Women violated by soldiers of the Syrian regime should be considered as helpless victims, and they are not to be blamed in anyway, reiterated Islamic scholar Sheikh Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi yesterday at his Friday sermon at Omar Ibn Al-Khattab mosque.

“I told all sister Syrian women, you are spotless and honourable. A woman violated by oppressive force is not held guilty and should be proud of herself. All Syrians should deal with her in dignity and esteem because she had done nothing wrong. Damnation is only due to those oppressive, tyrants and unjust who want to crush the people,” he stressed.

He indicated that the followers of the regime are raping women, wives, mothers and virgins, while these actions are not expected from a national army but may be only committed by occupying forces.

He also affirmed his strong belief that the Syrian rebels would ultimately win the struggle because “it is impossible for evil to win over good or the futile over the right”. He said that he anticipated tyrant’s downfall and subsequent
annihilation.

In the meantime, Qaradawi denounced the killing and manslaughter going on in Syria by the army of the regime.

“The army is killing the people who had paid for its weapons. They kill all, women, men, children, the young and the old. Annan said that he had offered the Syrian regime a six-point plan, and they did not implement even one point of it. The bloodshed is going on and everybody knows this,” he said.

The scholar criticised the passing on of the rule from father to son in republican regimes as the case was with Bashar al-Assad, citing the examples of Libya, Tunisia, Yemen and Egypt as a proof for the failure of this policy.

For Egypt, Qaradawi said that Egyptians have started a very important journey, which they began from here in Qatar and all over the world, in reference to second round of the Egyptian presidential election.

“I urge all Egyptians to be considerate regarding their votes. In the past, they never had votes and they did not care about the elections because they knew that it was useless. But now every vote is very important, it can cause life and death,” he said. He pointed out that all Egyptians had made the revolution except for a small section of the followers of the former president Mubarak and his corrupt regime.

Qaradawi explained that Mubarak handed over the authority to the army represented by the Military Council who used to be among his obedient disciples. However, they chose to be by the side of the people. Eventually, the new elected parliament approved a draft law to ban the members of the former regime of taking part in political life for 10 years.

“Yet the Military Council did not pass this law and referred the law to the Constitutional Court, which will resolve it,” he maintained, saying the followers of the former regime have corrupted political life in Egypt for 30 years and they should have been banned from any nominations for key positions.

“Who is with the revolution is not permitted by norm or law to vote for the enemies of the revolution,” he said, adding: “It is shameful and disastrous, if Egyptians voted for any of those,” referring to Ahmed Shafiq, the man chosen by Mubarak to be his last prime minister.

“I told all sister Syrian women, you are spotless and honourable”