Ali al-Qaradaghi is an influential Sunni scholar of Islam, an expert on Sharia and Fiqh combined with Islamic economics. He is a professor of Jurisprudence at the Faculty of Sharia and Islamic Studies of the Qatar University in Doha and he has a Qatarian citizenship.
According to Chechen historian and political analystMairbek Vatchagaev, Ali al-Qaradaghi and the International Union of Muslim scholars for Moscow play an important role in internal Russian Islamic stability: Russian authorities do not simply want Sheikh Ali al-Qaradaghi to declare the jihad in the North Caucasus to be illegal. Moscow regards this international Islamic organization as a potential means to control part of Russia's own Muslim population, which could issue fatwas on important questions of Islam and be recognized. Moscow, however, fails to see that only those Muslims who already recognize the official Muslim clergy will listen to al-Qaradaghi. That portion of the Muslim community in Russia which deems cooperation between the authorities and the Muslim clergy unacceptable will not be influenced by al-Qaradaghi. He is an active supporter of Yusuf al-Qaradawi and his project "Muhammad: A Mercy for All" , and called upon all Muslims to support this project financially to IslamOnline.net and to give moral support: We have decided to launch a big Web site about Muhammad : A Mercy for All under the supervision of IslamOnline.net, the greatest global Islamic Web site on the Internet. We call upon our brothers and sisters in Islam to support this project financially, especially that the eminent scholar Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, who supervises the implementation of the project, has given a fatwa to the effect that it is permissible to pay zakah, sadaqah and doubtful money to IslamOnline.net as a donation. Sheikh Al-Qaradawi, moreover, has described this project as 'jihad of the modern age.' We also call upon Muslims to give moral support to the project by inviting the friends of IslamOnline.net to participate voluntarily in its activities and services. We are going to prepare special programs to show how they can share in this respect.“ On his reaction to the murder of Muslim students in Chapel Hill shortly after the Paris attacks, Spiegel reported: The Secretary General of the International Union of Islamic Leaders in Qatar, Ali al-Karadaghi, criticized the silence of the" international media on this "terrorist attack". "Are the leaders of the whole world going to honour the victims?" he wrote on Twitter alluding to the huge mourning ceremony for the victims of the Islamic attacks in Paris in January.