It is, by now, a well-established fact that Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi has on repeated occasion and for over a decade in public life, referred to the Jewish people as “descendants of apes and pigs.” Despite asserting that his current bad press is merely the byproduct of a smear campaign led by the “Jewish-controlled media” (thereby doubling down on the hackneyed anti-Semitic slurs), the Muslim Brotherhood leader actually has an excuse for his consistently inflammatory rhetoric. After all, he is simply citing the Quran.
Amidst the sea of oft-repeated blood libels and anti-Semitic canards, the “descendants of apes and pigs” mantra may be among the most prominent, and indeed, most important, in terms of what it actually incites among those who speak it (or hear it), and know from whence it came.

Despite common perceptions, the derision was not coined by Adolf Hitler and then adopted by Islamists, rather, it was the other way around. Found within the Quran itself are numerous verses citing Allah’s hex on the Jewish people and their subsequent damnation to live as the aforementioned swine, and primates. Quran verse 5:60 is the key to the kingdom in this regard and serves as the basis for all modern-day iterations. The Hilali-Khan Quranic translation of this verse reads as follows:

Say (O Muhammad SAW to the people of the Scripture): “Shall I inform you of something worse than that, regarding the recompense from Allah: those (Jews) who incurred the Curse of Allah and His Wrath, those of whom (some) He transformed into monkeys and swines, those who worshipped Taghut (false deities); such are worse in rank (on the Day of Resurrection in the Hellfire), and far more astray from the Right Path (in the life of this world).”