Using ritamalik’s invaluable translation of the Arabic-language audio from the White Mosque Summit on Kinetic Activism, Dr. Andrew Bostom explains the background of Koran 5:32 (which was chanted at the White Mosque) and 5:33 (which was not).

Below are some excerpts from Dr. Bostom’s piece in PJMedia:

White House Whitewash: Koran Verse Featured at ‘Extremism’ Summit Edited Out Call to Crush Jews

Worse, the edited-to-sound-kind words are actually a passage lifted from the Mishnah, a Jewish text.

by Andrew G. Bostom

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: “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, recited a “verse from the Koran” in Arabic. An English translation of the verse was read next 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.”

Imam Roble had recited Koran 5:32 (i.e., the 5th sura, or chapter, and 32nd verse) in Arabic, in its entirety (see video here).

However, Imam Adam quoted Koran 5:32 selectively with his English translation.

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.

And the very next verse, Koran 5:33, “prescribed” what fate “the Children of Israel,” the Jews, deserve for continuing to “commit excesses” by refusing Islamic teachings:

This is the recompense of those who fight against Allah and His Messenger, and hasten about the earth, to do corruption there: they shall be slaughtered, or crucified, or their hands and feet shall alternately be struck off; or they shall be banished from the land. That is a degradation for them in this world; and in the world to come awaits them a mighty chastisement.

Perhaps the most misleading and degrading element of this whitewash occurring at the White House summit is that the wonderful sounding words selectively extracted from Koran 5:32 are attributed to the Koran, when they in fact come from a preexisting Jewish text (Mishnah, IV Division 5):

Thus was created a single man, to teach us that every person who loses a single soul, it shall be written about him as if he has lost the entire world, and every person who sustains a single soul, it shall be written about him as if he has sustained the entire world.

The Koranic commentary of Ibn Kathir (d. 1373), and the modern commentaries of Maududi and Usmani confirm and validate the anti-Jewish attitudes expressed in Koran 5:32—33. Ibn Kathir (in Tafsir Ibn Kathir, vol. 3, 2000, p. 160) stated:

This Ayah chastises and criticizes those who commit the prohibitions, after knowing that they are prohibited from indulging in them. [Like] [t]he Jews of Al-Madinah, such as Banu Qurayzah, An- Nadir, and Qaynuqa [Jewish tribes ultimately attacked, expropriated, expelled, and even massacred by Muhammad].

Abul Ala Maududi (1903-1979) was a profoundly influential 20th century Islamic scholar, political philosopher, journalist, and Muslim revival leader in India and Pakistan. Maududi (from Towards Understanding the Qur’an, vol. 2, pp. 155—56) makes a contextual reference to Koran 5:30—31 as well:…

Read the rest at PJMedia.