According to Pickled Politics, Madeleine Bunting has been tasked with interviewing Al Qaradawi.
An interview of Al Qaradawi by a progressive journalist for a liberal newspaper would be an interesting thing to read.
There are many questions that should be put to Al Qaradawi. For example, we know that Qaradawi endorses the punishment of homosexuality by stoning, being thrown from a high building, being whipped 100 times or imprisonment until death. But there has been some debate as to which of these punishments Qaradawi thinks the state that he hopes to create should impose.
I hope Madeleine Bunting will take this opportunity to ask him which of these punishments he favours.
We also know that Qaradawi has delivered fatwas which legitimise the deliberate targeted murder of civilians, and has argued against other muslim theologians which have expressed the view that those murders of civilians are illegitimate and reprehensible:
“We must realize [sic] that Israeli society is a military society – men and women. We cannot describe this society as civilian. We cannot say that the casualties were innocent civilians. They are not civilians or innocent.”
We also know that over 2,500 Muslim intellectuals from 23 countries have signed a petition to the United Nations calling for an international treaty to ban the use of religion for incitement to violence, and have specifically accused Qaradawi of “providing a religious cover for terrorism.”
I hope that Madeleine Bunting will challenge Qaradawi for counselling and procuring a war crime.
I hope that the Madeleine Bunting’s interview will not dodge the difficult questions. I hope that she will ask him whether the state which he hopes to see created will execute apostates, and why he has ruled that “an apostate is a traitor to his religion and his people and thus deserves killing“. I hope that she will ask Qaradawi why he supports female genital mutilation, even though he does not regard it as a religious obligation. I hope that she will ask him why he believes that a husband should compel his wife to wear a hijab. I hope that she will ask him why he sanctions the right of a husband to “admonish” his wife “lightly with his hands” if he “senses that feelings of disobedience and rebelliousness are rising against him“.
I hope that this interview will not consist of a whitewash of Qaradawi’s views.
(Also see the Popinjays)
