Yusuf al-Qaradawi

Yusuf Abdullah al-Qaradawi (9 September 1926 – 26 September 2022) was an Egyptian scholar who lived in Qatar and held Qatari citizenship. He was the founder and former chairman of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, and chairman of the European Council for Fatwa and Research. ^{1 2}

He became known to a worldwide audience through his programme al-Shari'a wa-l-Hayah ("Sharia and Life") on Al Jazeera, which the article estimates had an audience of 40–60 million worldwide, and through IslamOnline, a website he helped found in 1997 and for which he served as chief religious scholar. ² Al-Qaradawi published more than 120 books, including The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam and Fiqh al-Zakat, received eight international prizes for his contributions to Islamic scholarship, and was considered one of the most influential Islamic scholars of his time. ²

Al-Qaradawi was born on 9 September 1926 in the rural village of Saft Turab in the Nile Delta, now in Gharbia Governorate, Egypt, into a poor family of devout Muslim peasants. His father died when he was two, and he was raised by his mother and uncle. ^{2 1} He had memorised the entire Quran before he was ten years old. ²

He joined the Institute of Religious Studies at Tanta and graduated after nine years of study; while in Tanta he first encountered Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, when al-Banna gave a lecture at his school, an encounter whose lasting impact al-Qaradawi later described in writing. ² He then studied Islamic theology at al-Azhar University in Cairo, graduating in 1953 first in his class, earned a teaching licence from the Faculty of Arabic Language in 1954, a diploma in Arabic language and literature at the Advanced Arabic Studies Institute in 1958, a master's degree in Quranic studies in 1960, and a PhD from al-Azhar in 1973 with first merit, for his thesis Zakah and its Effect on Solving Social Problems. ^{1 2}

His connection with the Muslim Brotherhood led to imprisonment under King Farouk in 1949, then three more times during the presidency of Gamal Abdel Nasser. ² In 1961 he left Egypt for Qatar to head the Qatari Secondary Institute of Religious Studies, settled there and obtained Qatari citizenship. ^{1 2}

In 1977 he laid the foundation for the Faculty of Shari'ah and Islamic Studies at the University of Qatar and became its dean; in the same year he founded the Centre of Seerah and Sunna Research. He held academic posts between Qatar and Egypt until 1990, served in Algeria as chairman of the Scientific Council of Islamic University and Higher Institutions in 1990–91, then returned to Qatar as director of the Seerah and Sunnah Center at Qatar University. ² In 1997 he helped found the European Council for Fatwa and Research, a council of Muslim scholars dedicated to researching and writing fatwas for Western Muslim minority communities, based in Ireland, and served as its head. ² He also chaired the International Union of Muslim Scholars from its founding. ^{1 2}

Al-Qaradawi was a principal shareholder and former Sharia adviser to Bank Al-Taqwa; on 2 August 2010 the bank was removed from the United Nations Security Council list of entities and individuals associated with al-Qaeda. ²

His best-known media work was the programme al-Shari'a wa-l-Hayah ("Sharia and Life") on Al Jazeera, which the article estimates had an estimated audience of 40–60 million worldwide. ² The Arabic article also notes that he recorded many episodes of religious programmes, both recorded and live. ¹

In 1997 he helped establish IslamOnline and served as its chief religious scholar; he remained chairman of Qatar's Al-Balagh Society, which funded the network, until 23 March 2010. ^{2 1}

In the wake of the 2011 revolution he returned to Egypt for the first time since leaving in 1961. On 18 February 2011 he led Friday prayers in Tahrir Square before an audience the article estimates at more than two million, opening with "O Muslims and Copts", demanded the release of political prisoners, and called for a quick restoration of civilian rule. ²

Alongside the International Union of Muslim Scholars and the European Council for Fatwa and Research, al-Qaradawi was a member of al-Azhar's Body of Senior Scholars and its Islamic Research Academy in Egypt, of the Islamic Fiqh Academy of the Muslim World League, chairman of the Sharia supervisory boards of Qatar Islamic Bank and Faisal Islamic Bank of Bahrain, and a trustee of the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. ¹

This section should be read as a presentation of differing positions reported in the sources, not as the museum's verdict on them.

His supporters: The scholar Muhammad Taqi Usmani wrote that he had benefited from al-Qaradawi's books to a very large extent and admired the majority of them, and that his disagreement with him on particular issues was the natural juristic disagreement (ikhtilaf) that does not diminish the value of those books in scholarship and da'wa in the slightest. ² Commentators sometimes described him as a "moderate Islamist"; he finished third in the 2008 Prospect and Foreign Policy poll of the world's leading public intellectuals, and received prizes including the Islamic Development Bank Prize in Islamic Economics (1991), the King Faisal International Prize for Islamic Studies (1994), the Dubai International Holy Quran Award for Islamic Personality of the Year (2000) and the State Acknowledgement Award of Qatar (2008). ^{2 1} After the September 11 attacks he urged Muslims to donate blood for the victims and said that Islam considers the attack against innocent human beings a grave sin. ² In 2014 he stated that the Islamic State's declaration of a caliphate "is void under sharia". ²

His critics: The sharpest criticism concerned his support for Palestinian suicide bombings against Israelis. Defending them to BBC Newsnight in 2005 he said: "An Israeli woman is not like women in our societies, because she is a soldier", and considered this type of operation evidence of God's justice, who "has given the weak a weapon the strong do not have". In interviews and articles he repeated that these operations are "heroic martyrdom operations" and legitimate resistance, not suicide. ^{2 1} In response to such positions, al-Qaradawi was banned from entering the United States from 1999; the United Kingdom refused him a visa in 2008, the Home Office stating it feared his preaching "could foster inter-community violence"; and French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced in March 2012 that he would be barred from France. ^{2 1} In October 2004, over 2,500 Muslim intellectuals from 23 countries signed a petition to the United Nations that counted al-Qaradawi among the "sheikhs of death" who provide a religious cover for terrorism; al-Qaradawi dismissed the charge as baseless and slanderous. ²

MEMRI reported his statement in a sermon broadcast on Al Jazeera on 28 January 2009, as translated by MEMRI, that what Hitler did to the Jews was "divine punishment" for them and that, God willing, the next punishment would be "at the hand of the believers". ² The Anti-Defamation League accused his remarks about Jews of inciting violence, and an article in the Jewish Political Studies Review described his statements as incitement to genocide. ² Other fatwas were also criticised, from his position that the death penalty is a necessity for apostasy — while advocating that apostates be given a chance to repent — to his views on the Shia and minorities; some Shia critics object to his warnings against what he calls a "Shiite resurgence" invading Sunni societies. ^{2 1} Some scholars criticise him, in their view, for preferring opinion over evidence, citing weak hadiths and departing from consensus on some questions; al-Qaradawi replies that the questions in which he was accused of breaking consensus were held by earlier scholars before him, and that he does not impugn firmly established hadiths. ¹

Legal measures and designations: On 16 May 2015 an Egyptian court sentenced al-Qaradawi to death in absentia, along with the ousted President Mohamed Morsi and over 100 other Egyptians affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood; the article reports, citing Interpol's website, that he was wanted by the Egyptian judicial authorities for charges including agreement, incitement and assistance to commit intentional murder and helping prisoners to escape. ² In November 2017, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain announced in a joint statement a terrorism list that included the International Union of Muslim Scholars and al-Qaradawi personally. ¹ On 17 January 2018 an Egyptian military court sentenced him to life imprisonment on a charge of incitement to violence in the case of the 2015 assassination of officer Wael Atef Tahoun. ¹ The Arabic article records that his name was removed from the Interpol wanted list in December 2018, the ruling against him being considered politicised and lacking neutrality and transparency. ¹ Al-Qaradawi had also chaired the Union of Good, a coalition of Islamic charities supporting Hamas' infrastructure that the United States placed on its terrorism lists; and in December 2014 the International Union of Muslim Scholars, which he led, was expelled from the Cairo-based International Islamic Council for Da'wah and Relief on the allegation that it mixed religion and politics and supported terrorism. ²

The English article credits al-Qaradawi with more than 120 books; the Arabic article puts his works at more than 170, counting books and treatises. ^{2 1} Among his best-known works are The Lawful and the Prohibited in Islam; Fiqh al-Zakat, which Abul A'la Maududi described, as the article reports, as "the book of this century in Islamic jurisprudence"; Fiqh al-Jihad (2009); Fi Fiqh al-Awlawiyyat (On the Jurisprudence of Priorities); Fatawa Mu'asira (Contemporary Fatwas); Non-Muslims in Islamic Society (1977); and Islam: The Future Civilization. ² He also wrote poetry, including his famous long poem Malhamat al-Ibtila' ("The Epic of Affliction", known as Nuniyyat al-Qaradawi), composed when he was imprisoned in the military prison with the Muslim Brotherhood and running to more than 300 verses. ¹

Al-Qaradawi was born in Egypt and lived in Qatar. He had three sons and four daughters, among them his daughter Ilham Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an internationally recognised nuclear physicist, and his son Abdulrahman Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a poet and political activist in Egypt. ² The museum does not publish family detail beyond what understanding his work requires.

Al-Qaradawi died in Doha on 26 September 2022 at the age of 96. His funeral was attended by thousands of mourners, including the deputy emir of Qatar and senior Qatari and foreign officials, at the Imam Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab Mosque, and he was buried at Mesaimeer Cemetery in Doha. ^{2 1} The sources report that his television programme alone reached tens of millions of viewers a week and that his books were translated and circulated across the Muslim world; these are the sources' dated estimates. ²

• The defined sources cited above, recorded in data/source/.
• Later translations and edits of this article require periodic review with clear update dates.