Al-Qaradhawi Speaks In Favor of Suicide Operations at an Islamic Conference in Sweden

During the first week of July 2003, the European Council for Fatwa and Research convened in Stockholm for its 11th session. The council, which was established in 1997 in the U.K., is comprised primarily of Islamic scholars from the Arab world and is headed by Sheikh Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, one of the most influential clerics in Sunni Islam and amongst Islamist groups and organizations. The council convenes every few months in a European city to conduct discussions and issue Fatwas on questions concerning Muslim communities in the West. Following differences of opinion on the matter of suicide bombings during the previous session (convened in Dublin in January 2003), the council decided to research the matter and bring it up for discussion at the July session. Though the Stockholm conference was called “Jihad and Denying its Connection to Terror,” the five reports that were presented focused on dictionary definitions of the word “terror.” The London-based Arabic language daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat [1]reported at length on the research by Sheikh Al-Qaradhawi, who classified terror according to the following categories: colonialist terror, state terror, international terror, political terror, terror that is permitted by Islamic law, terror that is prohibited by Islamic law, and martyrdom operations. Full Story