Death of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi – The end of the controversial Fatwas in the Arab world
The official Twitter account of Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi on Monday announced the death of the Muslim Brotherhood leader at the age of 96.
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Al-Qaradawi
He was born on September 9, 1926, Yusuf Abdullah al-Qaradawi, a Muslim Brotherhood leader, Egyptian Muslim-Azhari scholar of Qatari nationality and former President of the World Union of Muslim Scholars. He was born in the village of Safat Trab in the center of El-Mahalla El-Koubra in the governorate of Gharbeya in Egypt.
Al-Qaradawi belongs to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is classified as a terrorist group. He is considered one of its most prominent ideologues and was offered several times as a guide. He was also known for his strong support for the Brotherhood when it assumed power in Egypt, and he issued many controversial fatwas related to fighting existing Arab regimes during the Arab Spring.
Since its founding in 2004, al-Qaradawi has been president of the World Union of Muslim Scholars, based in Doha, retaining his position for 14 years. Before he gave it up to Mohamed ben Abdallah el-Raisuni, who recently resigned over controversial remarks on the Moroccan Sahara.
Death sentence in absentia
Yusuf al-Qaradawi has been a member of the Muslim Brotherhood since its inception and has become a well-known leader. He is considered the group’s first ideologue and has been arrested several times. The longest was in 1954 where he was imprisoned for 20 months. After that, he traveled to Qatar to obtain Qatari citizenship there.
The Egyptian authorities considered al-Qaradawi to be the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been banned in Egypt since 2013.
In 2015, the Cairo Criminal Court confirmed the death sentence against former President Mohamed Morsi in the case known in the media as “prison break”. In the case, 129 defendants were tried, including 27 who were arrested and 102 fugitives, including members of the Palestinian Hamas movement and the Lebanese Hezbollah. More than 90 fugitives, including Yusuf al-Qaradawi, were sentenced to death in absentia.
The same year, Egypt’s public prosecution referred 38 Egyptian Brotherhood members, including al-Qaradawi, to a military court, accusing them of setting up armed cells that killed a police officer. Al-Qaradawi was tried in absentia.
Al-Qaradawi headed the International Union of Muslim Scholars, and Saudi Arabia, along with other Gulf and Arab countries, has blacklisted him as a “terrorist” figure. His presence in Qatar was one of the reasons Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt boycotted Doha for several years.
Al-Qaradawi’s controversial fatwas
Al-Qaradawi gained his fame through the Qatari Al-Jazeera Channel, where he used to call for supporting Islamist movements, especially during the period known as the Arab Spring. His sermons call on young people to rise up against the rulers of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria, who for more than a decade have been mired in a crippling crisis that has reduced the two countries to rubble mixed with the blood of innocents.
Al-Qaradawi’s life has drawn controversy because his fatwas were rejected by many scholars because they offer opinions on sharia evidence and are subject to external pressure. Most of these fatwas incited to violence and murder and supported jihadist and terrorist groups.
In his fatwa, al-Qaradawi sanctioned suicide acts by Palestinians in order to defend themselves from the Israelis, and later issued a fatwa against their permissibility when he said, “We authorize that for necessity and necessity, it has ended,” which made Israeli websites celebrate after he said, “Terrorist operations against Israel are forbidden.”
Then al-Qaradawi came back to defend such suicidal acts and the necessity of continuing them without stopping in Syria this time, not Palestine, and he confirmed that there is evidence to allow this. He said: “The origin of the human being is to fight and kill, but the bombing is the group’s plan, and to see that it needs this thing and does not leave it to individuals alone.. The group is the one that behaves as individuals.”
Al-Qaradawi was known to issue fatwas according to orders, and sometimes his fatwas differed based on the situation and the relations between Qatar and the Brotherhood in other countries.
