-- Qaradawi,
http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/3006.htm
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From the Hindu article linked by McCarthy:
Yusuf al-Qaradawi [...] has emerged as a key mediator in secret talks between the U.S. and the Taliban, government sources have told The Hindu.
[...]
New Delhi, Indian diplomatic sources said, has been warily watching Mr. al-Qaradawi's emergence as peace broker — fearful that his growing influence could help regional jihadist groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad find new sanctuaries in a rapidly changing West Asia or a future Afghan regime which includes the Taliban.
Earlier this month, the sources said, Mr. al-Qaradawi helped draw a road map for a deal between the Taliban and the United States, aimed at giving the superpower a face-saving political settlement ahead of its planned withdrawal from Afghanistan which is due to begin in 2014.
In return for the release of prisoners still held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, the lifting of United Nations sanctions on its leadership and its recognition as a legitimate political group, the Taliban was expected to agree to sever its links to transnational organisations like al-Qaeda, end violence and eventually share power with the Afghan government.
[...]
Egyptian-born Mr. al-Qaradawi is seen by both the United States and the Taliban traditionalists as an ally in the battle against the growing influence of this new generation of commanders. Expelled from his homeland for his Islamist views, he has emerged over the last year as ideological pole star of the Muslim Brotherhood — now West Asia's most influential political movement.
In 1993, Mr. al-Qaradawi issued a landmark edict endorsing democratic pluralism; the Muslim Brotherhood later cast its embrace of electoral politics in Egypt and elsewhere as a form of da'wa, or proselytising missionary work. Even though Mr. al-Qaradawi said he remained committed to “the spread of Islam until it conquers the entire world,” he argued this could be achieved peacefully.
He condemned 9/11 and, in September, 2005, described the Iraqi jihadist Abu Musa'ab al-Zarqawi as a “criminal.” In a 2009 book, he defended armed jihad under specific conditions — Kashmir, Iraq and, later, Libya were among those cases he endorsed — but lashed out at al-Qaeda for a “mad declaration of war on the whole world.”
Mr. al-Qaradawi explained his logic thus to Der Spiegel: “The [Muslim Brotherhood] have tried [jihad], but [jihad] has not been helpful, and we have not gained anything out of [jihad] other than detention, suffering, and victimisation.”
The Muslim Brotherhood's decision to embrace electoral politics incensed al-Qaeda. In 2008, al-Qaeda's now-chief Ayman al-Zawahiri lashed out at the Muslim Brotherhood for accepting the Egyptian constitution, rather than God's word, as a source of law — a fundamental betrayal, he claimed, of the precepts of Islam. In many countries, Brotherhood cadre clashed with salafi-jihadist groups sympathetic to al-Qaeda.
Key Brotherhood leaders like Said Ramadan, the historian Ian Johnson has shown, were cultivated by the United States' Central Intelligence Agency for anti-communist operations —along with several central and west Asian Islamists who fought with German fascist forces against the Soviet Union in 1941-1945.
Expelled by Egypt's socialist rulers for his neo-fundamentalist views, Dr. Ramadan received a warm reception — and a radio programme — when he landed in Pakistan in 1948.
The Pakistani-Canadian scholar Tarek Fatah said Dr. Ramadan's work “was instrumental in turning a secular Muslim country into a hotbed of Islamic extremism.” Dr. Ramadan also visited the White House in 1953, where he met with President Dwight Eisenhower."
http://www.thehindu.com/news/article2755817.ece
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Yes the same Said Ramadan I was talking about in my Birth of the Muslim Brotherhood thread...
Hassan al-Banna (left), حسن البنا and Saïd Ramadan (right), سعيد رمضان
more here...