Sheik Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi Criticizes Jordan for Hosting the Pope: He Should First Apologize for Affronting Islam and the Prophet Muhammad

Following is an excerpt from a Friday sermon delivered by Sunni Islamist scholar Sheik Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi, which aired on Qatar TV on May 8, 2009:

Yousuf Al-Qaradhawi: [With regard to] the Vatican Pope's visit to the Jordanian kingdom – the Islamists there protested against the Pope's visit, and I join them in their protest, because the Pope affronted the religion of Islam and its Messenger, when, in a sermon in Germany, a few months after his election – without any preliminaries or justifications – he attacked Islam, calling it a religion of violence, and attacked the Messenger of Islam, saying that he didn't introduce anything new, and that he spread his religion by the sword.

Therefore, we in the World Association of Muslim Scholars protested against him, and demanded that he apologize to the nation of Islam for his affronts. Everybody makes mistakes. He had an opportunity to say: I didn't mean it, I did not mean to affront the Muslims, it was a slip of the tongue, or something like that. But he did not do so. Therefore, the World Association of Muslim Scholars has decided to freeze its relations with the Pope and the Vatican, until he apologizes or says something that will cover or erase this. This has yet to happen. Therefore, we expected the Jordanian officials to say to him: Before you come here, we want you to say something to rectify your relations with the Muslims.