Clerical Errors

Shocking quotes from Islamic clerics

A clerical error is a harmless slip: a typo, a wrong date, a misplaced decimal point. The errors collected here are of another kind. They come from imams, muftis, ayatollahs and preachers, and they call for the death of apostates, the stoning of adulterous women, the sale of captives and the killing of Jews.

These are not words from the fringe. Alongside a few small-time preachers, you will find two Grand Muftis of Saudi Arabia, a Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, the imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the head of Turkey’s state religious authority and two Supreme Leaders of Iran. Each quote comes with its source. Check them: that is what they are for.

We do not target believers, who are often the first victims of these sermons. We target the men who speak in God’s name from a pulpit, a ministry or a television studio. Most of them are not misreading their scriptures: they quote them chapter and verse. Clerical errors usually get corrected. These ones get applause. Their critics have the floor in Unforgivable Sentences.