Erdogan defends Brotherhood's Qaradawi after arrest warrant

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was angered when Interpol issued an arrest warrant Dec. 5 for Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the ideological leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Expressing his resentment publicly at the Fifth Religious Council in Ankara Dec. 8, Erdogan said: “Look, a person who came to power through a coup is giving instructions to Interpol. Based on this instruction a step is being taken for the arrest of Youssef al-Qaradawi, president of the [International] Union of Muslim Scholars. What kind of a business is this?” 

In July, an Egyptian news report of unknown reliability wrote that Qaradawi had ruled that a declaration of a caliphate by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant is “void under Sharia,” but that he declared Turkey to be the capital of the caliphate.

In June 2013, Qaradawi released a written statement in response to the Gezi Park protests and called on everyone to support Erdogan against foreign conspiracies. He said the opposition protesting in Taksim Square is a minority and they should respect the opinion of the majority and refrain from destructive behavior. Qaradawi also stressed that Erdogan’s success was because of the help of Allah, because by prohibiting the use of alcohol Erdogan stopped moral corruption and destruction of society.

Qaradawi is also known for his passionate hatred of Israel. He permitted the use of suicide bombings in one his fatwas in the 1990s as a defensive tactic against Israel. Since then, he never retracted from that position. In April 2004, Qaradawi issued a fatwa declaring a Muslim boycott of US- and Israeli-made products. “To buy their goods is to support tyranny, oppression and aggression,” he wrote. “Buying goods from them will strengthen them; our duty is to make them as weak as we can.”