I was listening to a podcast of an Israeli reporter (a Jew - can't remember his name) who regularly interviews Jihadists in the Gaza strip (having secured their trust) who, only when pushed on the subject, will reluctantly admit that the verse is a mistranslation (although apparently they still continue the myth among young Jihadists).

No.

Hour al-ayin is quite well known to refer to beautiful virgins of paradise. Also if you read the verses it's mentioned in, it's quite obvious what the term means. They're also mentioned by many other names and epithets as well, like "Azwaajun Mutahara" meaning "pure spouses". There's absolutely no ambiguity about it whatsoever, the Jew is duping you.

Like with most attempts to attack Islam, it's about 0.01% fact and about 99.99% bovine faeces.

Rachael Kohn:  Aaron, in all these interviews, particularly as you started pretty young, at the age of 18 or 19, were you scared? Were you ever really scared for your life?

Aaron Klein: Absolutely...  One example in particular was when I went in to meet the senior leadership of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade terror group, the most active Palestinian terror group in the West Bank with literally the chief of the Brigade's No.2, No.3. No.4, it was the senior leadership, they were all with their weapons, had machine guns, and I went with Rusty Humphreys who's an American radio host. We went in together and during the interview, Rusty, this American radio host, kept asking the terrorist to show us where in the Qur'an it says anything about 72 virgins, about suicide bombers who go up to Allah's paradise and get an eternity with 72 dark-eyed virgins, because actually I don't know if you know this, but it's not in the Qur'an, the Qur'an doesn't say anything about 72 virgins and yet the terrorists constantly tell the Palestinian teenagers who blow themselves up that they're going to get the 72 virgins, and so Rusty knew it wasn't in the Qur'an and he kept asking the terrorists who said earlier that martyrs get 72 virgins, he kept asking them to show us where in the Qur'an it was located. And I was sitting across the room from Rusty and so I couldn't really nudge him, but the terrorists were getting really agitated and he didn't realise that, they actually kept shooting these angry glances at me, like Shut this guy up, tell him to stop asking. And he kept petitioning, 'So did you find the 72 virgins yet, did anybody finds the 72 virgins?' he actually had them take out a Qur'an and flip through the Qur'an and look for the 72 virgins, and they kept pointing to different verses that may indicate a virgin or two, but they couldn't find the 72 virgins, and I didn't think we'd get out alive from that interview. Ultimately though, the terrorists conceded on record, on audio, that there are no 72 virgins, it's not in the Qur'an. Actually it comes later from the oral tradition

though if it isn't in the Koran then the hadith is questionable.

So what does the Koran actually say?

How does that work? That is, what is the justification for it? I thought the hadiths were only supposed to clarify the Koran, not add new bits.

After all, aren;t they the work of regular people, not Muhammed?