Al-Azhar: Demands to omit Quran verses leads to terrorism

Demands for the Quran to be altered in order to omit some verses are “one of the causes of terrorism”, the Grand Mufti of Egypt’s Al-Azhar, Ahmed El-Tayeb, warned yesterday.

“It is normal for the Quran to be exposed to many distortion campaigns and false accusations,” El-Tayeb said.

Last April, some 300 public figures, intellectuals and politicians in France signed a joint statement calling for the removal and revocation of some of Quranic verses.

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“Such boldness on others’ sanctity is one of the major causes of terrorism,” the Islamic scholar reiterated.

“It is regrettable that those who publish these statements do not know how much hatred these words could create in the hearts of over 1.5 billion Muslims,” he added.

“There is no single verse in the Quran that calls for killing Jews or Christians,” El-Tayeb stressed, pointing out that verses which call for fighting “call for combating any aggression”.