Yusuf Al-Qaradawi Quotes
Islam does not require a war against … homosexuals. Gays are sexual perverts who should be thrown from a high place.
These lines illustrate a tactic of many Muslim leaders who go out of their way to make moderate statements to the Western press and media audiences while whipping up extremism when appearing on Middle Eastern media.
Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, Qatar Moslem Cleric & Scholar, First line is from a British TV interview, Second line is from and Al Jazeera (Arabic) interview, Quoted in The Washington Post, September 22, 2013
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Islam forbids homosexuality and Sharia (Islamic religious law) prescribes death as the penalty for homosexuality. At that time Iran was a Muslim theocracy and if there were overt homosexuality that was officially discovered, the heretics would be killed. The logic of the government was that since they had killed the homosexuals, there were none left. At the same time all the research showed that while Muslim homosexuality was slightly less than Christian, it was still quite significant in all Muslim cultures that had been studied. If the President was to be believed, Iran was the only exception.
The then current example was with same sex marriage. Some people who claimed that their religion declared same sex marriage as a sin and prohibited their aiding and abetting that activity. As a result, they claimed that their right of religious freedom allowed a county clerk to refuse to issue the marriage license or a hotel to refuse to allow a gay couple to rent their facility for a wedding, or a retail store to refuse to sell the couple bedding.
It is this verse that for some Muslims justifies terrorism against non-Muslims. See {584354} for a specific example. There are similar provisions in the Old Testament which a few extremely conservative Jews and Christians have used to advocate for blasphemy being a capital crime. Note that if an unbeliever repents and becomes a Muslim, he should be spared.
See {586039} for a quotation that goes further and seeks to punish and humiliate the non believers. This sura is often used by those wishing to illustrate the intolerance of Islam—especially of other religions. They fail to put this into the context of the Old Testament which proscribed death for heretics or the history of Christianity regarding the murder of nonbelievers. The difference is however, that a very small proportion of Jews or Christians today believe in following Biblical instructions in this respect while the proportion of Muslims who believe in the literal interpretation of scripture on these points is much larger. However there are Islamic modernists and moderates throughout the world who reject this notion of warring on all other religions and there is a struggle going on within Islam itself.
She was born a Muslim herself and her life has been threatened by other, Muslims who are fundamentalists who are living proof or her point.
Since Muslims try and convert others, one who changes religion and becomes a Muslim is exempt. The death penalty is reserved for Muslims who leave the religion.
The place of non-Muslims in an Islamic country, if any, has been a point of great anxiety among Christians, Jews, Bhais, and others. These have been persecuted and expelled from numerous Islamic countries while in others such as modern Turkey there is no problem. This particular cleric is seen as more “modern” and “liberal” than most. Even he has little concept of equality and freedom of religion.
The King, a religious exremist fanatic, was a great supporter of the Inquisition whose excesses were horrible during his reign.
See {624641} for Iranian confirmation of its discriminatory policy. The Iranian "justification for murdering Bahais is this: The Behai were originally Muslims and then they created an heretic form of Islam. Under Islamic Law (Sharia), any Muslim who converts away from Islam to ANY other religioun must be out to death. As barbarous as this sounds, the irrational thinking is the same as that of the Catholic Church when Protestant chiurches emerged. All of them were to be put to death. However that was over 600 years ago, and humanity has much imporoved standards today. But the Muslims are 700 years younnger than the Catholic Church and some point out that they are behaving the same way as the Catholics, brutal as it is, when the Church was at the same level of maturity as Islam is today.
His call for the Pope’s assassination in a public meeting produced counter-protests all over England. Choudary had earlier threatened British Jews. See {615445}.
This statement was made in the aftermath of 9-11. However, three years earlier, at a Hamas meeting, the Cleric did not seem to be concerned about the lives of the innocent. See {617372}.
Yusuf al-Qaradawi is an Egyptian Islamic scholar based in Doha, Qatar, and chairman of the International Union of Muslim Scholars. His influences include Hassan al-Banna, Abul A'la Maududi and Naeem Siddiqui. He is best known for his programme al-Sharīʿa wa al-Ḥayāh ("Sharia and Life"), broadcast on Al Jazeera, which has an estimated audience of 40–60 million worldwide. He is also known for IslamOnline, a website he helped to found in 1997 and for which he serves as chief religious scholar.
