JERUSALEM — An Egyptian columnist has written a column praising Jewish achievement in science and technology and condemning the violence, extremism, and ignorance in Muslim countries.
"Long live the descendants of apes and pigs," Khalid Muntasir sarcastically wrote in the daily al-Watan, a bold jab at Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi who famously referred to Jews as descendants of apes and pigs in a widely seen video.
Muntasir based his column on the recent establishment of a foundation in the United States aimed at encouraging research in the life sciences by awarding prize winners $3 million each, compared to $1.1 million that goes with a Nobel Prize.
The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation was established by Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook; Sergey Brin, cofounder of Google; and Yuri Milner, a Russian billionaire and Internet investor.
All three are Jewish, Muntasir noted.
"Who is more conscionable, moral, and loves life and his fellow man? Is it these three Jews who contribute to science, health, happiness, and the improvement of life, or [al Qaeda leaders] bin Laden, al-Zawahiri and [Taliban leader] Mullah Omar?" Muntasir asked in his column according to the Middle East Media Research Institute, which monitors the press in the Middle East.
He compared the life-changing scholarship pursued by the scientific award winners with the scholarship of "those whom (Muslims) call scholars merely because they memorized 100 old books and can recite them without interpreting or even understanding them."
While reading an article about the ceremony at which the first 11 prize winners were awarded $33 million for their work in fields like molecular biology and genetics, wrote Muntasir, he also watched a video from a friend showing a lecture by "an important [Muslim] speaker" on the benefits of having a beard for treating impotence.
"I closed the article, shut the computer, sighed and said: ‘It’s no use. … The voice of the sheikh in the neighboring mosque rose and echoed as he cursed the Jews, descendants of apes and pigs … while the worshipers rejoiced.’"