Dubai Social media in the Arab world was abuzz yesterday with footages and YouTube clips posted by thousands of users showing a senior Muslim Brotherhood leader praising suicide bombings as a means to “intimidate the enemy”.
Yousuf Al Qaradawi, a cleric based in Qatar and considered by many as one of the banned Muslim Brotherhood group’s spiritual leaders, is known for radical views that include condoning suicide bombing.
In the wake of suicide attacks in Baghdad and Madinah this week, Shaikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, UAE’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, wrote on Twitter that the Muslim cleric who encourages such crimes should be held accountable. He mentioned Al Qaradawi as one of those clerics who condones suicide attacks. Al Qaradawi responded on his Twitter account claiming that he never encouraged suicide attacks. He also said he condemned the attacks in Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
Soon after, the social media networks erupted with thousands of posts, under the hashtag #AlQardawiisawarcriminal, calling the cleric “a liar” and showing videos in which he praised suicide attacks as a mean to intimidate the enemy and “support the Mujahedeen”. In videos from his Friday sermons and a TV show he hosts for the Qatari news channel Al Jazeera, Al Qaradawi also called for Muslim fighter to “surrender themselves to [a militant] group they belong to and that group would decide where, when and how the suicide attack should be carried out”.
