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Following are excerpts from an interview with Sheik Yousef Al-Qaradhawi, which aired on Qatar TV on August 26, 2006.
Sheik Yousef Al-Qaradhawi: In this film ["The Passion of the Christ"], there is an important positive aspect. The positive aspect lies in its exposing the Jews' crime of bringing Jesus to the crucifixion. Even though we [Muslims] believe that Jesus was not crucified, a crime was committed, and the people who paved the way for this crime, who helped to commit it, who brought Jesus to the crucifixion, and kept pursuing the issue, until the governor on behalf of the Romans in Jerusalem at that time sentenced him to death...
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More than 30 years ago, the Vatican issued a document, exonerating the Jews of [spilling] the blood of Jesus. Not all Christians accepted this document. The Pope in the Vatican and the Catholics are the ones who exonerated them. They exonerated them under political pressure. But the Protestants did not exonerate them, the Orthodox did not exonerate them, and Patriarch Shinoda in Egypt did not exonerate them, and kept saying that they bear the responsibility.[...]
Do the Jews of yesterday [sic] bear responsibility for the crimes committed by the Jews of the past? The principle is that they indeed bear responsibility for these crimes, as long as they do not renounce them. If they glorify and take pride in what their forefathers did, if they write about it, quote it, record it, and teach it to their children, and if they consider it to be part of their religion and heritage, they bear the responsibility. As we can see, the Koran held the Jews of the Prophet Muhammad's time responsible for what their forefathers did. It addressed them, saying: "We made Moses a promise extending over forty nights, then you took the calf for worship, wrongfully." It says, "you took," but it was their forefathers, not them. But they adopt the deeds of their forefathers, and so they bear responsibility for them - unless they renounce them.
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They adopt the deeds of their forefathers, and they take pride in them. Therefore, I say that the Jews of the 21st century adopt what the Jews of the first century did. They adopt what [their forefathers] did to Jesus, and so they bear responsibility for it, unless they renounce it, saying: This was a crime, and we ask Allah to absolve us of it. But they have not said this, and therefore, the Jews of today bear responsibility for the deeds of the Jews of yesterday.
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