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2002年攻读硕士学位研究生入学考试经贸专业英语试题

本试题为英译中，共五段，每段二十分。

1.The True, Peaceful Face of Islam

There are 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, and Islam is the world’s fastest-growing religion. If the evil carnage we witnessed on Sept. 11 were typical of the faith, and Islam truly inspired and justified such violence, its growth and the increasing presence of Muslims in both Europe and the U.S. would be a terrifying prospect. Fortunately, this is not the case.

The very word Islam, which means “surrender”, is related to the Arabic salam, or peace. When the Prophet Muhammad brought the inspired scripture known as Koran to the Arabs in the early 7th century A. D., a major part of his mission was devoted precisely to bringing an end to the kind of mass slaughter we witnessed in New York City and Washington. Pre-Islamic Arabia was caught up in a vicious cycle of warfare, in which tribe fought tribe in a pattern of vendetta and counter-vendetta. Muhammad himself survived several assassination attempts, and the early Muslin community narrowly escaped extermination by the powerful city of Mecca. The Prophet had to fight a deadly war in order to survive, but as soon as he felt his people were probably safe, he devoted his attention to building up a peaceful coalition of tribes and achieved victory by an ingenious and inspiring campaign of non-violence. When he died in 632, he had almost single-handedly brought peace to war-torn Arabia.

Because the Koran was revealed in the context of an all-out war, several passages deal with the conduct of armed struggle. Warfare was a desperate business on the Arabian Peninsula. A chieftain was not expected to spare survivors after a battle, and some of the Koran injunctions seem to share this spirit. Muslims are ordered by God to “slay [enemies] wherever you find them!”. Extremists such as Osama bin laden like to quote such verses but do so selectively. They do not include the exhortation to peace, which in almost every case follow these more ferocious passages:” Thus, if they let you be, and do not make war on you, and offer you peace, God does not allow you to harm them.

Islam is not addicted to war, and jihad is not one of its “pillars”, or essential practices. The primary meaning of the word jihad is not ”holy war” but “struggle”. It refers to the different effort that is needed to put God’s will into practice at every level-personal and social as well as political. A very important and much quoted tradition has Muhammad telling his companions as they go home after a battle. “We are returning from the lesser jihad [the battle] to the greater jihad,” the far more urgent and momentous task of extirpating wrongdoing from one’s own society and one’s own heart.

---Time, October 1st 2001.

伊斯兰教爱好和平的真实一面

当今世界上共有12亿穆斯林教徒，而且，伊斯兰教是世界上发展最为迅速的宗教。如果说我们在911这天所目睹的惨绝人寰的血腥灾难就是这种宗教的特征和本质，并且它确实鼓励着这种暴行并宣告施暴者无罪。如果伊斯兰教在欧洲和美国影响增长，那将前途未卜。幸运的是，这并未成为事实。