Al-Qaradawi…all at once!
By: Selim Abdel-Qader
Among God’s graces to renowned sheikh Dr. Yusuf Al-Qaradawi is that he reached such a high status that made him a target for envious, inimical people of weak wills and mean souls who use the attack on the sheikh as a passage to fame although it’s a path that only triggers God’s wrath, believers’ anger, and wise men’s contempt. The last of these was the editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram Newspaper Abdel-Nasser Salama who wrote a column entitled "It’s time for Baradei and Qaradawi to shut up”; a column that only comes from a delusional mind, a bleak soul, and a sick heart, and, mind you, we are merely describing not insulting here.
Had the writer said "it’s time for them to be silent” we would have considered it a viewpoint and a matter of freedom of speech. But for such a small column to include such amount of incredible vulgarity on the pages of Al-Ahram Newspaper, it is an issue more worthy of disgust than response.
It’s not of our concern that the writer placed the name of Baradei beside that of Al-Qaradawi as a sort of distraction, considering the huge difference between the two men. It’s not our concern either the attempt to hypnotize the reader by saying that Mubarak’s old age made him give the keys to the country to elderly people like himself, and that this was the reason that accelerated his downfall as if Mubarak’s rule was better twenty years earlier. But then again, what is the link between someone who wants to rule Egypt in old age and a man who is a prominent scholar of the nation expressing his opinion in its affairs? So do feeble-minded men have the right to express their viewpoints in all matters whereas scholars do not have that right? And what if Sheikh Qaradawi had an opinion that coincided with the opinion of this rickety writer, would he have rejected it for claims of old age?
If someone has reached feeble old age prematurely, it is the writer of this column who objects to the sheikh’s leadership of a protest at Al-Azhar to support the Syrian people whom the writer views as staging an obviously sectarian uprising, not a people’s revolution by any means! Does such delirium deserve a discussion? And if the writer doesn’t respect the stance of the Muslim nation, the Egyptian people, the Al-Azhar scholars and the blood of victims in Syria, and calls the most difficult uprising against the worst regime in history a ‘sectarian uprising’ while a blind man can see what’s going on in Syria, then this a blindness in eyesight, a lack of inner sight, a deficiency of thought, a death of conscience and nothing more.
There is no sectarian conflict in Syria. There is a people’s revolution against a criminal gang hijacking a country of a deep-rooted civilization, Arab and Muslim heritage. It is a gang that kills, slaughters, rapes, and markets the matter as a sectarian conflict. Even school children do not buy the lie, but the editor-in-chief of Al-Ahram does? It is only a shame that Al-Ahram’s editorial management has come down to this.
As for the writer’s accusation to the sheikh of working as an agent for others, all people know who the sheikh is, and if sheikh Al-Qaradawi wished to sue the writer for such claim, this writer would be the one sentenced to shut up and being jailed.
Sheikh Qaradawi represents Egypt’s foremost scholarly and cultural face in the Muslim world. Undermining his efforts and audience is only evidence of the writer’s lack of the least levels of self respect and respect of others.
The rest of the writer’s accusations bounce back to him, as he slurs himself not the sheikh like someone banging their head against a brick wall.
Everyone knows who Sheikh Al-Qaradawi is. But this man, who is he?