Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradawi :1926-2022

The Muslim world On Monday lost one of the most prominent and influential religious scholars of our time. He is Dr. Sheikh Yousef Al Qaradawi, widely viewed as one of the most prestigious Muslim A’lem in the Arab world. He died peacefully in Doha, Qatar, at the age of 96. 

Muhammed al-Hassan Walid al-Dido al-Shanqiti, a famous Mauritanian scholar, described Qaradawi as “one of the greatest Muslim scholars in the 20th century.”

He called him “heir of the Prophet Muhammed in our time.’

Fahmi Huwaidi, a noted Egyptian intellectual,  said “Qaradawi was greater than all words.”

 The eminent Egyptian scholar joins a constellation of top Muslim scholars whose legacies shaped intellectual currents throughout the Muslim world for over a century. We are talking about luminaries such as Abul Ala Maududi of Pakistan, Abu al-Hasan Nadwi of India, Malik Bin Nabi of Algeria, Sayed Qutob and Muhammad Gazali of Egypt and Said Nursî of Turkey.

Qaradawi was born in the village Saft Turab in the Gharbiya province in Egypt on September 9, 1926. He completed the memorization of the Holy Quran before he reached ten years of age. 

He received the international Diploma in the discipline of Sharia in 1954.  Several years later, he received a doctorate from al-Azhar, the prestigious Sunni Muslim Academy in Caro.

Fearless A’lem dedicated to promoting Islam

Qaradawi exemplified the character of a fearless A’alem who practised the paramount Muslim religious duty of al-Amr Bilm’arouf and an-Nahy anil Munkar,  (promotion of virtue and prevention of vice). 

His Sharia-inspired activism prompted the regime of former Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser to incarcerate him three times during which he was subjected to severe torture and maltreatment.

The harsh persecution which Qaradawi underwent, along with thousands of Muslim Brotherhood followers and supporters, forced the eminent scholar to seek safe haven in Qatar where he remained until his death on Monday.

Qaradawi was a vocal critic of autocratic Arab dictatorships which often use Islam to justify their tyrannical rules and strangulation of human rights and civil liberties.

In 2015, an Egyptian court acting on instructions from the Sissi Junta sentenced him to death in absentia for affiliation with the Brotherhood and opposition to the despotic Sissi regime.

Two years earlier, Sissi had carried out a military coup, toppling President Dr. Muhammed Mursi, the only democratically elected ruler in Egypt’s history. Mursi was a member of the now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood. It is widely believed that the coup was carried out in collusion with the U.S. and Israel, with a strong financial backing from Saudi Arabia and UAE.

Similarly, the governments of Saudi Arabia and UAE barred Qaradawi from entering their territories, accusing him of apostasy for arguing that Islam and dictatorship are totally incompatible.

Al-Qaradawi was a strong supporter of the popular uprising against Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, who effectively destroyed Syria, killed hundreds of thousands of his own citizens, occasionally using chemical weapons,  and forced nearly half of the Syrian people to leave their homes, all in order to remain power.

Predictably, Al-Qaradawi supported the so-called Arab Spring uprisings in countries such as Egypt, Syria, Libya and Tunisia. He also strongly supported  Muslim resistance and liberation movements in places like Palestine, and Kashmir.

His strong advocacy of Palestinian rights and fierce rejection of normalization between some autocratic Arab regimes  and Israel  prompted the apartheid Zionist entity to call him the “Sheikh of Terror.” Moreover,  powerful Zionist circles in the West instigated the U.S. as well as several European states to consider him a persona non grata.

Advocate of Muslim Unity

Al-Qaradawi was a vocal prominent proponent of Muslim unity and pan-Islamic cooperation. He repeatedly argued that Allah wanted Muslims to be one Umma, not 55 states.

On many occasions, he argued that Muslim disunity, coupled with parochial secular nationalism,  which he labelled as an advanced degree of tribalism, was responsible for the enduring weakness of Muslims around the world, including the relentless persecution meted out to millions of Muslims in places like Palestine, India and Myanmar.

Qaradawi is credited for founding the International Federation of Muslim Religious Scholar (IFNRS), based in Qatar. This body, which includes prominent religious scholars from all over the Muslim world issues Fatwas or religious edicts dealing with novel subjects that were not known in the past.

Moreover, the council strives to find practical Islamic solutions bridging the gap between classical Islamic judgments, derived from the Holy Quran and Sunna of the Prophet and the requirements of  modernity.

Dr. Al-Qaradawil was a religious scholar, thinker, philosopher and poet. He enriched the Muslim library with as many as 177 books. Some of his famous books include “Halal and Haram in Islam,” and Fiqh Az-Zaka (the philosophy and understanding of Alms). May Sheikh Al-Qaradawi be in the company of prophets, saints, martyrs and righteous people in Jannat al-Ferdous.