[ExI] Allah's genetic and social engineering

[Damien Broderick]

<http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/opinion/14goldberg-1.html?pagewanted=2&th&emc=th>

Nizar Rayyan expressed much the same sentiment the night we spoke in 
2006. 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."