Islamic cleric Yusuf Qaradawi attacks UAE for jailing ‘hardliners,’ Qatari ambassador to denounce cleric’s remarks
The UAE summoned the Qatari ambassador on Sunday to protest against remarks made by a Muslim Brotherhood cleric who slammed the Emirates for jailing hardliners, the Foreign Ministry said.
Yusuf Al Qardawi at the Third Annual Doha Educational Conference in Doha in February 2006 photo Nmkuttiady via wikimedia commons
Arab News details that Qatar’s ambassador to the UAE, Fares Al-Nuaimi, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry in Abu Dhabi and handed “an official letter of protest” over “insults” by cleric Yusuf Qaradawi, WAM reported.
In a weekly prayers sermon in Doha, Qaradawi lashed out at the UAE, accusing it of “standing against Islamic government, punishing its leaders and putting them in jail.”
Qaradawi, an Egyptian-born Muslim scholar and supporter of Muslim Brotherhood’s deposed President Morsi, hold massive through his regular appearances on Al-Jazeera television from his base in exile in Qatar.
The summons was the first of its kind by a GCC state against another GCC state since the bloc’s formation in 1981.
The Qatari Foreign Minister Khaled Al-Attiyah disavowed Qaradawi’s remarks this weekend, saying “they do not reflect Qatari foreign policy” and insisting that ties between the two nations are “strategic in all aspects.”
But the UAE Foreign Ministry said that response “did not reflect a decisive stance rejecting Qaradawi’s speech,” and therefore Abu Dhabi had to take “an unprecedented measure” and summon Doha’s envoy.
