On Tuesday, thousands of people from all over the Muslim world walked in the funeral procession of influential Egyptian Muslim cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi in Doha. Officials from Qatar and Hamas were among those who walked in the procession.
On Monday, Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, passed away in Qatar at the age of 96. One of the few Muslim clerics who publicly supported the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings in Egypt and throughout the Arab world, he was one of the most renowned and controversial clerics and public intellectuals in the Islamic world. (Hamas and Qatar officials )
The funeral was attended by Ghanem bin Shaheen al-Ghanim, Minister of Endowments, Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Khalid bin Khalifa Al Thani, and his representative, Sheikh Jassim bin Hamad Al Thani.
In addition, Qaradawi-backed Palestinian movement Hamas political bureau chief Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas diaspora office chief Khaled Meshaal, and Turkey’s religious affairs chief Ali Erbash took part in the procession.
Haniyeh said at the funeral that one of the most prominent scholars in the Arab and Muslim world had passed away. He had dedicated his life to serving Arab and Muslim issues, particularly the Palestinian cause.” Sheikh Yusef, our sheikh and role model, stood by Palestine and believed in not giving up a single inch of it. Haniyeh stated, “He believed that jihad and resistance are the means of liberation and that the cause of Palestine is the cause of the nation.” (Hamas and Qatar officials )
In a phone call, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan offered his condolences to Abdel-Rahman Youssef, Qaradawi’s son.
Erdogan said that Qaradawi “never gave up on his beliefs throughout his life and was an example to follow on balancing the principles of Islam and life.” Qaradawi was an example to follow, he said.
(Palestinian media) Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi supported democracy and the participation of political Islamic groups in elections and denounced groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (IS) as extremists. Qatari officials, Hamas leaders, and Muslim Brotherhood leaders attend Qaradawi’s funeral prayers on September 27, 2022, in Doha.
In a statement, Rachid Ghannouchi, the leader of the Ennahda party in Tunisia, paid tribute to the cleric, stating that he “had given his life to the principles of Islam and to defending his nation while stressing moderation.”
The International Union of Islamic Scholars, a global association of Islamic intellectuals and clerics, was founded by Qaradawi, who also served as its chairman. He was sentenced to death in absentia in 2015 on charges of links to a mass jailbreak in 2011 and was imprisoned multiple times in Egypt for his connections to the Brotherhood. (Hamas and Qatar officials )
Qaradawi repeatedly denied being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and turned down several requests from the group to hold senior positions in it, despite his apparent support for the organization and intellectual influence on the organization.
Since 2013 when he ousted the late president Mohamed Morsi, a senior Brotherhood leader who died in prison in 2019, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has cracked down on the Brotherhood.
Qaradawi was mourned by Morsi’s family in a statement.
Since the 1960s, Qaradawi has been primarily based in Qatar. His opposition to Sisi and support for the Arab Spring have been cited as one of the causes of the diplomatic rift between Doha and several Arab nations, which resulted in a boycott of Qatar for four years in 2017.
After the disagreement, which came to an end at the al-Ula summit last year, his organization, the International Union of Islamic Scholars, was listed as a “terrorist organization” by Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain.
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