Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, one of the masterminds of the Arab Spring, dies at 96

Spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and one of the mentors of the Arab Spring in 2011, Egyptian Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi died this Monday (26), aged 96.

Qaradawi spent much of his life in Qatar, where he became one of the most recognized and influential Sunni Muslim clerics in the Arab world, thanks to regular appearances on the local Al Jazeera network.

Broadcast to millions of people, his sermons generated discontent that led Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies to impose a blockade on Qatar in 2017, declaring Qaradawi a terrorist.

The death was announced on his official Twitter account, and the cause was not disclosed. He died in Qatar, where he lived in exile after the military overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt in 2013.

Qaradawi, who studied at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, was often described by his supporters as a moderate who offered a counterweight to the radical ideologies espoused by al Qaeda. He strongly condemned the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and supported democratic politics.

Despite moderation, he also sanctioned violence in some episodes. After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, he supported Iraqi insurgency attacks against coalition forces; he also defended Palestinian suicide bombers in their offensives against Israeli targets in the year 2000.

His stance caused several western countries to ban him from entering.

Qaradawi joined the Muslim Brotherhood at a young age. Advocating Islam as a political program, the Brotherhood has been seen as a threat by autocratic Arab leaders since it was founded in 1928 in Egypt by Hassan al-Banna, whom Qaradawi knew.

Al-Qaradawi has been arrested several times in Egypt, where members of the Muslim Brotherhood are considered “terrorists” and exposed to the death penalty for being part of the organization.

He turned down the chance to lead the organization, focusing instead on preaching and Islamic knowledge and gaining followers that extended beyond the group.

During the Arab Spring uprisings, the sheikh called for Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to be killed and declared a fight against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Its prominence grew after the Arab uprisings of 2011.

While visiting Cairo after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, he told a crowded Tahrir square that fear had been taken away from the Egyptians who overthrew a modern pharaoh.

His appearance symbolized changes in the region, with long-oppressed Islamists enjoying new freedoms and a member of the Brotherhood, Mohamed Mursi, being elected president in 2012.

When the military, encouraged by mass protests, toppled Mursi a year later, Qaradawi condemned the new military order and its crackdown on the Brotherhood. The sheikh called for a boycott of the presidential election that made army commander Abdel Fattah al-Sisi president in 2014.

“The nation’s duty is to resist the oppressors, restrain their hands and silence their tongues,” Qaradawi said.

Death penalty

“He is someone committed to democracy and popular sovereignty from an Islamic perspective,” said David Warren, a scholar of contemporary Islam and a researcher at Washington University in Saint Louis.

“But being a democrat doesn’t mean one has to be a pacifist. So, in the context of a civil war like Libya and Syria, he could occupy those positions while saying that Gaddafi is a tyrant who should be killed.”

Qaradawi was sentenced to death in absentia by an Egyptian court in 2015, along with Mursi and about 90 others. The sheikh said the sentence, related to a mass prison break in 2011, was absurd and violated Islamic law, adding that he was in Qatar at the time.

Qaradawi, who memorized the Quran at age 10, presided over the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS). He opposed “takfir”, a concept used by Islamic militants to justify killing Muslims who disagreed with them by declaring them non-believers.

The sheikh also opposed the Islamic State, saying he completely disagreed with its “ideologies and means”. When the terrorist group burned a captured Jordanian pilot alive in 2015, the IUMS said the organization did not represent Islam in any way.

He strongly supported the Palestinian struggle with Israel. On a 2013 visit to Gaza organized by the Islamist group Hamas, Qaradawi said: “We must seek to liberate Palestine, all of Palestine, inch by inch.”