Qaradawi, an Egyptian scholar based in Qatar, aged around ninety, was well known in the Muslim world.
Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, one of the Sunni Muslim world’s most influential religious scholars, has died.
Al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian based in Qatar, was the president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars and also a spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. He was 96 years old.
His death on Monday was announced on his official Twitter account.
Al-Qaradawi, who once made regular appearances on Al Jazeera in Arabic to discuss religious matters, hosted a popular TV show, “Shariah and Life”, in which he took calls from all over the Muslim world, dispensing theological decisions and offering advice on everything from world politics to the mundane aspects of everyday life.
Al-Qaradawi strongly criticized the coup that toppled Egypt’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, in 2013.
Morsi was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood before becoming president and was supported by the movement.
Al-Qaradawi was unable to return to Egypt after Morsi’s overthrow due to his opposition to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
The religious leader had previously been in exile from Egypt before the 2011 revolution that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak.
His death sparked strong reactions across the Muslim world, as people took to social media to mourn his death.
At the age of 96, Sheikh Yousuf Al Qaradawi, one of the most influential contemporary Muslim scholars, died today. His progressive views paved the way for new trends in modern Islamic thought, and his support for the Arab Spring and our dreams of freedom will be remembered. https://t.co/1vEomUs8e3
— Abdelrahman Ayyash (@3yyash) September 26, 2022
The Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in Egypt and had branches across the region, played a huge role in the 2011 uprisings that rocked the Middle East and led to widespread protests in several countries in the region.
Al-Qaradawi had been tried and sentenced to death in absentia in Egypt.
Born in 1926, when Egypt was still under British colonial rule, Al-Qaradawi combined religious education with anti-colonial activism during his youth. His activism against the British occupation and later his association with the Muslim Brotherhood led to his arrest on several occasions during the 1950s.
He moved to Qatar in the early 1960s when he was appointed Dean of the Sharia Faculty at Qatar University and later obtained Qatari citizenship.
One of his famous early works was the 1973 book Fiqh al-Zakat (The Jurisprudence of Zakat). Al-Qaradawi also sought to reinterpret historic rules of Islamic law to better integrate Muslims into non-Muslim societies.
He backed suicide bombings against Israel during the second Intifada and also expressed support for the Iraqi insurgency that erupted after the 2003 US invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. His stance on both issues has earned him long-standing infamy in the West.
In 2009, Israel’s internal security agency Shin Bet accused al-Qaradawi of allocating $21 million to a Hamas-funded charity to build militant infrastructure in Jerusalem. Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, has denied the allegations.
