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In London this week to chair the European Council for Fatwa and Research (of which he is president), Qatar’s Sheikh Yusuf Al Qaradawi couldn’t avoid the wrath of the tabloids hungry for new militant meat. His controversial (but tepid) remarks on suicide bombing (calling them “permissible” and a “weapon of the weak”) and wife beating (“a possibility, [but] not a requirement or a preference”), led many Conservative MPs to call for his banning from the country (as the US has also done since 1999). Archivists may note the somewhat contradictory remarks he made after September 11th (“haphazard killing where innocents are killed along with wrongdoers is totally forbidden in Islam”). Jailed in Egypt in his youth for his association with the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaradawi has managed to simultaneously revile Wahhabis for his engagement with the West and many westerners for how he does it, while still pleasing other Muslims with favourable views on integration (he also wrote the most widely published guide to Zakat). Al Qaradawi has lashed out at critics, asking if they have seen his hundreds of lectures or TV programmes (he hosts a weekly show on Al Jazeera). However, not among them is London Mayor Ken Livingstone, who called him a “man of tolerance and respect” and invited him to return to Britain. “London,” Al Qaradawi says, “is a city of cultural plurality. [We urge] Muslims to integrate into the societies within which they live without conceding their faith.”
Zahed Amanullah is associate editor of altmuslim.com. He is based in London, England.
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