The Qaradawi difference

When I received the news of his passing, I was already getting ready to set off for Istanbul. After a meeting I was to attend in Istanbul, I was going to travel the next morning to Siirt to deliver the university's Academic Opening lecture.

Inna lillahi wa inna ilayhi raji'un. The great scholar Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi had reached the end of his journey in this world and had met his Lord. Those who called to tell me, in case I had not heard as I set out for Istanbul, did not neglect to say a word or two about him as they prayed for mercy, and my new route had already taken shape. As soon as I reached Istanbul I reserved a seat on the Doha flight three hours later, attended the meeting I had to attend for half an hour, and went straight back to the airport.

A scholar had died, the scholar of all Muslims, a scholar in the truest sense of the word, who had devoted his life to Islam and to the affairs of Muslims, who had not merely acquired and taught knowledge but had fully absorbed the political awareness that this knowledge requires and had led it. But he was also someone to whom I personally felt very close.

I have known of him for as long as I can remember, steadfast in his course to a degree that astonishes, and I felt close to this scholar through his ideas, his stance and his sincerity even when I did not see him or meet him; I do not even remember when I first met him in person. Probably at the first of his conferences and meetings I attended.

In the early two-thousands I took part in a meeting in Istanbul of the European Council for Fatwa, which he founded and chaired, with a paper on "Islam and Secularism in Türkiye" that I presented in Arabic for the first time. On that occasion I had the opportunity to chat with him more closely.

In 2016, at the "Thank You Türkiye" meeting held in Istanbul in recognition of the stance Türkiye showed toward the world's Muslims, in humanitarian aid, and beside the oppressed of the world, he did not hold back from coming from Doha to attend, sick as he was and at his age. He expressed his reason for attending by constantly reciting the verse "Is the reward for goodness anything but goodness?" and the noble hadith "Whoever does not thank people does not thank God."

That night he explained in his own style that standing with Türkiye, with the values, the stance and the struggle it represents in the world today, is the duty of all Muslims, and he thanked Erdoğan especially and prayed for him at length. "Thank you Türkiye, because since Nureddin Zengi the Turks have always entered the stage of history with their service in Islam's difficult times" is one of the most striking sentences from his speech that has stayed in my mind.

I remember very clearly the moment of his meeting with the President, whom we visited after the meeting. Although he was in a wheelchair and unable to stand, when the President approached he asked those around him to take him by the arm and lift him in order to receive him standing; and when people told him it was not necessary, he insisted on his request, angry and shouting, and said, "This brave, generous, humble leader cannot be received sitting down."

Three years ago his secretary called from his office in Qatar. She said the Sheikh had heard that some of my books had come out in Arabic and wanted a copy of each. With honor, I said, and sent them at once. I learned from some acquaintances who visited him from Türkiye that he had instructed his secretary to put my articles published in Arabic in Yeni Şafak or on aljazeera.net into his press summary; this was a great joy, but frankly this joy also placed on me the knowledge, and the responsibility, that he now read what I wrote as well.

Within a short time, all the well-known scholars of the Islamic world had gathered from every part of the world to send Qaradawi off to the eternal realm. Apart from its obligatory portion, the funeral suddenly turned, rather than into an atmosphere of mourning, into a setting of meeting, conversation and deliberation of the world's Muslims. In the condolence tent set up over two days, or in meetings outside, there were feasts of knowledge and literature in which Qaradawi, and through him the affairs of the entire Islamic world, were discussed thoroughly.

So that is how a scholar's death is, they say. Perhaps with a scholar's death a world truly dies, but on this occasion I saw what kind of blessing of a world the gathering of those who bore witness to that scholar's world shows. Frankly, it was a situation I have not seen at any other funeral.

From Mauritania the great scholar M. Deuddo, from Sudan Usam el-Beşir, from Iraq Yusuf el-Karadaği, from Libya Ali M. Sallabi, from Morocco M. Raysuni, from Palestine Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Meshaal, Wadah Khanfar, Ahmet Mansur, from Egypt Muhammed el-Sağir, İbrahim Münir, Mahmud Hüseyin, from Türkiye, from the scholars of Damascus Sheikh Kerim Racih, from Türkiye Prof. Ali Erbaş and Prof. Mehmet Görmez, and hundreds of scholars, intellectuals and politicians whose names I will not mention.

In the conversations held on the occasion of Qaradawi's funeral, as everyone related their own experience and memories of him, one thing caught my attention: the friendly relations that Qaradawi, who by age was considerably older than all of them, had established with all these people. He had had an interesting relationship of friendship with those thirty, forty, fifty years younger than he.

Even more interesting was that all these people, among whom there were great scholarly, literary and intellectual differences, had each found with him a horizon and depth of virtue, thought and literary pleasure suited to his own depth and horizons.

If it were asked, I think, what the Qaradawi difference is, which made him accepted so strongly in such broad circles, this should probably be the first thing pointed out: his friendship, which he fulfilled so well on the basis of knowledge, fiqh, politics, struggle, literature, poetry and, most important of all, virtues.

"It reminded me of the saying 'The death of a scholar is like the death of a world,'" said Professor Mehmet Görmez in his speech at the condolence tent. In fact we recall this saying whenever a scholar dies. Indeed, every scholar has a world. The entrance and exit of this world is not as easy as is supposed. Those who truly possess knowledge observe very well how the construction of a world through knowledge takes place, and who can enjoy himself here and how much, and who enters which edge or which end of it and how much of which share he can take.

They do not share all these observations with everyone. Even if they wanted to share, they could not, because it is not possible for everyone to grasp the realities they observe in the way, the weight and the importance in which they observed them. Even so, those who want to enter their world can also have a share according to their own vessels, and take what they will according to that vessel.

Besides, the difference of those who barge into that world without permission, without making this distinction, shows at once. One must also know the permission to enter that world; let us look a little at that.