Who Are Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi's Successors?
The "global mufti" died in 2022. Different clerics have taken on different parts of his role.
Shaykh Yusuf al-Qaradawi (1926-2022) had a uniquely prominent status in the Sunni Muslim world for much of his career. Egyptian by birth and educated at Egypt’s al-Azhar University, the preeminent Sunni Islamic university, he authored the mega-bestseller Al-Halal wa-l-Haram fi al-Islam (The Permissible and the Forbidden in Islam), published in 1960. He went on to write over 100 books; the second most famous might be Fi Fiqh al-Aqalliyyat al-Muslima (On the Jurisprudence of Muslim Minorities), which is itself a cornerstone of a whole genre of thought. A member of the Muslim Brotherhood, he spent most of his later career based in Qatar, eventually headlining the tremendously popular television show al-Shari‘a wa-l-Hayat (Sharia and Life, or perhaps Law and Life). He also built and led numerous institutions, most famously the European Council for Fatwa and Research (founded 1997) and the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS, founded 2004).
As one can see even from glancing at the titles of Shaykh al-Qaradawi’s books, his programs, and his organizations, much of his religious status and interests were connected with Islamic law and what is known as fiqh, usually translated as “jurisprudence” but which also might be translated as “legal understanding” or “deriving rulings where interpretation and contextualization is required.” Due to his status as a faqih (practitioner of fiqh) and a giver of fatwas (legal opinions; and the one who gives them is called a mufti), he was dubbed the “Global Mufti,” including in this book by that title. That volume, along with David Warren’s Rivals in the Gulf, make for a solid introduction to al-Qaradawi’s career and thought; I also found Shaykh Yasir Qadhi’s eulogy for al-Qaradawi enlightening, particularly in terms of laying out al-Qaradawi’s intellectual genealogy, which ran through key figures in the Islamic modernist movement.
As an institution-builder, al-Qaradawi had a number of associates, protégés, students, and successors. Below I discuss four of them briefly. In a way, none of them has yet replicated his role as a focal figure for the Sunni world - a feat that would take a particular combination of charisma, global dissemination (including, on a logistical level, widespread translation of writings and remarks), and political appeal.
Al-Qaradawi was not a consensus figure and indeed no one can be for Sunni Muslims due to the decentralized nature of Sunni clerical authority, especially at the global level. In the Muslim-majority world, it is also difficult to rise past a certain level of prominence without the backing or at least toleration of a state, and accepting such backing can engender rivalries that, again, inhibit the potential of any individual scholar to emerge as a consensus figure. Al-Qaradawi had his share of critics, among them Western governments and media outlets that sometimes dismissed him as a “terrorist” - a fundamental misunderstanding of his role and outlook. But those criticisms, again, show how fraught it is to operate at the global level as a major Sunni scholar. And perhaps it is even more difficult to achieve that status now that it was in the 1990s, given an even more competitive media environment and even more pronounced struggles between states to speak for Islam, with and through clerics. Finally, one can add that the situation of the Muslim Brotherhood has changed dramatically from the last three decades of the twentieth century, when they had considerable momentum, to the post-2013 era (i.e., after the coup in Egypt against the Brotherhood’s Muhammad Morsi) when they have been somewhat adrift. So if even al-Qaradawi’s status as a “global mufti” was always a partial one, any aspirant to such a role might find an even more limited platform now - and might not come out of the Brotherhood at all.
In any case, here are four key figures to watch when considering successors to al-Qaradawi:
Institutionally: Ali al-Qaradaghi, born 1949 in Iraq (see his official biography in English here and Arabic here). Like al-Qaradawi, al-Qaradaghi was trained at Al-Azhar, earning his Ph.D. there in 1985 (specializing in “contracts and financial transactions”) and joining the University of Qatar in 1985. He was elected President of the IUMS in 2024, after serving as the organization’s Secretary-General, and is well connected to institutions (especially in higher education and the Islamic finance sector) around the world. Every figure on this list had some connection with the IUMS and indeed built their own networks of institutions, but I find it significant that IUMS chose al-Qaradaghi as its first post-Qaradawi leader.
Intellectually: Ahmed Raïssouni, born 1953 in Morocco (see his official biography in Arabic here). He trained in Moroccan higher institutions, especially Muhammmad V University, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1992 in foundations of Islamic jurisprudence. A prominent figure in the Islamist scene in Morocco, Raïssouni became something of a dissident vis-a-vis the Moroccan monarchy, criticizing kingly authority as well as various policy decisions, and he eventually moved to Qatar. He served as IUMS president from 2018-2022, resigning shortly before al-Qaradawi’s death after making controversial comments suggesting Mauritania should have been part of Morocco. Anyways, not to deny the others on this list their due, but Raïssouni is in my view the most intellectually ambitious and creative of the group, writing numerous books on foundational topics such as maqasid al-shari’a (the aims of Islamic law), shura (consultation in Muslim political affairs), ijtihad (fresh legal interpretation), the umma (global Muslim community), and the future of Islam. If any of al-Qaradawi’s successors have the late shaykh’s intellectual range and his focus on fiqh in a wide-ranging sense, it is Raïssouni.
Popular literature and revolutionary politics: Ali al-Sallabi, born 1963 in Libya (see his official biography in Arabic here). Al-Sallabi, an Islamist dissident against the regime of Muammar al-Qadhafi (in power 1969-2011), was imprisoned under the dictator for eight years. He left Libya and earned his B.A. at the Islamic University of Medina in Saudi Arabia in 1993, and his M.A. (1996) and Ph.D. (1999) from the Islamic University of Omdurman, Sudan. Moving to Qatar to work with al-Qaradawi, al-Sallabi eventually returned to Libya and helped broker a (short-lived) reconciliation between al-Qadhafi and Libyan jihadists. When revolution broke out in 2011, al-Sallabi sided with the revolutionaries. Amid various ups and downs in his and his family’s influence, al-Sallabi has remained a significant player in Libya, especially due to his Qatari ties (you can read a bit on his role here). Meanwhile, he has written well over a hundred books, including dozens of short biographies and histories covering famous figures from classical and medieval Islam, from the early Caliphs to Salah-al-Din. Al-Sallabi matches al-Qaradawi in terms of literary output, especially output aimed at a popular audience, and he is in the post-revolutionary political fray more than any other figure on this list - an heir to al-Qaradawi’s pro-Arab Spring stance, if you will. At the same time, al-Sallabi lacks anywhere near the fame al-Qaradawi had, and arguably shows the risks of appearing too politicized, with all the reputational drawbacks and divisiveness that can bring.
Charisma and depth: Muhammad al-Hasan Wuld al-Dedew, born 1963 in Mauritania (see his official biography here). Al-Dedew, from a lineage of major scholars in Mauritania, has a traditionalist training and an astonishing memory, making him the epitome of “global Shinqit.” In an era where Sunni traditionalism is undergoing a revival and reappraisal, al-Dedew’s command of classical texts leaves audiences in awe, his politics (on Gaza and other issues) have wide appeal, and his ability to answer legal and theological questions is on par with al-Qaradawi’s. He is also, like the others, close to the Muslim Brotherhood and has some serious tensions with the political leaders of his own country. I have tried several times (and failed, I would say) to categorize al-Dedew; perhaps the ultimate takeaway is that he is difficult to categorize, which makes him the figure best-poised to fill al-Qaradawi’s shoes. One limitation for al-Dedew, I would say, is that he does not have the same reach within Europe and globally that al-Qaradawi had - although al-Dedew is becoming better and better known beyond the Arab world. Another limitation is that al-Dedew may not have (or, indeed, share) the kind of flexibility that al-Qaradawi had with fiqh, especially in terms of devising solutions for the knotty problems confronting Muslim minorities in the West and elsewhere.
In fact, however, in composing this list I wonder whether al-Qaradawi’s “global mufti” status has been exaggerated. The most obvious successors to the late shaykh are all Arabs and Arabophones, and (with the exception of the Iraqi al-Qaradaghi) from the same North African region that al-Qaradawi hailed from himself. All of them, too, have been close to the Muslim Brotherhood or to local expressions of it, meaning their politics has serious but certainly not universal draw. Despite al-Qaradawi’s obvious influence throughout the Muslim world, the closest keepers of his legacy are all figures relatively similar to him in terms of background (linguistic, educational, and political).
Finally, we can note that there two other kinds of “successor” to Shaykh al-Qaradawi. One is his rivals, foremost among them his former associate Shaykh ‘Abd Allah bin Bayyah (b. 1935 in Mauritania). I refer you to Warren’s Rivals in the Gulf for a full discussion of how the post-2011 period, and the dueling foreign policies of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, cemented the rivalry between al-Qaradawi and Bin Bayyah. Another kind of “successor” is the online da’i (proselytizer), a genre of activist who builds reputation through soundbites and controversial takes, rather than through the process of delivering deeply researched fatwas. The global Muslim community undoubtedly needs muftis, but as I mentioned above, one could view al-Qaradawi partly as a product of a particular media environment, as he moved from print bestseller to satellite television fixture. Perhaps our own internet and social media era produces and uplifts different voices.
Or better yet, it’s a mixture of the two - al-Qaradawi was shaped by his own times, yet the “global mufti” is not obsolete as a role. Global Muslim audiences are clearly hungry for people with serious scholarly depth, even as online influencers also gain ground and compete to speak for the faith. Al-Qaradawi, then, leaves behind some heavyweight personalities in terms of protégés, but no single successor in terms of unifying appeal - which either points to al-Qaradawi’s special status and character or to the particularities of our era, take your pick.