THE QUESTION IS WHETHER HE'D SIMILARLY SUPPORT SUICIDE BOMBINGS OF ARAB DICTATORS

Yusuf al-Qaradawi – a ‘man for all seasons’ (OREN KESSLER, 02/20/2011, Jerusalem Post)

“Don’t fight history,” he urged the assembled crowd, and the millions more watching the televised address live. “You can’t delay the day when it starts. The Arab world has changed.”

As often in the past, Qaradawi spoke of democracy and pluralism. He urged the army officers temporarily ruling Egypt to deliver on their promises of handing power to a civil government founded on principles of pluralism and freedom, and cleanse the cabinet of former Mubarak cronies.

“Don’t let anyone steal this revolution from you – those hypocrites who will put on a new face that suits them,” he said. “The revolution isn’t over. It has just started to build Egypt… guard your revolution.” [...]

His professed embrace of progressive values has earned the cleric a reputation as a moderate.

“Qaradawi is very much in the mainstream of Egyptian society. He’s in the religious mainstream, he’s not offering something that’s particularly distinctive or radical in the context of Egypt,” Shadi Hamid, research director at the Brookings Institute’s Doha Center in Qatar, told the Christian Science Monitor on Friday.

“He’s an Islamist and he’s part of the Brotherhood school of thought, but his appeal goes beyond the Islamist spectrum, and in that sense he’s not just an Islamist figure, he’s an Egyptian figure with a national profile.” [...]

Today he is best known in the Arab world for his program Shari’a and Life, broadcast on Al-Jazeera to an estimated audience of 40 million. A 2008 Foreign Policy magazine poll put Qaradawi third on its worldwide list of public intellectuals.

In his 2001 article for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, “Al- Qaradawi: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” Reuven Paz noted the contradictory nature of the cleric’s statements.

He was one of the first Islamic scholars to have condemned the September 11 attacks – but has supported attacks on US forces in Iraq and suicide bombings against Israelis.

“There is no enmity between Muslims and Jews,” he told rabbis from the radical anti-Zionist sect Neturei Karta visiting Qatar in 2008. “Jews who believe the authentic Torah are very close to Muslims,” he said, adding that “Muslims are against the expansive, oppressive Zionist movement, not the Jews.”