DOHA: Prominent Qatar-based Muslim cleric Sheikh Yusuf Al Qaradawi has sparked controversy by issuing a religious edict allowing Muslims to consume tiny amounts of alcohol.“The latest fatwa caused confusion among people... we could have done without it,” the editor of the Qatari daily Ash-Sharq, Abdullatif Al Mahmud, wrote on Thursday. In the edict published in the Al-Arab newspaper on Tuesday, the Egyptian-born Qaradawi said consuming drinks containing small quantities of alcohol that is “constituted naturally through fermentation” did not violate Islamic teachings.
But Ash-Sharq’s editor said the fatwa “will open the door to those who want to consume drinks containing small proportions of alcohol” under the pretext that the proportion of alcohol that is banned or permitted has not been defined.
Qaradawi, told AFP on Thursday that his fatwa sparked controversy because it had not been properly understood. It came in response to a question about “an energy drink available on the market”, he said. A former dean of the Islamic law school at Qatar University, Abdul Hamid Al-Ansari, told AFP he agreed with the content of Qaradawi’s fatwa