bring you all together [on the Day of Resurrection?].  Truly, God has power over everything.  (2:148)

Let there be no coercion in religion (2:256)

To each of you we have prescribed a law and a way of life.  Had God willed it, he could have made you all one people, but that he might test you by means of what he has given you.  So compete with one another in good works.  All of you will return to God, so he will inform you regarding the matters about which you used to disagree.  (5:48)

God is the light of the heavens and the earth.  A similitude of his light is as a niche, within which is a lamp.  The lamp is as if it were a brilliant star, lit from a blessed olive tree, neither eastern nor western, whose oil would almost glow forth though no fire touched it.  Light upon light.  God guides to his light whomever he will.  And God strikes similitudes for the people.  And God knows all things.

[This light is found] in houses that God has permitted to be raised and that his name be remembered in them.  In them there praise him, morning and evening, men whom neither commerce nor sale distracts from remembering God and establishing prayer and giving alms.  They fear a day on which hearts and eyes will be overturned, that God may reward them for the best of their deeds and even increase his reward for them from his bounty.  For God gives without reckoning to whomever he wishes.  (24:35-38)