Laleh Bakhtiar’s Living Legacy: A Daughter’s Reflection Through AI
The first time I asked Laleh AI a question, it felt surreal. Before she passed away, I had been working with my mother, Dr. Laleh Bakhtiar, to bring her voice and scholarship to life through AI.
With just a few typed words, I could explore decades of her thoughts on Sufism, Islamic spirituality, psychology, and gender justice. It was incredible to see her life’s work come alive — not just stored away, but active, ready to spark new conversations that matter today.
With over 200 conversations held since its launch, this tool offers a way for users to engage directly with her ideas — exploring her Quran translation, reflecting on her ethical perspectives, and grappling with the questions her work raises. Together with my siblings and Laleh’s Institute, we built this tool to ensure that her ideas remain accessible and vibrant.
Curious about how scholars were engaging with her ideas four years after her passing, I asked Laleh AI to pull up recent research. It guided me to Google Scholar, where I found hundreds of references to her name between 2020 and 2024. As I sifted through these papers, several studies stood out — each showing the profound impact of her scholarship, whether celebrated or contested.
1. Reimagining the Sacred: Feminist Interpretation and Its Impact
One of the most powerful discussions around my mother’s work centers on her reinterpretation of Quran 4:34. In Feminist Perspective in Laleh Bakhtiar’s Translation of the Holy Qur’an (2023), scholars explore how Bakhtiar’s choice to translate daraba as “to go away” offers a non-violent, just interpretation. By moving away from “to beat,” she challenged patriarchal readings and transformed the verse into a call for equity and moral responsibility in relationships.
While her reinterpretation was widely celebrated, the paper acknowledges that such bold shifts can create discomfort. Feminist translation theory, as the authors explain, is about more than translating words — it’s about reshaping cultural narratives. Bakhtiar’s work serves both as an invitation and a disruption, asking readers to rethink long-held interpretations and align their understanding of sacred texts with contemporary values of justice and non-violence.
Her approach exemplifies the power of translators to influence meaning and drive social change. By questioning traditional readings, she offered an alternative aligned with non-violence and mutual respect, reflecting both the Quran’s ethical principles and modern moral concerns. This act of translation became a form of resistance, amplifying new voices and perspectives within the Islamic tradition.
The paper concludes that Bakhtiar’s translation is a challenge to the long-standing male authority that has dominated Quranic interpretation, positioning her work as part of the broader feminist effort to recover lost meanings and question entrenched hierarchies. Her reading of Quran 4:34 invites Muslims to engage with gender and power dynamics within sacred texts, encouraging deeper reflection on how scripture can align with both faith and justice in contemporary life.
2. Rethinking Gender in Translation: A New Reading of the Sacred
In Rethinking Gender in Translation (2022), Khaoula Jaoudi situates Bakhtiar’s work within feminist translation theory, which views translation as a way to challenge cultural power structures.
“Feminist translation theory emerged from the shared struggle women and translation experience; it criticizes the concepts that place both women and translation at the bottom of the literary and social scale. ‘La liberation des femmes passé par le language’ is a famous saying among women of the 1970s feminist movement which indicates that women must be first liberated from language,” Jaoubi says.
Jaoudi argues to amplify their voices and assert their agency, feminist translators employ a variety of strategic approaches. Jaoubi outlines the strategies through the work of Louise Von Flotow, a scholar who has researched feminism and translation and gender issues in translation. She writes:
- Supplementing — This method involves creative linguistic play, allowing translators to make intentional shifts in language. By doing so, female translators can express their creativity and directly challenge gender-biased language.
- Preface and Footnotes — These tools help feminist translators reveal their intentions, guiding readers through the translation process and offering insights into the choices made along the way.
- Hijacking — Perhaps the most provocative strategy, hijacking focuses on altering texts that lack feminist perspectives, transforming exclusive or sexist language into more inclusive expressions.
For Jaoudi, translation is not just about reproducing meaning — it’s a creative process that reshapes narratives and empowers marginalized voices.
Central to Jaoudi’s analysis is The Sublime Quran, which she compares to The Quran: A Reformist Translation by Edip Yüksel and collaborators. Both translations aim to destabilize traditional interpretations and foster gender equality. Bakhtiar’s choice to translate daraba in Quran 4:34 as “to go away” rather than “to beat” transforms language into a tool for justice.
Jaoudi emphasizes that feminist translators like Bakhtiar turn sacred texts into living documents, making their meanings align with modern values of justice and compassion.
3. The Influence of Sufism: Futuwwa in Her Qur’an Translation
In The Influence of Bakhtiar’s Sufī Belief in Futuwwa on Her Qur’ān Translation (May 2023), Najlaa Aldeeb explores how Sufi concepts of futuwwa (spiritual chivalry) shaped my mother’s approach to Quranic translation. Aldeeb argues that Bakhtiar’s deep engagement with Sufism influenced her emphasis on compassion, justice, and moral equity.
The concept of futuwwa, which prioritizes selflessness and moral courage, is reflected in how my mother interpreted gendered verses — seeking to remove hierarchy in relationships and frame them within a spirit of mutual respect.
Aldeeb highlights that futuwwa’s ideals — such as humility and non-coercion — resonate deeply with Bakhtiar. This influence reinforces the idea that translation is not merely linguistic but profoundly spiritual, with the potential to reshape relationships by promoting a higher ethical standard.
For Aldeeb, Bakhtiar’s work exemplifies how Sufi principles enrich modern interpretations of sacred texts, offering insights that are both timeless and urgently relevant today.
4. Contested Terrain: The Challenge of Translating Gendered Terms
Of course, not everyone agrees with her interpretations. In Problems in Translating Gender-Related Terms in the Holy Quran (2022), scholars criticize her feminist approach as introducing ideological bias. They take issue with her translation of nushuz — commonly understood as “disobedience” — as “resistance,” arguing that this departs from traditional meanings. Similarly, they suggest that her nuanced take on polygamy-related verses creates ambiguity not found in the original text.
This debate reflects the tension between staying faithful to traditional interpretations and reimagining religious understanding for modern readers. While the paper critiques her work, it also acknowledges that such provocative approaches are essential to reinterpreting sacred texts in a way that resonates today.
Laleh AI: A Living Legacy in Dialogue
Laleh AI ensures that my mother’s scholarship remains accessible, growing with every interaction. However, it’s important to note that AI can make mistakes — this tool is a prototype meant to evolve with time and feedback. Explore Laleh AI at Laleh AI on ChatGPT, and continue the conversation by visiting LalehBakhtiar.com.
Four years after her passing, Laleh’s legacy is a living one — a call to keep questioning, learning, and growing. It’s an invitation to engage with ideas, challenge assumptions, and imagine new possibilities. That’s exactly what she did throughout her life, and it’s what she continues to inspire in all of us today.
This content was crafted with the assistance of artificial intelligence, which contributed to structuring the narrative, ensuring grammatical accuracy, summarizing key points, and enhancing the readability and coherence of the material.
