http://www.nationalreview.com/article/352370/bin-bayyah-bungle-andrew-c-mccarthy
‘Who is a civilian?” The Muslim Brotherhood’s chief jurist, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, was asking the question rhetorically. It was 2004 and the sheikh, globally renowned as Sunni Islam’s most influential sharia scholar, felt obliged to dilate on Muslim law’s distinction between civilians and combatants. After all, a couple of his edicts had caused some confusion.
Two days after the atrocities of September 11, 2001, Qaradawi declared, “We, in the name of our religion, deny the act and incriminate the perpetrator.” Although he expressed skepticism that Muslims were behind the attacks on the United States, his pronouncement was taken as an implied condemnation of al-Qaeda.
An apparent rebuke from a figure of such stature elated American progressives, who look upon the Brotherhood as a cure, rather than an incubator, for violent jihadism. For once, the Left could feel comfortable forgetting that Qaradawi is a rabid anti-Semite whose gory enthusiasm for the Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch, the Hamas terrorist organization, is most notable for its paeans to suicide bombing — or what the sheikh prefers to call “martyrdom operations.”
But the treacle that Brotherhood eminences serve up for voracious Western consumption is rarely repeated in speeches to their core Arabic audience, swelled to the millions by the popularity of media mogul Qaradawi’s weekly al-Jazeera program, Sharia and Life. This is the audience to which Qaradawi typically spouts such venom as: “The Israelis might have nuclear bombs but we have the children bomb, and these human bombs must continue until liberation. Calling for peace at this time is treason.”
