DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Youssef al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric who was seen as the spiritual leader of the pan-Arab Muslim Brotherhood, has died at the age of 96.
His death on Monday was announced on his official website.
He died in the Gulf Arab nation of Qatar, where he had been living in exile following the military’s overthrow of a Muslim Brotherhood-led government in Egypt in 2013. Al-Qaradawi had been tried and sentenced to death in absentia in Egypt.
For many years while living in exile, he had popular talk show on Qatar’s Al-Jazeera network and often weighed in on controversial political topics.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in Egypt and had branches across the region, played a major role in the 2011 uprisings that rocked the Middle East and rose to power in Egypt’s first democratic elections after the overthrow of long-ruling autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
But their year-long rule proved extremely divisive, and the military removed the Brotherhood from power in 2013 amid mass protests against them.
