Top Sunni Cleric Refuses to Participate in World Interfaith Conference Because of the Jews

Egyptian Muslim scholar Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi addresses Muslims at Al-Azhar mosque during the weekly Friday prayer in Cairo on December 28, 2012. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

Yousef al-Qaradawi is a well-known Sunni cleric in both the Islamic world and the west.  An estimated 60 million people worldwide tune into his weekly "Shariah and Life" Al-Jazeera show, and he has been described as "the voice of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood."

Now, according to the Agence France-Presse, Qaradawi is taking a stand against the interfaith dialogue that began this week in Doha, Qatar.  Apparently, he objects to sitting in on panels that include Jews.

“I decided not to participate so I wouldn’t sit at the same platform alongside Jews who still violate Palestine and destroy mosques and as long as the Palestinian issue has not been resolved,” Qaradawi explained to the Al-Arab daily of Qatar.

“There is no more injustice than what the Jews have caused to our people in Palestine,” he added.

According to the Arabian Business, Qaradawi has refused to attend interfaith events since 2009, claiming there isn't “one practical thing that these conferences have achieved for the benefit of the Islamic nation”

This particular conference brings together 500 religious leaders from 75 countries, but the International Union of Muslim Scholars, which Qaradawi heads, will apparently be represented.

Qaradawi, who strongly supported the "Arab Spring" revolutions in his home country of Egypt and across the Middle East, is often depicted as a "moderate voice of Islam."

He has expressed hope that he will live long enough to "shoot dead Allah's enemies, the Jews," and said that Adolf Hitler "managed to put them in their place."

"Allah willing, the next [Holocaust] will be at the hand of the believers," he declared during a televised broadcast in 2009.

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