Egyptian-born cleric Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, who was based in Qatar, died on Monday, according to a post on his official Twitter account.
Qaradawi was considered an icon and a spiritual guide to the Muslim Brotherhood, which is classified as a terrorist group in Egypt.
He rose among the group’s ranks and had contacted its founder, Hassan al-Banna in the 1940s, and remained supportive of the organization throughout his life.
In 2018, Egypt sentenced Qaradawi in absentia to life in prison after a military court convicted him, along with others, of participating in the 2015 assassination of interior ministry public security Colonel Wael Tahoon, as well as the killing of one other policeman and one civilian.
Born in 1926 in the Egyptian Delta, Qaradawi studied at Al-Azhar. He graduated from the Faculty of Fundamentals of Religion. In 1973, he received his doctorate in Islamic studies.
Throughout his studies and his youth, Qaradawi was organizationally committed to the Brotherhood, and was imprisoned several times.
He has been living in Qatar since 1961.
Over the years, Qaradawi wrote several books and issued numerous fatwas related to Muslims living in societies with a non-Muslim majority. His fatwas had always sparked controversy.
With the arrival of the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt in 2011, Qaradawi, who had been exiled by former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, returned to the country to deliver his first public speech in the Tahrir Square.
The late cleric had used his platform at the International Union for Muslim Scholars to attack Egypt, after the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood-backed president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013.
Despite his keenness to appear in the distinguished dress of Al-Azhar’s clerics, Qaradawi had been dismissed from the membership of Al-Azhar’ Senior Scholars Council in 2013 for insulting Al-Azhar Grand Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayyeb and the religious authority in Egypt.
