You're making a mistake by lumping all Kurds together.
The training camp was for Kurdish Islamics............we call Saddam a bad guy for gassing the Kurds yet they were more closely aligned with OBL than any Iraq religious faction.
The area controlled by Ansar al-Islam was a very small strip along the Iranian border. The area was held by Al Qaida militants from outside the region (see Life after Ansar below). The Kurds as a whole are one of the most liberal of Muslim peoples (see below - The Kurds and Islam).
Life After Ansar
Free from the brutality of terrorist militants, northern Iraqi villagers praise Allah for their newly recovered liberties.
By Gretel C. Kovach BIYARA, northern Iraq—They considered themselves the true believers of the faith. But now that the Ansar al Islam militants are gone, the Kurdish villagers who lived among them in northern Iraq say they were nothing but fanatics.
"How dare they call us infidels! If you say 'There is no god but God and Mohammed is his prophet,' then you are a Muslim," said Osman Wahab, 65, freely puffing on a cigarette for the first time in three years.
In the village of Biyara nestled in the mountains near the Iranian border in Iraqi Kurdistan, men were busy this weekend shaving their beards and smoking—reveling in their new freedom. A woman stood in the center of town and tore off her enveloping black abaya. She tossed her hair in the sun for a moment, smiling broadly, before donning a simple headscarf.
At least 700 Ansar militants had established Taliban-like restrictions on about 30 villages here, forcing the local residents to practice a narrow interpretation of Islam that was alien to the moderate Muslim traditions practiced among most Kurds. "They are al Qaeda," said Commander Ghafur Darwish, sunning himself on a roof after his pesh merga soldiers retook control of Biyara. "Ansar was using Islam as a cover. They are terrorists."
Ansar's leaders praised Osama bin Laden and sheltered his so-called mujahideen, or holy warriors, that were run out of Afghanistan last year, so it seemed only a matter of time before America took notice. In February, Ansar was added to the U.S. list of terrorist groups, and in the following month U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations Security Council that Ansar's ties to Al Qaeda and Baghdad were part of the justification for a war against Iraq.
America was expected to lead an attack on Ansar along with several thousand Kurdish soldiers, to mop up this terrorist threat before opening the northern front of the war. Finally the fight began late last week, and within days most of the Ansar fighters had fled to Iran or were killed. Some snuck across the border with the help of smugglers, but Iranian authorities, once thought to be Ansar's main benefactors, are now detaining more than 100, including four leaders, Kurdish officials say.
Wahab lost his house and two shops in the recent air strikes, but says it was worth it to be rid of Ansar. "We thank God they are gone," he said. "Even having nothing is better than living with Ansar. Now we are free."
For several years Ansar had fought to overthrow the secular Kurdish government via unsuccessful assassination attempts on its leaders and sometimes deadly artillery and mortar attacks on pesh merga soldiers. Their tactics were brutal—Kurdish soldiers who surrendered or were captured were summarily executed, their bodies mutilated and displayed on the Ansar web site and video tapes, and left on the side of the road in warning.
.....
In fact, most of Ansar's precepts are unrecognizable to the average Muslim. Pilgrims from as far away as Turkey and Jordan had visited the graves of the Muslim leader Neqishbandi buried in Biyara 300 years ago. But the Ansar fighters considered such devotion to be apostasy, and paved over the graves with concrete under their new mosque.
.....
All across the territory once held by Ansar al Islam, Kurds were busy reclaiming their religion. At Sergat, the site identified by Colin Powell as a chemical weapons and terrorist training facility, Kurdish soldiers spray painted the initials for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan on the dome of a mosque. In the Biyara prison, others were gathering up green leather-bound Qurans for their own use.
Tariq Said Sadiq, 25, a pesh merga soldier, walked through the ruins of Ansar's mosque headquarters in disgust. "I graduated from an institute of Islamic law. These people were not Islamic, they were against Islamic principles. Islam is for peace, for health, for faith, not for killing."
beliefnet.com
The Kurds and Islam
It has been said that Kurds "hold their Islam lightly," meaning that they are not so vehement about Islam and do not identify as closely with it as the Arabs do. This is perhaps due to two factors: First, many Kurds still feel some connection with the ancient Zoroastrian faith, and feel it is an original Kurdish spirituality that far predates the seventh century AD arrival of Muhammad. Secondly, their principal oppressors and antagonists for over one thousand years have been fellow Muslims, who have showered far more pain than pleasure upon the Kurds.
Nonetheless, most Kurds are Muslims, and about 75% today are at least nominally members of the majority Sunni branch. As many as four million Kurds are Shiites, living mostly in Iran where the Shiite faith predominates. However, the Kurds generally strive to express their Islam in a distinct fashion. For example, the Sunni Muslim Kurds of Turkey have adopted the Shafi'i legal code, ignoring the general rule among the surrounding Arabs and Turks, who adhere to the Hanafi school. Mystical practices and participation in Sufi orders are also widespread among Kurds. Many of these orders are considered heretical by rigid orthodox Muslims. Drawing heavily on shamanism, Zoroastrianism and elements of Christianity, Kurdish mysticism places emphasis on the direct experience of God through meditation, ecstatic experiences and the intercession of holy men or sheiks. Most Kurds possess a tangible sense of the supernatural, readily acknowledging demonic activity in the form of evil spirits and curses; they often worship at shrines or other holy places.
The rest of the Kurds are followers of several indigenous Kurdish faiths of great antiquity and originality. The most notable of these are the Yezidis. Although often charged with worshiping Lucifer, the Yezidis embody a distillation of the Jewish, Deavic, Zoroastrian, Christian and Islamic beliefs which have consecutively ruled their mountainous homeland for three millennia. Central to the Yezidi cosmology is the Heptad, a group of seven archangels through which God is said to delegate his authority. Although statistically small in number, the Yezidis are a source of great pride for Kurds of every tradition.
Throughout the Middle East, smaller communities of Jews, Christians and Baha'is also consider themselves Kurds. Israel's 150,000 Kurds constitute the greatest concentration of these non-Muslim groups. The Kurdish Jews emigrated to Israel in the 1950s, having lived in Mesopotamia since the Assyrian exile: "The king of Assyria carried the Israelites away to Assyria, settled them in Halah, on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes." (2 Kings 18:11) Like the Yezidis, the Israeli Kurds are highly regarded throughout Kurdistan.
www.itnet.org/kurds_islam.html |
