During recent TV appearances, global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi reiterated his endorsement of suicide bombings in Israel despite his statements last April appearing to suggest that they were no longer necessary. According to a MEMRI report, Qaradawi said on Al-Hiwar TV:
I have [supported]this for more than 20 years. I am not the only one to support this. More than 300 Muslim scholars have supported it. I do not automatically permit martyrdom operations. I permit them under specific constraints, when necessary – like in the case of our Palestinian brothers, who are forced to defend themselves by turning themselves into bombs. I said to a British TV broadcaster in the summer of 1983: “Brother, you can prevent these martyrdom operations. Give the Palestinians just one percent of the tanks, missiles, and Apache helicopters that their adversaries have, and they will not resort to martyrdom operations.” They are forced to do so. God has given them this means as a kind of just and divine compensation. Their only way to defend themselves is for one of them to turn himself into a human bomb. This is divine justice. I sanctioned these operations to anybody who is forced to carry them out in defense of his homeland. In my opinion, our brothers in Palestine are forced to do so. In Iraq, they have a wide variety of weapons. They are able to use weapons against their enemies. But the weapons of the Palestinian brothers are no match for their enemies’ weapons – they do not have even one percent or one permille of their weapons. That’s why I sanctioned these operations for [the Palestinians], but not for [the Iraqis]. In addition, I did not approve using this kind of operation in New York and Washington, on September 11, 2001. I did not approve of these operations in the London and Madrid bombings. I sanctioned bombings and sacrifice operations for the Palestinians only – not because their enemies are Jews, but because they are occupiers, and the Palestinians cannot fight them. They kill Palestinians on a daily basis, destroy their homes, burn their fields, uproot their trees, and so on.
On Al-Jazeera TV, Qaradawi offered a somewhat less than ringing condemnation of anti-Semitism by explaining that Jews cannot be the ” offspring of apes and pigs”:
I denounced some contemporary religious preachers, who curse the Jews and the Christians, saying: “Allah, annihilate the Jews and the Christians.” Where did this come from? There are Jews and Christians in our Muslim countries. There are Copts in Egypt, and Christians in Syria. So how can you curse them? Not only that, but they curse: “Allah, turn their children in orphans,” “Allah, destroy their homes.” Who sanctioned such prayers? The Koran does not call to turn children into orphans or to destroy homes. There are no such things in the prayers of the Prophet Muhammad. I denounced some people who said that the Jews are the offspring of apes and pigs. That’s not true. When God transformed some people into apes and pigs, they did not have any offspring, as is written in the Al-Muslim compilation. When God transforms people into something else, they do not have offspring. They die and are annihilated straight away. Besides, this is a curse, and Islam forbids cursing.