ABSTRACT This inquiry adopts a practice theoretical perspective in thinking about how Quran Persian translations might feature in faith literacies in the multilingual province of Khouzestan, Iran. For the purpose of this inquiry, I conducted ethnographic observations and interviews. To make sense of the data, I drew on sociological theories of practice. As such, the paper underscores the spatiotemporal shaping of faith literacies and recitation practices. Furthermore, the material resources and technological affordances associated with faith literacies enact embodied performances which might determine the boundaries of recitation practices, and hence the reception of Quran translations. Moreover, interviewees’ habitus, particularly their translingual repertoire might rhizomatically bear on the need for translation. Additionally, meanings associated with Quran recitation seem to depend on habitus, translingual repertoire, and language ideologies, the combination of which might render translations either essential or unnecessary. This, at least partly, has to do with the immanent nature of meaning in faith practices characterised by prioritising contextual meaning over propositional content. In sum, the constellation of spatiotemporal resources, material configurations, embodied performance, translingual repertoire as well as language and religious ideologies shape, sustain and constrain the conditions of possibility for the reception of Quran translations within faith literacies and Quran recitation.
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