{"id":267,"date":"2007-02-09T22:58:40","date_gmt":"2007-02-09T21:58:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/ijwp\/mt.php\/2007\/02\/09\/melanie_phillips_liar_or_ignoramus"},"modified":"2025-10-10T11:24:24","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T10:24:24","slug":"melanie_phillips_liar_or_ignoramus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/mt.php\/2007\/02\/09\/melanie_phillips_liar_or_ignoramus","title":{"rendered":"Melanie Phillips: Liar or Ignoramus?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title = \"Melanie Phillips&#8217;s Diary &raquo; The war against the west (5)\" href=\"http:\/\/www.melaniephillips.com\/diary\/?p=1459\">Mad Mel&#39;s Diary: the &quot;War Against the West&quot;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Mel comments on the King Fahad Academy controversy, in which a sacked former teacher accuses the school of teaching from a textbook which makes some unflattering references to non-Muslims.  Referring to the appearance by the school&#39;s spokeswoman, Dr Sumaya Alyusuf, on Newsnight on Tuesday, she alleges:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nFurthermore, anyone familiar with the verse in the Koran that describes Jews and Christians as monkeys and pigs, and who knows with what sickening frequency this incitement to hatred is preached in the Muslim world, would instantly recognise Dr Alyusuf\u2019s protestations of \u2018mistranslation\u2019 as pure humbug. As this <a href=\"http:\/\/memri.org\/bin\/articles.cgi?Page=archives&#038;Area=sr&#038;ID=SR01102\">report<\/a> [from MEMRI] shows in detail, the \u2018apes and pigs\u2019 insult is standard Islamist discourse. The idea that this is a \u2018mistranslation\u2019 is simply ludicrous.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Anyone who has really read the passages Mel is talking about knows that they do not &quot;describe Jews and Christians as monkeys and pigs&quot;, but mention that a group of Jews (and <em>not<\/em> Christians) centuries ago were turned into such creatures.  While &quot;sons of apes and pigs&quot; is a common Arab insult against Jews, the passage in question does not in any way demonstrate that those particular Jews are the ancestors of today&#39;s Jews.  (See <a href=\"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/mt.php\/2005\/12\/14\/muslims_and_holocaust_denial#comment-8956\">this comment<\/a> for a classical opinion on this.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mad Mel&#39;s Diary: the &quot;War Against the West&quot; Mel comments on the King Fahad Academy controversy, in which a sacked former teacher accuses the school of teaching from a textbook which makes some unflattering&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-melanie_phillips"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p17bgV-4j","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42129,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions\/42129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blogistan.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}