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Friday 10 February 2017

Hugh Sykes - ignorant or deliberately misleading?

Today's Feedback http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08cvmh0b08cvmh0b08cvmh0 included a piece criticising a Hugh Sykes report about President Donald Trump's Executive Order temporarily restricting immigration from seven countries that have been linked with terrorism. The piece was quite amusing as Hugh Sykes is rarely criticised for being insufficiently pro Islam or immigration, so it was quite fun to hear him dancing around to try and prove his PC credentials.

However what really struck me was his comment from 6:30 to 6:38 that he's heard many Muslim leaders say that these (terrorists) aren't true Muslims:

'If you kill an innocent person it's like killing the whole of humanity, which is roughly speaking a quote from the Koran.'

The problem is that that quotation is somewhat longer than Hugh Sykes makes out, and in full means something somewhat different. The quotation is from Sura 5:32 which in full says:

'On that account: We ordained for the Children of Israel that if any one slew a person - unless it be for murder or for spreading mischief in the land - it would be as if he slew the whole people: and if any one saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people. Then although there came to them Our apostles with clear signs, yet, even after that, many of them continued to commit excesses in the land.'

So clearly 5:32 is a commandment to the Children of Israel, the Jews, not Muslims.

However even if you ignore the first part of the Sura that specifically refers to the Jews, the commandment goes on "unless it be for murder or spreading mischief in the land." If someone is "spreading mischief", he can still be killed. Islamist terrorists believe that Americans, British, French etc. are spreading mischief in Palestine and around the world, so even if this verse were to apply to non Jews, they would still be justified in slaughtering those "spreading mischief".

So the question is: does Hugh Sykes not know what the whole Sura that quotation comes from says or does he know but would rather we don't know?

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