Obama’s Genocidal Mediator: Radical Islamist cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi

FrontPageMag/ by Arnold Ahlert

The Obama administration, fresh from abandoning Iraq at a critical time in its post-war development, is apparently preparing to do the same thing in Afghanistan. According to a report published late last month in The Hindu, radical Islamist cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi is serving as a “key mediator in secret talks between the U.S. and the Taliban.” Unnamed government sources assert that Qaradawi helped in putting together a “road map” whose purpose is to provide America a “face-saving political settlement ahead of its planned withdrawal from Afghanistan which is due to begin in 2014.” Once again, for an Obama administration concerned with the 2012 election, a “political settlement” becomes a viable substitute for victory.

How viable? Viable enough to pretend that a rabid anti-Semite such as Qaradawi is a “moderate” Islamic cleric. Here is part of a speech he made in Tahrir Square in Cairo before a huge crowd on February 18, 2011, after returning to Egypt from 30 years of forced exile:

A message to our brothers in Palestine: I have hope that Almighty Allah, as I have been pleased with the victory in Egypt, that He will also please me with the conquest of the al-Aqsa Mosque to prepare the way for me to preach in the al-Aqsa Mosque. May Allah prepare the way for us to [preach] in the al-Aqsa Mosque in safety–not in fear, not in haste. May Allah achieve this clear conquest for us. O sons of Palestine, I am confident that you will be victorious.

The speech was hardly unique. Mr. Qaradawi has a track record of anti-Semitic, genocidal statements. In 1995, at a conference held by the Muslim Arab Youth Association (MAYA) in Toledo, Ohio, he told his audience that “the balance of power will change, and this is what is told in the Hadith of Ibn-Omar and the Hadith of Abu-Hurairah: You shall continue to fight the Jews and they will fight you, until the Muslims will kill them. And the Jew will hide behind the stone and the tree, and the stone and the tree will say: ‘Oh servant of Allah, Oh Muslim, this is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him!’ The resurrection will not come before this happens.” In 1998, the Associated Press quoted his writing: “There should be no dialogue with these people [Israelis] except with swords.” In April 2001, he characterized suicide bombings as “heroic martyrdom operations.”

In 2009, he had this to say during two TV broadcasts on al-Jazeera: “I will shoot Allah’s enemies, the Jews, and they will throw a bomb at me, and thus, I will seal my life with martyrdom. Praise be to Allah, Lord of the Worlds. Allah’s mercy and blessings upon you.” Two nights later it was this: “Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler. By means of all the things he did to them–even though they exaggerated this issue–he managed to put them in their place. This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers.”

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