The Qatar-based Al Jazeera network aired a program honoring Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi on Sept. 29, three days after his death at age 96. The program included excerpts from interviews in which al-Qaradawi defended his support for “martyrdom operations,” i.e. suicide bombings against “occupiers” including civilians.
In the interviews translated by MEMRI, al-Qaradawi lauded Qatar for its role in spreading his teachings.
He explained that in “lawful” “martyrdom operations,” people use their bodies to defend their country from occupiers, which was not the case in the 9/11 attacks, in which the attackers killed innocent airplane passengers in order to “invade” and assault the United States.
Born in Egypt in 1926, Qaradawi left his homeland in the 1960s for the Gulf state of Qatar, where he enjoyed the protection of the royal family and preached militant Islamist ideology to the Sunni world.
Hamas and the Islamic Movement in Israel are both offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood.
