Below is a translation of a recently published report on the Egyptian news portal Bab.com

Al-Qaradawi: the marriage of a Muslim man to a Baha’i woman is wrong

Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, President of the World Federation of Muslim Scholars, issued a formal legal opinion (fatwa) that it is illegal for a Muslim man to marry a Baha’i woman. He requested all those who marry abroad to provide written documents as proof of marriage to a Christian or Jewish [Kitabi] woman because some women do not follow any religion at all despite the fact that their official religion is Christianity, for example. He assured that the Baha’i religion is not recognized in the Qur’an. He also assured the right of some Muftis (those who provide formal legal opinions) to forbid the marriage of a Muslim man to a Kitabi woman in countries where Muslims are a minority, where a Muslim girl can only marry a Muslim man, and whereby the marriage of a Muslim man to a Kitabi woman would take away the chance of a Muslim woman to get a husband in that country, and this is what Omar Ibn Al-Khattab did. This fatwa was issued on the TV program “understanding life” presented by Akram Kassab on “ANA” channel during an episode about Muslim minorities.

Here is a video from that appearance (Arabic):

In the interview, Al-Qardawi described the story of a man who sought his advice: the man married a woman abroad, thinking that she was a Christian, only later to discover that she was Baha’i. Sheikh al-Qardawi said that it is against Islam to marry a Baha’i because the religion isn’t recognized by the Qur’an, unlike Judaism and Christianity, and therefore it is not a valid religion.