Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi was one of the most influential religious figures in the last half-century of Muslim countries, He has written more than a hundred volumes of books in various intellectual fields, participated in the establishment of various religious and research institutions, and had an active presence in the media and public arenas. What multiplied his fame was, on the one hand, his inherent abilities, which, in addition to his rich knowledge of jurisprudence, were visible in his fluent speech and writing, and on the other hand, external factors, the most important of which was the support and promotion of the branches of the Society of the Muslim Brothers organization around the world and then the Al Jazeera TV, which had been the platform of publishing his thoughts for many years. In terms of the scope of his fields of work, he was an encyclopedic scientist who dealt with various topics and issues, but in terms of the depth of specialization, most of his works were superficial, and only a limited part of his writings, which are mainly jurisprudence, are considered important and valuable in their fields. In this article, I would like to review three basic axes in Qaradawi’s career.

1- Jurisprudence and Ethics

The most brilliant part of Qaradawi’s career is the field of jurisprudence. In this context, he had an unparalleled understanding of the great jurisprudential heritage of Muslims and could choose the most appropriate ones for today’s world among the jurisprudential views of the past. His method in the field of jurisprudence was based on rationality, simplicity, and connection with the realities and needs of the people. In this context, he acted methodically based on the rules of jurisprudence and “ijtihad”, without showing any bias in favor of a particular jurisprudence. He freed jurisprudence from the old and classical language and presented it in today’s eloquent language. In addition, in explaining jurisprudential issues, he tried to take into account their moral aspect and did not deal with issues in a purely legal manner. Although he was not very familiar with theoretical mysticism, his knowledge of practical Sufism was acceptable and he tried to present jurisprudence with the flavor of Sufism, and this gave his work a special charm. Although he did not discover a new jurisprudential system and did not create a new method in ijtihad, it can be said that he used and actualized all the potential capabilities of traditional jurisprudence to become modern. From this point of view, he was head and neck above all those who practiced jurisprudence in the Shia and Sunni world in the last century. In the field of the principles of jurisprudence, in the branch called the objectives of the Shari’ah, which has an important potential in the creation of Islamic jurisprudence today, even though he was familiar with the classic topics of this field, he could not add anything new to it, and could not get it out of its classic outlooks. Despite all this, Qaradawi was an outstanding and full-fledged jurist and in this field had no equal in our time. This part of his legacy is a valuable treasure that is very effective for improving the type of religion in Islamic societies, especially against the rigid jurisprudential outlooks.

2- Dialectic and Philosophy

jurisprudence and ethics are of course the superstructure and its foundation is dialectic and philosophy; philosophy is the mother of all knowledge, and dialectical theology is like a bridge that connects reason with narration, or religion with wisdom. Qaradawi had limited knowledge of dialectical theology, it was to the extent of the differences that occurred between the Ash’ari and the Mu’tazila sects several hundred years ago. He took small steps in the field of theological issues, from writing about the proof of God’s existence to the description of his names and attributes, but because he was not familiar with philosophy, he did not do anything new and original in this field and only repeated the words of the ancients. In addition, he took a pessimistic stance against the new theological debates that are required by contemporary knowledge and rationality, and he criticized those who had opened new doors for understanding the Qur’an with the help of modern linguistic knowledge, or the theological debates relying on new scientific data, these debates were brought in by people such as Mohammad Erkun, Nasr Hamed Abu Zaid, and others. He attacked them severely. In this context, he became a staunch defender of the traditional ideas of the past and, like the old jurists and philosophers, he tried to remove the modern thinkers from the discussions with titles such as secular and atheist. He did not agree to talk with thinkers familiar with modern philosophical and social sciences and only took part in controversial debates that serve to stimulate the emotions of the common people, and as a result, the lives of writers were endangered and even a number of them such as Farag Foda, Najib Mahfouz, and others like them became the victims. His approach in this field, like other fundamentalist groups, was based on eliminating the “other” and not dialoguing with him/her. Even in the books he wrote criticizing secularism and liberalism, he did not pursue scientific-academic work to open a dialogue with intellectuals, instead, by taking a propaganda-polemical method, he chose to mobilize the emotional and uneducated youth against the political rivals of the fundamentalists. He devoted as much effort to the approximation and convergence of the backward-looking religious groups, both Salafi and non-Salafi, as he spent the same amount of energy on distancing himself from liberal and modern Muslims, and his approach in this regard was to separate no to unite. By promoting misleading and inverted concepts of competing ideas, he became one of the founders of a way of thinking that disabled and paralyzed the minds of several generations of active Muslim youth from understanding the reality of the matter, and until now the field of understanding between different spectrums of Muslim societies is either limited or even blocked. He, who was always critical of political tyranny in the Islamic world, adopted an authoritarian-takfiri approach in dealing with other-minded Muslims who looked at issues with a modern perspective, and by accusing them of intellectual and cultural apostasy, he made them more dangerous than the enemies of Islam. Pay close attention to this paragraph from his writing in the book Fiqh al-Jihad: “Here, I should not forget to mention a type of apostasy that does not show its face like open apostasy, because it is too clever to throw its disbelief openly and, in the sun, rather, it puts it in different envelopes and gives way to minds [and souls], just like diseases find their way to bodies… This is indeed an intellectual apostasy whose effects appear in front of us every day, from newspapers that are distributed everywhere, books that are distributed, magazines that are sold, speeches that are published, programs that are watched, serials that go on TV screens, customs that are promoted and laws that are implemented. In my opinion, this hidden apostasy is more dangerous than naked apostasy…” (Fiqh al-Jihad, 2010: 209) Calling intellectual opponents apostates is a way to suppress and eliminate them, which is what “Takfiris” do.

3- Politics and Daily Challenges:

In the context of politics and daily challenges, Qaradawi’s position was more controversial. He, who was a member of the Society of the Muslim Brothers organization in his youth, and because of which, he was imprisoned for some time, could not get rid of the psychological effects of it, until the end of his life. His position was always strict and hostile towards several governments that were strict with the Muslim Brothers organization, and he always had a soft and friendly position towards other governments such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the Gulf states, and he did not criticize them at all. It was because of this position that the more radical groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS considered him as one of the court scholars because he took advantage of the material and spiritual benefits of these governments and had arranged a luxurious life for himself and his children. It was said that he does not have any enmity with the rich governments that benefit him and only attacks the governments that he does not benefit from.

The most challenging part of Qaradawi’s political career was his stance during the Arab Spring. There, he, like those he called court scholars, openly aligned himself with the line taken by the Qatari government, publicly encouraging people to revolt against governments that Qatar disliked, speaking live on Al-Jazeera TV, and encouraging people for killing Gaddafi. He also had a harsh stance toward Syria and Egypt. He turned a political dispute, which was behind large oil and gas projects, into a religious issue. According to the critics, he was the most important figure of jurisprudence who, along with other factors, caused chaos in the Middle East and created a situation where hundreds of thousands of people were killed and millions were displaced, and in the end, no benefit came to the oppressed and afflicted people. Despite Qaradawi’s extensive involvement in politics and political situations, he did not know anything about it, and his positions on various occasions, including the Arab Spring, clearly displayed his parochialism, which was due to his ignorance of the nature of international politics. These controversial positions of Qaradawi, as much as they increase the number of his supporters, also make the line between his critics and opponents long and longer. A number of his critics considered him to be among the “jurisprudents of sedition” and considered him to be the cause of unrest, bloodshed, and destruction of countries.

His position in Afghanistan is a part of his political career. He used to come to Peshawar during the years of Jihad and, in addition to meeting with Mujahideen leaders, he gave lectures in educational institutions for Afghan immigrants. When his students and intellectual followers in Kabul turned to party and organizational wars, it was not seen that he felt responsible for these actions. Indeed, he did not have a direct role in these events, but as one of the great ideologists of these groups, he had a moral responsibility to see “where is the problem?” and it was necessary to deeply revise the approach of such groups. For such a task, moral advice is not enough, but the critical and pathological analysis is necessary, but he did not do it. In addition, Qaradawi always had a soft position towards the Taliban group, whose stories of killings spread all over the world every day, and no one remained unaware of the many innocent drops of blood that were shed on their hands. It seems that he considered himself related to them in some way and did not like to criticize them, even if they lead a country to destruction. During the time of Mullah Omar, He came to Kandahar to intercede and prevent the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha, but he did not take any action for the intercession of the oppressed and tortured people, and even after his return, he did not mention any words about the deprivation, suffering and bitter calamity that the people were suffering. It seems that he did not care about the suffering of the Afghan people.

َAdditionally, Some of his critics pointed out that he established the practice of suicide attacks with his fatwas in the 1990s when Islamic groups resorted to this method in Palestine. He was the first or at least the most famous jurist who theorized suicide operations under the name of martyrdom operations. Although he later said in interviews that the fatwa was specific to the conditions of Palestine and not to other territories, no such stipulation was raised when the fatwa was issued and legitimized the suicide operation. Many fundamentalist and terrorist groups in different countries spread and published his fatwa and considered it an effective method for Jihad against the enemies. His fatwa was one of the factors that spread this subversive phenomenon.

If we look at the issue in the big picture of civilization and compare our situation with the developments after the renaissance in the West, what led to a deep transformation in those lands and freed them from the straits of the Middle Ages, At least in the intellectual field, the main factor was that priests and church leaders were removed from leading the transformations, and great thinkers such as Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Hume, Stuart Mill, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, and others were free from the stereotyped thinking frameworks and conquered new intellectual horizons where great human concerns were at the center of it. They introduced precious categories such as rationality, law, tolerance, ethics, epistemology, historicism, world peace, empirical knowledge, and such issues, which are aimed at the basic needs of all humanity, not a specific Ummah or a nation, into the basic discourse of contemporary civilization. The developments after the renaissance undoubtedly depended on many economic, political, industrial, and other factors, but without considering the intellectual dimension, it would not be possible for them to be on this path. This has not happened in our countries and still, the most influential figures are the mullahs who look at the world through the lens of jurisprudence and are unaware of the important knowledge of today’s world. They cannot deal with the needs and concerns of the world, focused on the major problems of humanity, and all their concerns are just for the part of the Muslims, who are on the same side as their parties and groups, not the unlucky masses who suffer from all kinds of poverty, deprivation, and oppression. Therefore, their works have no value or attraction for people belonging to other cultures and civilizations, unlike the aforementioned thinkers, whose ideas cross all borders and are taken seriously in different cultures and civilizations.

I, who have read most of Qaradawi’s works in my youth and benefited from his jurisprudential views, do not present these criticisms to discount and diminish his scientific status but rather, I consider it necessary to deal critically with the work and intellectual legacy of the elders so that their faces are not depicted without mistakes, and the culture of idolatry and sanctification does not gain more depth and strength. One of the fundamental steps toward the maturity of societies is to get rid of the trap of pious worship and rely on one’s wisdom and knowledge. As long as the reign of our reason is in the hands of others and we don’t dare to think for ourselves, our situation won’t change.