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Islamist preacher Yusuf Al-Qaradawi
Photo: - / AFP
He was considered the eminence grise of the Muslim Brotherhood and one of the most influential Muslim scholars.
The Islamist preacher Yusuf Al-Qaradawi has died at the age of 96.
This was reported by his official Twitter profile at noon.
Al-Qaradawi was born in Egypt in 1929 and turned to the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood at an early age.
He quickly gained influence as a preacher and soon became known beyond the borders of Egypt in the Islamic world.
The Egyptian government had arrested al-Qaradawi several times because of his sermons, most recently he lived in exile in Qatar since 2013, where he also died.
In Egypt he was sentenced to death in absentia.
The preacher became famous through his talk show "The Sharia and Life" on the Qatari channel Al-Jazeera.
Scholars accused him of not only dealing with spiritual issues, but also of abusing his influence for political issues - and thus legitimizing Islamist terrorism.
Al-Qaradawi was a proponent of the Pan-Islamic idea of building a great state encompassing the Arab countries.
This must be structured theocratically, and the Islamist strictly rejected secularism.
Islamist hardliner
Al-Qaradawi was also considered a hardliner when it came to social issues.
Among other things, he agitated against homosexuality and was considered a supporter of genital mutilation.
Women should be subordinate to men, and Al-Qaradawi considered the death penalty appropriate for cheating.
Al-Qaradawi headed several Islamic scholarly groups, including an umbrella organization of fifty organizations that financed the Palestinian organization Hamas.
In the Middle East conflict, he advocated suicide bombings against Israel and glorified the Holocaust.
The governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates had listed al-Qaradawi on their terror lists since 2017.
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