Daily Telegraph: Al-Qardawi Inflaming Sectarian Tension in ME

Local Editor

The Daily Telegraph daily reported Tuesday that Yousef al-Qaradawi, who is based in Qatar and has been a leading voice supporting the sectarian strife in the Middle East, claimed that Iranian Shia were trying to "eat" Sunni Muslims.

"The spiritual mentor of the Muslim Brotherhood movement has risked further inflaming sectarian tension across the Middle East by using highly charged religious rhetoric to call for a Sunni "jihad" in Syria," the daily added.

According to its report, he referred to Alawites, as being "worse infidels than Christians or Jews". He also used the deliberately contemptuous term "Nusayris" when talking about them.

"There is no common ground between the two sides because the Iranians, especially conservatives, want to eat the Sunni people," he claimed.

Qaradawi himself, who is Egyptian by birth but has lived in Qatar for many years and is regarded as a key factor in the active role the Qatari royal family has played in backing the armed groups with arms and money, has a controversial record in the West.

However, his latest comments, made in a mosque in Qatar on Friday, go beyond his previous political sermons. He himself acknowledged he had become more radical. "People involved in reconciliation between the sects... said that I used to be the one calling for reconciliation and doctrinal unity. They asked why I don't take up that call again.

He also apologized for his past words in favor of Hizbullah. "The Shia deceived me," he said. "I was less mature than the Sunni scholars who were aware of the truth of that party."

Source: The Daily Telegraph, Edited by website team