Who is this el-Qaradawi?
Based in Qatar, Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi is one of the most influential clerics in Sunni Islam. He currently serves as president of the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFW), and is a highly influential spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. Qaradawi has twice (in 1976 and 2004) turned down opportunities to serve as the Brotherhood’s highest-ranking leader. His preference, he explains, is to avoid tying himself to "any movement which might constrain my actions, even if this is the Muslim Brotherhood under whose umbrella I grew and which I so defended."
In addition to his affiliations with the aforementioned groups, Qaradawi is founder and president of the International Association of Muslim Scholars, which has issued several anti-Zionist fatwas (religious edicts). He is chairman of the IslamOnline website, which has published numerous articles and religious rulings which were anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and supportive of violence against non-Muslims. He is also chairman (in absentia) of the board of trustees at the Michigan-based Islamic American University (IAU), a subsidiary of the Muslim American Society. And he is president of the Union of Good, a Saudi-based umbrella organization which represents Islamic fundraising groups worldwide, and which has transferred tens of millions of dollars directly to Hamas over the years.
During a press conference around that same time, Qaradawi added that suicide bombings were "weapons to which the weak resort in order to upset the balance because the powerful have all the weapons that the weak are denied." On another occasion, he asserted that suicide bombings "are not in any way included in the framework of prohibited terrorism, even if the victims include some civilians." This, he explained, was because Israel was "a society of invaders" whose "nature" was "colonialist, occupational, [and] racist."
Also in April 2004, Qaradawi issued a fatwa declaring a Muslim boycott of American- and Israeli-made products. “To buy their goods is to support tyranny, oppression and aggression,” he wrote. “Buying goods from them will strengthen them; our duty is to make them as weak as we can.”
During the 2006 Israel-Lebanon war, Qaradawi declared that Muslims were obliged to support the terrorist group Hezbollah in its combat operations against Israel.
In a 2007 interview, Qaradawi said: "It is obligatory on all Muslims to resist any possible attack the U.S. might launch against Iran. The U.S. is an enemy of Islam that has already declared war on Islam under the disguise of war on terrorism and provides Israel with unlimited support."
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=822
