Youssef Qaradawi

Youssef Qaradawi is the most impor­tant leader of the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and is the de fac­to spir­i­tu­al leader of the move­ment. He is also the “spir­i­tu­al guide” for Hamas and his fat­was in sup­port of sui­cide bomb­ings against Israeli cit­i­zens were uti­lized by Hamas to jus­ti­fy their oper­a­tions. In 2004, Qaradawi turned down the offer to head the Egypt­ian Broth­er­hood after the death of the Supreme Guide but now denies that he has any rela­tion­ship with the Egypt­ian Broth­er­hood. Qaradawi is the head of the Union of Good (UOG), is the for­mer leader of the Euro­pean Coun­cil for Fat­wa and Research (ECFR), as well as the for­mer leader of the Inter­na­tion­al Union of Mus­lim Schol­ars (IUMS). He is based in Qatar, holds Qatari cit­i­zen­ship and has said the Qatari Emir has pro­tect­ed him from being des­ig­nat­ed as a ter­ror­ist by the US. He has also amassed sub­stan­tial wealth by serv­ing as the Shari’ah advis­er to many impor­tant Islam­ic banks and funds. Qaradawi has been banned from enter­ing the US, the UK and France. Qaradawi has made a num­ber of extrem­ist state­ments includ­ing pre­dict­ing that Islam will con­quer Europe through peace­ful means, call­ing Hitler a divine pun­ish­ment for the “mis­deeds of the Jews”, say­ing that he wants to end his life “in the ser­vice of Jihad” by vis­it­ing Israel and throw­ing a bomb, call­ing for the death of all Jews, call­ing for attacks on US troops and civil­ians in Iraq, and call­ing for the col­lapse of the US if it doesn’t end its “unjust ways.” In 2018, an Egypt­ian court sen­tenced him in absen­tia to life in prison for alleged “incite­ment to mur­der”, “spread­ing false news” and “van­dal­is­ing pub­lic property”.