Islam can solve the Kurdish question: mullahs

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Kurdish religious scholars (mullahs) from the four parts of Kurdistan convened for a two day conference of the Union of Religious Scholars in Turkey's Kurdish city of Diyarbakir on Saturday.

It was the third conference of the Kurdish religious scholars to discuss issues in the Middle East, understandings of Islam, and the Kurdish question.

Mullah Teyip Elci, a Kurdish mullah from Northern Kurdistan (southern Turkey), says the Kurdish question could be solved if only people abided by the lessons of the Quran and the Sunnah.

“If we gather around human and Islamic brotherhood, and don’t discriminate among ourselves, then this [Kurdish] issue will be resolved,” Mullah Teyip Elchi, a Kurdish mullah, told Rudaw.

Ali Qaradaghi, the head of the Muslim Brotherhood affiliated International Union of Islamic Scholars, believes the application of true democracy in Iraq could resolve the Kurdish issue.

“If there is real democracy in Iraq, then we don’t need any more than that. They know if there is real democracy, then the people will obtain their rights. If there is really democracy, then there would be a referendum in Kirkuk and those [disputed] areas,” Qaradaghi told Rudaw. 

“From 2003 up to now no such thing has been done. Frankly, the problems of the Islamic World are injustice, oppression, and tyranny, and dictatorship,” he added. 

Another prominent pro-Kurdish mullah from Rojava said religious scholars pandering to rulers hurts the people in apparent reference to mullahs supporting regimes against Kurdish rights.

“Those who are connected to rulers and tamper with Allah’s verses to suit them, to invent sayings of the Prophet that has got nothing to do with him, is a huge problem when the scholar becomes the follower of the ruler,” Mullah Zahid Khaznawi, a mullah from Rojava, told Rudaw.

Speaking at the conference, Anwer Kilicharsalan, head of the Union of Islamic Scholars, said Kurds are abandoning Islam.

“Today we can see that the most godless nation in the world is the Kurdish, wanting to go away from Islam and the prophet,” the mullah said, according to Dogruhaber, the media of Huda Par, a Kurdish Islamist party. 

He complained that Kurds are becoming more communist, and socialist, perhaps referring to Kurdish support for the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and Turkey’s left-wing pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).