The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood is dead

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, referred to as the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, died in Doha at the age of 96.

On Monday, September 26, 2022, the media from Qatar, as well as the official Twitter profile of Qaradawi, reported the death of the elderly leader of the Islamist movement. Comments after his death showed how broad his influence was and how differently he was perceived by the Muslim community and by Westerners.

For some, he was the leader of the Middle East liberation movements from tyranny and neocolonialism, some cited his works of modernizing the interpretation of Islamic law, but also stressed his importance as an ideologue of the Islamist movement, opposing democracy and developing Islamic fundamentalism, as well as its anti-Semitic and homophobic statements. He has also been criticized by Salafist circles as a person who distorts the message of Islam, practically an apostate.

Yusuf al-Qaradawi was born in 1926, into a practicing family in the Nile Delta. He enrolled in the religious school of Tanta and at the age of 9, he knew the entire Koran by heart and later entered the Al-Azhar University in Cairo. In Tanta, Qaradawi first encountered the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was rapidly becoming a political force in Egypt between the two world wars. He often said he was enchanted by a lecture by the group's founder, Hassan al-Banna.

In the 1940s and 1950s he was jailed three times for his activities in the Muslim Brotherhood, and in 1961 he fled to Qatar, which became his home for decades, but also a tool for promoting Islamist ideology. As if to symbolically take the baton of the main ideologue of Islam, in 1979 he conducted the funeral ceremony of the Pakistani Abu A'la Maududi, one of the founders of Islamist doctrine.

By recommending moderation in action, a certain type of gradualism became known as moderate and the scope of his ideas extended beyond the circles associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. However, despite double offers over the decades, he never took the lead in the movement, feeling that this role would limit him. It was possible thanks to what he was able to reach the masses of Muslims in the Middle East and beyond, with the help of Al-Jazeera TV in Qatar and broadcasting programs on the interpretation of Sharia there. He also played an important role in building Islamic institutions in the West, especially in Europe, by creating the European Council for Research and the Fatwa, or by supporting the creation of the umbrella organization the Federation of Islamic Organizations in Europe FIOE, today CEM, Council of European Muslims.

Some experts who study Islam and extremism claimed that his activities enabled Muslims to combine the imperatives of Islam with life in modern Western societies. Others highlighted what he himself underlined in his writings according to which the strategy of coexistence is an element of entering structures, and the ultimate goal, on the other hand, is to introduce the principles deriving from religion.

His statements on political, social and security issues have also been controversial, and this is an understatement. Qaradawi was one of the first Muslim scholars to condemn the 9/11 attacks, but at the same time he supported the terrorist attacks against Israel. In 2016, Qaradawi revised his fatwa on Palestinian suicide attacks, saying they were no longer allowed because Palestinians had other options to resist Israel. There are records where he considered Hitler to be an instrument of God, punishing Jews or justifying criminal punishment for homosexuals. At the same time, in the past, being in favor of parents practicing female genital mutilation (FGM), seeing it as a noble act, he withdrew under pressure from the United Nations and found FGM harmful. He also derived a correct interpretation on the basis of Islamic law.

His contributions and his legacy as an Islamist ideologue deserve to be analyzed by academic research. His death leaves the Islamist movement without an important point of reference. Tariq Ramadhan was once considered his successor, who was even more moderate in opinion and also linked to the European intellectual community but with heavy questions open at the judicial level.

Dr Massimo Cozzolino