At last year’s trial at the British Columbia “Human Rights” Tribunal, I was accused of peddling a view of Islam as one identical, homogeneous mass. So I was very struck by the interesting interpretative differences that emerge here:

We had been discussing a passage of the Koran that suggests that God turns a group of impious Jews into apes and pigs. The Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, among others, has deployed this passage in his speeches. Once, at a rally in Beirut, he said: “We shout in the face of the killers of prophets and the descendants of the apes and pigs: We hope we will not see you next year. The shout remains, ‘Death to Israel!’”
Mr. Rayyan said that, technically, Mr. Nasrallah was mistaken. “Allah changed disobedient Jews into apes and pigs, it is true, but he specifically said these apes and pigs did not have the ability to reproduce,” Mr. Rayyan said. “So it is not literally true that Jews today are descended from pigs and apes, but it is true that some of the ancestors of Jews were transformed into pigs and apes, and it is true that Allah continually makes the Jews pay for their crimes in many different ways. They are a cursed people.”

Gotcha. So you Jews should quit being so uptight: We’re not saying your great-great-great-grandfather was a pig, only your childless great-great-uncle. This guy may be the moderate “partner for peace” Israel has been looking for.