Extended interview: Yusuf al-Qaradawi

These are clips from an extended interview with Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who talks about the permissibility of exhuming Yasser Arafat’s body for investigation.

Islam recommends the pursuit of medical treatment. People are told to seek remedy and not to deny themselves the necessary treatment. Neglecting medical treatment is a sin. When a person is afflicted with sickness, he or she should go to the doctor and obtain medication. This is an injunction in Islam. The Prophet said: Seek medication for He who created sickness also created remedy. Not a single disease is left without medication, it is just a question of knowing it.”

If a person is dead and suspicion is raised about his or her death, an investigation is a must. We should find out to the best of our ability what caused the death so that we establish whether it is natural death or a death caused by certain factors. We need to find out what this factor is and whether the person was killed or not and through what means: by poison or by some other cause unknown to people. If the people are suspicious then they should look into the matter.

In the case of Yassir Arafat, the people, his family, his relatives and the people who are responsible for him – having been the leader of a people and a resistance leader, a person with status inside the entire Arab world, a person with a historic and Islamic background. Such a person should not have been just buried while there were many suspicions and many questions raised by the people. The cause of death should have been investigated. It continues to this day an issue that needs to be investigated and something needs to be done about it.