Renowned Islamic scholar Yusuf Al-Qaradawi passes away at 96

Doha: One of the influential scholars in the Islamic world Yusuf al-Qaradawi has passed away at the age of 96, the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) said. IUMS, for which Qaradawi was founding president, tweeted, "The Islamic nation has lost one of its most sincere and virtuous scholars," The Peninsula reported.

As per reports, he was battling with age-related health issues for the last few years. But until he was bedridden, he was known for his scholarly pursuits including giving lectures in several countries defying age, and writing in-depth works on Islamic jurisprudence.

Qaradawi, who was associated with the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, an organisation founded by the late Hasanul Banna, was a revered scholar whose teachings and views were reported to have influenced political as well as religious leaders across the world.

He will be widely remembered as the first, and perhaps the last, global Muslim scholar-activist.

Throughout his career as a public intellectual, his approach to Islamic law - one that combined scholarship and political activism - and his ability to communicate these ideas in plain language would earn him millions of followers.

Born in 1926 in the Gharbia province of Egypt, Qaradawi grew up in the country still under British colonial rule.

Doha-based The Peninsula reports that Qaradawi memorised the Holy Quran at the age of nine and joined the renowned seat of Islamic scholarship in Egypt, the Al-Azhar University. He became a faculty of Fundamentals of Religion at Al-Azhar University, from which he obtained an international degree in the year 1952-53. After graduation and with a teaching licence from the Faculty of Arabic Language in 1954, and then in the year 1960, he obtained the higher preparatory study equivalent to the Masters in the Science Division, the Qur'an and Sunnah from the Faculty of Fundamentals of Religion. He did his PhD on "Zakat and its impact on addressing social problems" in 1973, with distinction and first-class honours.

In his youth, he combined religious education with anti-colonial activism, a combination that led to his repeated arrests at the hands of the Egyptian government.

Following Egypt's independence, his association with the Muslim Brotherhood - founded in 1928 when Qaradawi was two years old - also led to his arrest by the Arab nationalist President Gamal Abdul Nasser in the 1950s.

He eventually left Egypt for Qatar in the early 1960s, when he was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Shariah at the newly established Qatar University and was granted Qatari citizenship in 1968.

A scholar and author of 120 books, with an equal amount of advocacy of causes for justice, Al-Qaradawi is known as an unyielding champion of Palestinian rights, and against the atrocities of the Zionist state in the occupied territories. At the same time, he was vocal in condemning thoughtless extremist actions conducted by fringe groups in the name of Islam.

Al-Qaradawi was also chairman of the International Union of Muslim Scholars since it was established in 2004 and held this position for 14 years.

A prolific orator and highly popular television speaker and consultant on Islamic matters, Qaradawi is also known for his Al Jazeera broadcast, "Sharia and Life", which had an estimated forty to sixty million audience globally, Maktoob Media reports.