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Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi: Affiliations
Muslim Brotherhood Qaradawi is a major figure in the brotherhood, an Islamic movement founded in Egypt in 1928 that has spawned several contemporary terrorist groups (including Hamas and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which was absorbed by Al Qaeda). Since the 1980s – after several crackdowns in Egypt and Syria – the group has generally refrained from violence while remaining dedicated to enshrining Islamic teaching as civil law. Its ideology includes strongly anti-Semitic elements; in his 1950s essay "Our Struggle with the Jews," the group's highly influential ideologist Sayyid Qutb argued that Jews had always been enemies of Muslims and in modern times used secular Western culture to corrupt and ultimately destroy Islam.
In early 2004 Qaradawi declined an offer to serve as the group's leader, a position he said had first been offered 28 years earlier. His prominence was underscored when he and two other brotherhood leaders met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in May 2004 in an effort to improve the group's relations with Assad's government.
European Council for Fatwa and Research Qaradawi is chairman of this Dublin-based group, which he founded in 1997 with the idea of establishing a central religious authority for European Muslims. During its annual conference in 2003 the council issued a fatwa supporting suicide bombing operations against coalition forces in Iraq as well as against Israelis. In April 2004, in response to the mutilation of the bodies of security contractors in Iraq, IslamOnline published a fatwa permitting such acts. In the fatwa, the Council's deputy, Faisal Mawlawi, stated that "it is permissible to mutilate the dead only in case of retaliation... Muslim[s] are allowed to take vengeance for their mutilated dead
mujahids [fighters]."
Two weeks after the fatwa was published, the body of a Spanish officer, who died during a raid on a terrorist cell associated with the March 11 Madrid bombing, was disinterred and burned.
The council supports the fight against American troops by Iraqi insurgent forces, including former members of Saddam's party. Mawlawi, for example, stated: "It is not permissible to help them (the Americans) arrest any Iraqi, whether he was a Baathist or not….U.S. troops are not in a legal or neutral position to try Baathists….The Americans are nothing but occupiers." According to IslamOnline (May 31, 2003): "Mawlawi also said it is not permissible for Arab countries to cooperate with the so-called American war on terror, noting that in most cases what is dubbed terrorism by Washington are in fact 'Jihad and legitimate right,' such as resistance operations in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan."
International Association of Muslim Scholars Qaradawi is founder and president of the association, which was officially launched on July 11, 2004, in London. Defining itself as a "pan-Muslim body," the group's leaders include Ayatollah Muhammad Ali Taskhiri, an advisor Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Ahmad bin Hamad al-Khalili, Grand Mufti of Oman.
In May 2004, Taskhiri said on Iranian TV: "We must support this [Palestinian] uprising as much as we can so it will realize its goals and cut off the treacherous Zionist hands and the American hands standing behind Zionism and supporting it." He has also called the U.S. the "mother of international terrorism."
In December 2003, Taskhiri, Qaradawi and Khalili met in Khartoum at a government-sponsored conference. Qaradawi and others who attended emphasized the importance of suicide bombings.
In early September, the association sent a delegation to Sudan to fact-find and help mediate between the government and rebel forces in Darfur. Qaradawi, who led the delegation, predicted on IslamOnline that "the IAMC delegation will have a first-hand experience in Darfur and know where the truth lies to figure out whether or not human rights are being violated as claimed by western media, which often make too much fuss about nothing.
"The western media also want to drift the attention away from the situation either in the occupied Palestinian territories and Iraq," said Qaradawi.
Following the tour of Darfur, the association's secretary general, Dr. Mohamed Saleem al-Awa, denied that genocide had taken place in the region; he also insisted that reports of widespread rapes and other atrocities were false. He alleged that Muslims in the region were being victimized by a Zionist conspiracy.
IslamOnline Qaradawi is the chairman of this highly popular Muslim Web site, heading a committee of scholars that oversees the site's content. Launched in Qatar in 1999 with support from that country's royal family, it often features comments and religious rulings by Qaradawi or his European Council on Fatwa and Research. It features a link to the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Islamic American University Qaradawi is on the faculty of the Michigan-based Islamic American University, a subsidiary of the Muslim American Society. Until June 2003 he was also the chairman (in abstentia) of the board of trustees of the institute (he may still hold this position, but relevant information is no longer available online). Several of the university's board members have ties to Middle East extremist groups, while the university's founder and president, Salah Sultan, has fomented anti-Semitism and terrorism, saying that
"the text of the Talmud says: 'If you come across a non-Jew kill him!'…I want every child to sleep on the wound of Palestine and the action of martyrdom."
Islamic Society of Boston Qaradawi was amember of the society's board of directors according to its tax returns from 1998-2000. According to the
Boston Herald (March 7, 2004), Qaradawi was featured on ISB's Arabic-language brochure endorsing a new building project for which the Society was raising money. The brochure, which was published in 2003, states that Qaradawi is one of "several international Islamic personalities who are working to support the project." Qaradawi also appeared in a video that was shown at a November 2002 fundraiser for the ISB project in Boston.
Nonetheless, the group has said that Qaradawi "has never played any role in the ISB," according to the Herald.
ISB's founder and first President was Abdurahman Alamoudi, a prominent Muslim-American community leader who pleaded guilty to accusations that he had illegal dealings with Libya and that he took part in a plot to assassinate Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah.
Al Taqwa Bank This Bahamas-based financial institution concealed terrorists' holdings, according to U.S. intelligence, including those of Al Qaeda. Qaradawi was one of the institution's largest shareholders, according to a 1999 shareholders list. He also served on the bank's
Sharia Board, overseeing its adherence to Islamic law.
First Islamic Investment Bank of Bahrain and
Qatar Islamic Bank Qaradawi served as chairman of these banks'
Sharia boards. He stepped down from the post of the Bahraini bank in 2002, when his association triggered a popular boycott of Caribou Coffee, a U.S. chain in which First Islamic had a large share. Qaradawi is a member of Qatar Islamic Bank's Shariah board.
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