At PJ Media: “White House Whitewash—Koran Verse Featured at ‘Extremism’ Summit Edited Out Call to Crush Jews”

NOTE: “ritamalik’s” translation of the spoken Arabic was indispensable to the writing of this essay. Also see the explanatory video embedded at the bottom of the posting.

KEY EXTRACTS from my PJ Media essay, White House Whitewash: Koran Verse Featured at ‘Extremism’ Summit Edited Out Call to Crush Jews, but please read it all:

Penny Starr of CNSNews.com has reported that the second day of this past week’s White House summit on “Countering Violent Extremism,” was initiated by an unidentified “Muslim prayer,” exclusively, while “no other religious text was presented during the portion of the event that was open to the press.” Imam Sheikh Sa’ad Musse Roble, president of the World Peace Organization in Minneapolis, MN., recited a “verse from the Koran”, in Arabic, only, followed by a translation of his words by Imam Abdisalam Adam of the Islamic Civil Society of America. Adam stated,

In translation those verses of the Koran mean ‘Whoever kills a soul unless for a soul or for corruption in the land, it’s as if he has slain mankind entirely, and whoever saves one life, it’s as if he has saved mankind entirely.”

Although Imam Roble recited what was actually Koran 5:32 (i.e., the 5th sura, or chapter and 32nd verse) in Arabic, in its entirety (See video here; I know this thanks to the efforts of nonpareil oral Arabic translator, “ritamalik”), Imam Adam quoted Koran 5:32 selectively, as rendered into English, attempting to demonstrate that the Koran disapproved of violence and killing. The full (academic Arberry) translation is as follows:

Therefore We prescribed for the Children of Israel that whoso slays a soul not to retaliate for a soul slain, nor for corruption done in the land, shall be as if he had slain mankind altogether; and whoso gives life to a soul, shall be as if he has given life to mankind altogether. Our Messengers have already come to them with the clear signs; then many of them thereafter commit excesses in the earth.

The parts of Koran 5:32 indicated in bold were recited in Arabic (again, thanks to “ritamailk”), but not translated into English.

First, these wonderful sounding words selectively extracted from Koran 5:32, and rendered into English, come from a preexisting Jewish text (Mishnah, IV Division 5)…

…The supposedly noble, selectively translated sentiments of the first verse, Koran 5:32, taken from a Jewish source, are entirely undercut by the second intimately related verse, Koran 5:33 which becomes a bloodthirsty menacing by Muhammad of the Jews. (And as an aside the Muslim sources, “tallied” by Maimonides, estimate Muhammad killed 24,000 Jews in his jihad campaigns against them). Far from abjuring violence, these verses aggressively insist that any who oppose the Muslim prophet—such as the Jews—will be killed, or crucified, mutilated, and banished.

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