Chairman of the International Union of Muslim Scholars Youssef al-Qaradawi (R) speaks during a news conference in Doha on June 23, 2014.

© (photo credit: Mohammed Dabbous/Reuters)

The answer to the question, “How did a radical Islamist fool the West?” That’s an easy one. Everyone ought to know the answer to that question.

Because there is not one Western government that is not deaf and blind to what Islam is truly about. There is not one Western government that appears knowledgeable regarding Islam’s origins, history, or true beliefs.

Not one Western nation. Not one Western leader or body of leaders.

Every Western nation is foolish and visibly ignorant in its dealings with all of Islam.

Western leaders and most people in Western nations are blind and mute with regard to the reality of Islam.

This has only escalated since September 11th, 2001 each and every year.

The exact opposite course should have been taken if those in Western governments were not utterly blind and foolish living now to accommodate, appease and placate Islam while more and more Western governments are actually suppressing, and oppressing — even to the point of arrest, jail time, and large fines for those who dare speak or write the truth regarding Islam.

How much clearer do people need things to be in order for them to finally see?

The same West that trained, supplied, and entrusted Osama bin Laden when the Russians were at war in Afghanistan just as the Americans were in a losing battle, as Afghanistan has never been conquered. Not by Alexander the Great, the Romans, nor any modern army in history. And American taxpayer dollars trained, equipped, supplied, and aided Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda prior to Osama then ordering two commercial jets loaded with people to crash into the World Trade Center Towers. And we haven’t learned one lesson since. Do some homework. Do some research. Discover the facts. As no Western nation nor leader bothers to do their homework, do the necessary research, or discover or speak the facts.

That’s how radical Islamists fool the West. Because the West refuses to understand or believe the truth regarding Islam.

Ken Pullen, A CROOKED PATH, Tuesday, October 25th, 2022

How did a radical Islamist fool the West? – analysis

October 24, 2022

By YONAH JEREMY BOB

Reprinted from The Jerusalem Post

Egyptian-born Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, viewed for decades as one of the senior scholars of Sunni Islam, died on September 26 at the age of 96.

According to a report by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, Qaradawi’s story is a cautionary tale about how a radical Islamist can easily fool much of the West for an extended period of time by mixing in some reformist and modern-sounding views with his otherwise hateful rhetoric to obscure his darker side.

The report stated that by the 1960s, Qaradawi had moved the center of his activities to Qatar. There he established “a network of global Islamic organizations, including the Coalition of Good (I’tilaf al-Khayr), an economic wing of charity organizations that funneled funds from the entire world, including Europe, to the terrorist Hamas movement. “

Simultaneously, from 2004-2018, he ran the radical Islamic organization World Association of Muslim Scholars.

The Meir Amit Center report said, “Through this organization, he concentrated and coordinated the activity of radical Islamic scholars around the world, many of them members of the Muslim Brotherhood, but there were also members of other streams, some of them even more radical than the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Sheikh yusef al-Qaradawi

(credit: Shaib Salem/ Reuters)© Provided by The Jerusalem Post

Helping shape the concept of violent jihad

Many articles written about Qaradawi after his death emphasized his condemnation of al-Qaeda and ISIS and his moderate rulings permitting certain Western conduct for Muslims living as minorities in Western countries.

These articles portrayed him as many Westerners wanted to see him: a widely accepted authentic Islamic scholar who wanted to dialogue with the West and rejected violence.

However, the intelligence center noted that many of these articles left out that he helped shape “the concept of violent jihad,” especially justifying “carrying out terror attacks, including suicide bombing attacks, against Israeli citizens, the U.S. forces in Iraq, and some of the Arab regimes.”

Qaradawi supported violent jihad and suicide bombing attacks against Israeli civilians. He was a source of supreme religious authority for Hamas at a time when many Islamic scholars still prohibited suicide of any kind.

Qaradawi claimed that violence was a legitimate expression of the so-called “resistance” and that Israel was a militaristic society in which every civilian is a potential soldier, said the report.

His antisemitism was not limited to Israel, with the report saying he frequently expressed antisemitic statements worldwide and even issued a fatwa authorizing attacks on Jews around the world.

In that fatwa, “he claimed that there is no essential difference between Judaism and Zionism, and therefore every Jewish target equals an Israeli target,” according to the report.

In an interview granted to Al Jazeera, he “claimed that Allah struck the Jews throughout history due to their corruption… The last time it occurred was in the Holocaust, as punishment for the Jews’ corruption, and ‘the next time, with Allah’s help, it will happen at the hands of the [Muslim] believers.’”

At another point, he said, “The Jews opposed Muhammad, therefore Allah cursed them and turned them into apes and pigs.”

He also claimed that one should not make peace with the Jews “due to their negative qualities, as they appear in the Koran,” said the Meir Amit Center.

Despite decades of supporting radical causes and violence, Qaradawi was only banned from the U.S. in 1999, and from England in 2009, while many countries continued to value him as a so-called moderate.

However, the intelligence center said that in practice, all of his moderate rulings were a cover “to promote a radical Islamic agenda and gradually undermine Western democracy.”

Even regarding his opposition to al-Qaeda and ISIS, the intelligence center said, “It should be remembered that many of his students became supporters and even operatives of these organizations and his ideology concerning the religious laws of jihad (Fiqh al-Jihad) represented a milestone in shaping the concept of violent jihad of these organizations.”

His World Association of Muslim Scholars also published fatwas, such as blaming raped women for dressing immodestly, noted the report.

From 2013-2018, Egypt placed him on the INTERPOL list due to his affiliation with the Muslim Brotherhood, but in 2018 his name was “removed from the list without any explanation.”

In another game he played well for most of his career with the media and the West, he was often able to brush off radical accusations against the Muslim Brotherhood, saying that he had refused becoming a formal leader of the movement.

However, the report said, “It should be pointed out that he had always enjoyed a special status among the Muslim Brotherhood members and the international networks affiliated with the movement, serving as the prime source of Sharia [Islamic law] rulings for them.”