• Emily Assami, Amatulla Bantley and Mary Kennedy were all born in the US 
• They all moved to Saudi Arabia after converting to Islam in the 1970s and 1980s
• The trio have completed an English language translation of the entire Koran 
• All of the women have worked on translating dozens of Islamic manuscripts  

Three American women who converted to Islam, moved to Saudi Arabia and founded a publishing company have inadvertently created the most popular translation of the Koran for ISIS terrorists. 

Emily Assami from California and her friends Mary Kennedy and Amatullah Bantley were all raised as an atheist, in Assami's case, or Roman Catholics. 

Assami married an Arab man and began studying the language in Damascus, Syria during the 1970s before eventually becoming a Muslim herself.

 

 

 

Emily Assami, pictured, from California, is one of a group of three woman who translated the Koran into English, right, while living in Saudi Arabia having converted to Islam in the 1970s

The three women founded Saheeh International which publishes Islamic books including a popular translation of the Koran. 

The edition has been used by English-speaking ISIS fighters, although the three women themselves are not involved in extremism. 

Bantley became a Muslim aged 20 and moved to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 1987. She was born in Rochester, Minnesota and has a degree in Business Management. 

Assami - also known as Umm Muhammad - moved to Saudi in 1981 and has published more than 80 Islamic books in English.

Kennedy, from Orlando, Florida, became a Muslim in 1985 and moved to Jeddah in 1987.  

The translation of the Koran contains notes in English to explain various verses which cannot be directly translated from the Arabic.  

Bantley told The Daily Beast she studied under Assami after first moving to Saudi. 

She said: 'As her student, I recognized her ability to clarify the Arabic expressions into English was unlike any teacher I'd had before. This was especially true in her translation of verses from the Koran.'

Discussing Koran translation, she admitted dealing with the text presented its own difficulties.

She said: 'It differed from other projects because of the amount of research it took to accurately reflect accepted meanings of the Koran while being limited to the confines of English grammar. Some Koranic passages hold more than one meaning, while in translation, you can usually only reflect one of the intended meanings.'

The translation worked on by the three woman is now available online. 

According to the Daily Beast, the online translation is the text cited in the ISIS's English-language propaganda magazine Dabiq.

Various editions of the Saheeh International translation are available to purchase on Amazon, while the three woman also run their own bookshop in Saudi Arabia, primarily offering religious texts in English.

Source: www.dailymail.co.uk