There is a need for a new institutionalising of Islam in Kurdistan

Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan has sent a message to the Kurdistan Democratic Islamic Congress. In the message he talks of a pluralist, democratic, equal and free Islamic unity, adding: “there is an urgent need for a constant, new institutionalising of Islam in Kurdistan, as is also the case in all Muslim lands.”

Öcalan stressed in particular the damage caused in the present day by the clash between the two large centres of Islam, the dominant Arab, Salafist current versus the Iranian Shia state current, adding it is a duty of faith to the truth that is the essence of the same religion to raise the banner of popular democratic struggle against this damage. He greeted the congress, saying one of their key tasks was to seek an Islamic response that represented a moral and political expression of the opposition to these two centres.

In his message he added that in reality the “Hizbullah” and “Al Qaeda” insurgents that originated from these two cruel centres of power represented contemporary fascism which capitalist nihilism has imposed on Islam. The message said that this horrendous fascism was being inflicted on the people of Kurdistan and all peoples, whether Moslem or not, in the form of decapitation. While authoritarian secular and nationalist fascism continues, this more topical and radical obscurantist fascism is being implemented by the above parties.

“The freedom movement in Kurdistan will not make the mistake of falling into either of these deviations, I believe that the freedom movement you represent will be the free space of radical democracy opposing all manner of nationalist, fundamentalist gender-based, supposedly scientific capitalist patriarchal power. I consider the contemporary Islamic understanding of ‘popular unity’ to be important, but this should never be taken to mean the nonsense of ‘one state, one people, one flag’.”

“The most recent experiments in Turkey have been examples of the most pillaging, anti-environmental, power-hungry aspects of capitalism. A fair, free and democratic Islam will be an alternative to this, and institutionalise itself.”