Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi on International Relations: The Counter-Hegemonic Discourse of a Leading Islamist Scholar The Egyptian-born and Qatari-based Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi is arguably the most recognized Sunni cleric in the Arab World today. While Qaradawi’s fame stems mainly from his regular appearances on al-Sharia wa al-Hayat (the Law and Life) Program on Al-Jazeera television – and is reinforced by his effective utilization of the internet to disseminate his views (including fatwas) via such portals as Islamonline and www.Qaradawi.net –, Qaradawi is nevertheless a serious scholar who has penned dozens of influential works on religious, political and socio-economic issues; many of which have been translated to Western languages. A critical component of Qaradawi’s voluminous body of work that has received limited academic attention is his discourse on international relations. The prevalence of Qaradawi’s views among Islamist and Arab nationalist authors, as well as their influence on broad segments of the public in the Arab world and beyond, warrants detailed treatment of this discourse. This paper presents and critiques Qaradawi’s views on a range of theoretical and concrete issues related to international relations in the Post-Cold war era, drawing on the cleric’s massive oeuvre (books, editorials, fatwas and transcripts of television appearances.) Thus, in addition to highlighting what Qaradawi posits as the underpinning principles of international relations, the paper sheds light on his views of the Post-Cold War international system, Western relations with the Arab and Islamic worlds (and more generally with the Global South), the Arab-Israeli conflict, Arab and Islamic unty, globalization and the prospects for overhauling the prevailing “unjust” international order. In order to situate Qaradawi’s discourse in its proper geopolitical context, I consider selected works by other Islamists (primarily the Lebanese Shiite cleric and scholar-activist Sayyid Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah) and secular Arab nationalists, such as the Egyptian authors Mohamed Hassanein Heikal and Galal Amin. The paper argues that what distinguishes Qaradawi and Islamists in general from secular Arab nationalists, and other leftist critics of the prevailing international order, is not the substance of their discourse (which can be best characterized as counter-hegemonic) but its framing within the sacred text (the Quran). In sum, the discourse of Islamists ought to be seen as part and parcel of the Third World political and intellectual response to the alleged Western hegemony over international relations.