Al-Suwaidan who currently resides in Turkey, lauded late. Yusuf Al-Qardawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who recently passed away, and he especially applauded Qardawi’s book on the fiqh (Islamic law) of Jihad.

During the interview hosted by Islamist-cleric Qadhi, Al-Suwaidan said, “By Allah, there is no one I would love to meet Allah with a word similar to his, more than Sheikh [Yusuf] Al-Qaradhawi”. Upon which Qadhi replied, “Allah be praised”.

The interview was published on the YouTube channel of the East Plano Islamic Center on October 20, 2022.

Al-Suwaidan said, “He (Qardawi) wrote the book on jihad. And so on, if somebody wants to read the details of the fiqh of zakat, don’t waste your time, just go and read the three volumes of Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi. On jihad, three volumes on the fiqh of jihad and the details of that”.

Al-Suwaidan blamed Zionism and said, “All of these challenges [we are facing in the Arab world] are small, [when compared] to our challenge in facing Zionism and the occupation of Palestine. This is in the heart of the Arab world and Muslim world and they have been able to corrupt our governments, making them accept their presence in our lands”.

During the introduction Qadhi said that, he used to listen to the audio-tapes of Al-Suwaidan while going to his university.

The segment was trimmed and subtitled by Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).

Due to Al-Suwaidan’s antisemitic views, and his support for terrorism, he has been barred from entering several countries, including the United States and Belgium. He was also an unindicted co-conspirator in the case against the Holy Land Foundation for funding Hamas terrorism.

Yusuf Al Qardawi is the unofficial spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, and all it’s related off shoots. He is one figure, Qutbists can’t term as ‘Madkhali’. Followers of Sayyid Qutb have coined a condescending term for all the Ulama who have criticized and censured Qutb, and that is ‘Madkhali’.

Sheikh Rabee Madkhalee has been the most vociferous and prolific of Qutb’s detractors having written more than five books on Qutb’s methodology and crooked ideology alone.

So as far as Al Qardawi goes then, this term can’t certainly be used for him since he calls for revolt against Muslim rulers, and all the other corallaries which Qutbists and Al Qaeda believe in, but with one strong exception ; Qardawi is a harsh critic of Qutb’s takfiri ideology and how he brandishes anyone and everyone besides himself as an unbeliever.

In a nutshell then, Qardawi regards Qutb as:

A person who was a literary figure but in matters of Fiqh was a complete layman.

He had a very rigid stance and regarded everyone as un-believer and a Polytheist.

Fi Zilal Al Quran, Qutb’s tafseer and another book of his, Social Justice in Islam talk about his Takfiri ideology which culminated on it’s final form in his seminal work, Milestones.

He regards his contemporary Ulama as stupid and defeatist.

The following are the quotes from two of Qardawi’s books, and which bring out in the open his disapproval of Sayyid Qutb and his ideology.

Had Sayyid Qutb had the opportunity to study Islamic Fiqh, and had he spent some time contemplating towards Books of Fiqh, then maybe he would have changed his ‘extremist’ stance, but his nature of education and flavor for poetry and literature never gave him the chance. Had he perused books of Fiqh through a specialized way of studying (the way Fiqh is studied ) things wouldn’t have come to this pass. His literary flavor kept him away from knowledge of Fiqh. (Al Haq ul Mubeen Fi Radd ala man talaib Bi deen, page 124)

From among Sayyid Qutb’s works, Milestones is not the only book which declares Muslims as un-believers as a whole. Fi Zilal Al Quran is the base of such talk, and besides other books, an important work of his, Social Justice in Islam also carry the same message. (Ibn Al Qariata wal Kitab, Volume 3, page 69)

The evil which we find in Ustadh Sayyid Qutb is that he puts two kinds of allegation on his counterparts and Ulama who oppose his version of Jihad.

He alleges his opponents of stupidity, less experience and of being un-aware. This way he insults their knowledge and reasoning skills.

He alleges that his opponent Ulama are under the impression of Western pressure and Colonialist deceit and have psychologically accepted defeat and weakness. By saying this he criticizes his opponent by picking on their private matters and bodily capabilities. (Ibn Al Qariata wal Kitab, Volume 3, page 61)

Having myself debated and reasoned with Sayyid Qutb, I found him rather rigid and having a very myopic vision. He used to accept Islamic Fiqh, but was strictly against Fuqaha and Ulama of his era. In his view we need to give Dawah to Muslims that they should be ready to fight the whole world that either the whole world accepts Islam or they be debased and forced to pay jizya. (Ibn Al Qariata wal Kitab, Volume 3, page 59)

This is a new stage of Sayyid Qutb – that which we call the so-called Islamic revolution against the Muslim governments or we can say the attack on Muslim society by an Islamic group. Or we can say that Sayyid Qutb’s organisation is that which regards itself as Islamic, but in reality according to them all the people on the face of this Earth have gone into Jahiliyya and have become Infidels and Mushriks. Their so-called revolutionary ideology is to label society and all those associated with it as un-believers. (Ibn Al Qariata wal Kitab, Volume 3, page 56)

Despite, Qardawi has openly criticized Sayyid Qutb’s interpretation of Islam, Qardawi’s interpretation of the religion has also brought destruction and mayhem in the middle-East. Qardawi’s extremist views have invoked catastrophe across the region.

The criticism of Qardawi upon Sayyid Qutb is like kettle calling pot black.

He is a renegade cleric who was accused of ordering the assassination of political figures in his home country Egypt, and who was sentenced to death in absentia. 

Yusuf Al-Qaradawi is next in our series “Preachers of Hate.” He is one of the fountainheads of the Muslim Brotherhood, the religious-political organization that has been sanctioned and proscribed by Gulf states and many Western countries. 

The Brotherhood’s followers are accused of fanning religious hatred and promoting a cult of violence in order to achieve political power.

In a recent tweet, Al-Qaradawi claims that he is not a preacher of hate and that he spent 25 years promoting moderate thought. 

“I stood against extremism and extremists for approximately a quarter of a century. I saw its threat to deen and dunya (religion and the temporal world), on the individual and society, and I have reinforced my pen, tongue and thought (to support) the call for moderation and reject exaggeration and negligence, either in the field of fiqh and fatwa (Islamic jurisprudence and legal pronouncement in Islam) or in the field of tableegh and da’wah (guidance and preaching),” he tweeted.

But his track record reveals exactly the opposite. He has justified suicide bombings, especially in Palestine, has repeatedly spoken out against Jews as a community, and has issued fatwas (religious edicts) that demean women.

In a fatwa on his website, he states that martyrdom is a higher form of jihad. In a 2005 interview on the BBC’s “Newsnight” program, he praised suicide bombings in Israeli-occupied Palestine as martyrdom in the name of God. “I supported martyrdom operations, and I am not the only one,” he said. 

He encourages Muslims who are unable to fight to financially support mujahideen (those engaged in jihad) everywhere in foreign lands. 

This can hardly be described, according to what he says in his tweet, as a stand against terrorism.

Al-Qaradawi has issued fatwas authorizing attacks on all Jews. On Al Jazeera Arabic in January 2009, he said: “Oh God, take Your enemies, the enemies of Islam … Oh God, take the treacherous Jewish aggressors … Oh God, count their numbers, slay them one by one and spare none.” He has a similar disdain and a deep-seated hatred of Europeans.

On his TV show in 2013, broadcast from Doha to millions worldwide, Al-Qaradawi lambasted Muslim countries as weak, and called on citizens to overthrow their governments and launch a war against all who oppose the Brotherhood, describing them as “khawarij” (enemies of Islam). 

A revolt against then-Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, who hailed from the Brotherhood, began on June 30, 2013.

That Al-Qaradawi is an Islamic supremacist, and has total disdain for Europe and its culture, can be gauged from one of his lectures on Qatar TV in 2007. “I think that Islam will conquer Europe without resorting to the sword or fighting. Europe is miserable with materialism, with the philosophy of promiscuity and with the immoral considerations that rule the world — considerations of self-interest and self-indulgence,” he said. “It’s high time (Europe) woke up and found a way out from this, and it won’t find a lifesaver or a lifeboat other than Islam.”

Observers in the Middle East are perplexed by Qatar’s support and granting of citizenship to an incendiary ideologue such as Al-Qaradawi, especially since Doha claims that it is fighting terrorism. 

One of the major reasons for the Anti-Terror Quartet — comprising Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Bahrain — boycotting Qatar is Doha’s promotion of terrorism and its active support to terrorists.

When the late Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden became a menace to world peace, and when he unleashed terrorism in different parts of the world, Riyadh took the logical step of stripping him of his Saudi citizenship. 

Political observers feel that Qatar should have done something similar in Al-Qaradawi’s case. He is a renegade cleric who was accused of ordering the assassination of political figures in his home country Egypt, and who was sentenced to death in absentia. 

Qatar should have handed him over to Egypt, but it did not. Instead, it granted him citizenship.

In a 2017 exclusive interview with Arab News on the sidelines of the Doha Forum, Qatar’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani was asked why his country continued to support Al-Qaradawi. His answer was instructive. “He is a Qatari citizen who carries Qatari nationality, and an elderly individual, and thus we cannot tell him to depart Qatar,” Al-Thani said. “The Qatari constitution does not allow for the submission of any Qatari citizen to foreign judiciary, be it in an Arab or non-Arab country.”

Salman Al-Ansari, founder of the Saudi American Public Relation Affairs Committee, refers to the Law of Political Asylum, promulgated by Qatar. 

He said this grants terrorists and extremists certain privileges under the pretext of asylum, “the most important of which is escape from legal pursuits.” 

To all intents and purposes, he added, the law gives terrorists the right to residency and Qatari citizenship, and the ability to move freely between states using false names and nationalities.

Article first published on Arab News.

Most famously and notoriously, he justifies suicide bombings. He has done this repeatedly, with regards to Syria, Iraq and Israel / Palestine.

In counter-extremism circles, many prefer to focus on violent extremism: Anything that explicitly calls for or engages in violence on behalf of an extremist ideology. Others — and I put myself firmly in this camp — believe that there are sets of ideas that are dangerous not because they explicitly lead to violence, but because they create a worldview that is exclusivist in a way that affects others — a worldview that renders violence more likely.

The countering-violent-extremism camp has good reasons for its position. Many are concerned about policing ideologies, on the grounds that it comes close to policing thoughts and conscience. The European legacy of heresy hunting before, during and after the Reformation left a disturbing cultural memory, particularly in the US, to which many of the original settlers travelled to escape persecution for their beliefs.

Yusuf Al-Qaradawi is an interesting example of this dilemma. Some of his views are simply conservative (and some perhaps reactionary). But some of his views are dangerous, not just to those who follow them, but to others as well. Yet he is able to sit down at dinners with heads of state, implying their blessing — and certainly their protection — of his views.

He has never been proved to be violent, although he was suspected of involvement in an assassination plot in the 1950s. And at the age of 92, he has more of an air of a cuddly grandpa than a frothing fanatic.

Yet he has spent decades propagating a view of Islam that has helped fuel much of the violence that has rocked the Middle East and North Africa — and other parts of the world — over the past few decades, counting terror financiers and terrorists among his former confederates and business partners.

But his associates do not tell us a great deal about him. More telling is what he says. The quotes that Arab News has collected is revealing of a man who not only revels in the violence of others, but is also vastly out of touch with the contexts into which he offers his opinions.

Most famously and notoriously, he justifies suicide bombings. He has done this repeatedly, with regards to Syria, Iraq and Israel / Palestine. It is not an ill-considered judgment conceived in the emotion of anger at foreign occupation. It is his considered belief that suicide bombings can be justified.

Nor is Al-Qaradawi afraid of playing with words. In a 2004 sermon, he acknowledged that attacks on civilians are prohibited in Islam, before going on to redefine what a civilian is, to the point that the distinction becomes meaningless. Similarly, he describes all Israelis, civilian or otherwise — including children — as valid targets, on the tenuous grounds that they may grow up and become soldiers.

He may think that he was only talking about the US occupation of Iraq, and civilians who accompanied it, or only about Israel. Does he therefore think that he is shielded from blame for the indiscriminate slaughter that took place against fellow citizens, foreign aid workers and others in Iraq, and elsewhere in the Arab world since then?

He does seem to think that. In another 2004 statement, he appeared to claim that violence around the world was the fault of American culture, and Western movies in particular. And in a switch into the anti-Semitism for which he is notorious, he seems to blame this perceived violence of Western culture on the Torah.

It is fascinating to me how easy it is for someone to apply standards that they resent being applied to themselves when talking about others. Al-Qaradawi claims that the Torah commands that when Jews enter a country, they should either make the residents their slaves or kill them. It is, of course, common for the ignorant to make similar claims about Muslims on the basis of the Qur’an read out of context — something I am sure Al-Qaradawi deplores.

A long career in the public eye shows the balance of his opinions. These extremist and anti-Semitic tendencies are not aberrations, but the constant theme. It is his calls for peace and tolerance that are the aberration, and even these betray his deeper concerns.

In 2014, following the announcement of the international coalition to defeat Daesh, he tweeted: “I oppose ISIS (Daesh) completely in ideology and methodology, but I can never accept that the ones to fight them be America, which is not moved by Islamic values.”

Al-Qaradawi cannot accept that there is good outside the Muslim world. He has described dialogue with Christians as “a waste of time,” on the curious grounds that they do not agree with Muslims on key religious issues. And he will not speak with Jews at all, supposedly due to the actions of the Israeli government.

It is these attitudes that make him dangerous today. Daesh may have been defeated on the battlefield, but it continues to recruit people to its cause. Muslims who have already imbibed the toxic ideology of Al-Qaradawi are more vulnerable to the call. The exclusivist brand of Islam that he represents makes it easier to demonize, and ultimately kill, those who disagree — whether Muslim or non-Muslim.

Peter Welby is a consultant on religion and global affairs, specializing in the Arab world. He is based in London, and has lived in Egypt and Yemen.

Article first published on Arab News.