The Assault on Sheikh Qaradawi

by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem

There are some Palestinians and Egyptians among the supporters of the Ramallah authority and the Egyptian regime who attack Sheikh Qaradawi, sometimes departing from all propriety and decorum to heap curses and abuse upon him. Every vessel oozes what is in it, and Sheikh Qaradawi is too great and too exalted for his name to pass these people’s lips, even in praise. These people now issue fatwas declaring that cursing Qaradawi is permissible — but they never say according to which dictionary: is it permissible according to the dictionary of the corrupt, or of the conspirators, or of those who collaborate with the Zionists, or of those who recognize the nation’s enemy and chief killer, the Zionist entity, or of those who beg at America’s doorstep, or of those who conspired with the Zionist entity against Gaza?

When sinners find themselves entangled, committing abominations against the nation and against their own families, wives, daughters, and sons, sliding into the mire of collaboration with the enemies of God, the nation, and the homeland, they find nothing before them but to curse themselves by cursing others — and they can escape the shame into which they have plunged themselves only by accusing others.

He is a man devoted to God and to his nation, and to all its lands and regions from the Ocean to the Sind and India, and he has spent his life as a sharp sword confronting the various assaults visited upon the nation.

Sheikh Qaradawi is great and exalted, and whoever assails him only diminishes himself. We may disagree with him on some religious, political, or social question, but that has nothing to do with respecting and esteeming him, nor with his religious, national, and human standing. A nation that assails its own scholars is a nation ruled by the ignorant, who sell its homelands and its honor for the cheapest of prices.

A statement issued by a Palestinian party paired Netanyahu and Qaradawi, placing them, by implication, in the very same category. What is this? What is this ignorance, this insolence? Do you want us to accept it, and take pride in it? Are we to place Qaradawi in the same rank as Netanyahu? What a disgrace! And there were those who saw in the Friday sermon of January 15, 2010, an opportunity for reproach and vilification.

As a Palestinian, I am innocent of what they do and say, and I condemn with all my strength this behavior, which I consider shameful and disgraceful, bringing nothing but disgrace upon Palestine. As a Palestinian, I am proud of a nation that produces men like Sheikh Qaradawi, a man whose resolve does not soften, and who fears no reproach of any reproacher when it comes to the truth.

Sheikh Qaradawi did not say that the President of the Authority must be stoned; he said that the President of the Authority would deserve stoning if he supported the Zionists’ war on Gaza. This is a general statement that carries no particular implication unless the act itself has actually taken place. And I say: every Arab who supported the winter war of 2008/2009 on Gaza, whether openly or by insinuation, secretly or publicly, deserves stoning at the Sacred Mosque, or at the gates of al-Aqsa.

I apologize to Sheikh Qaradawi for what an ignorant people are doing, and I am convinced that millions across the land of Syria and the Arab lands are coming forward to offer Sheikh Qaradawi their own apology.

Source: Translated from the original Arabic, “التطاول على فضيلة القرضاوي” by Dr. Abdul-Sattar Kassem.