Kurdistan: “Mein Kampf” is Displayed in Bookstores
The spread of anti-Semitic publications and glorifcation of Hitler in Kurdistan accompanies the rise of Islamism in the autonomous region of Iraq.
OUR SPECIAL ENVOY TO ERBIL , IAN HAMEL
Published on 11/08/2015 at 12:04 the Point.fr
From book covers showing a smiling Adolf Hitler making the Nazi salute, to translations of Mein Kampf into Kurdish and Arabic, to pamphlets denouncing the so called “Jewish plot”. This nauseating literature does not hide in a dark corner of the backrooms but appears in many bookstores and at newsstands all around the Citadel, which overlooks the historic center of Erbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Of course, Kurdistan is not the only Muslim region to convey a great deal of interest in Nazism. Antoine Vitkine, in his book Mein Kampf: A Book of History, reveals that in just a few weeks the latest edition on the Furher’s book in 2005 had sold 80,000 copies in Turkey. The work appears in the catalog of eleven publishing houses in that country. More recently, in Le Point, François- Guillaume Lorrain, citing the book Jihad and Jew Hatred, recalled that since Hassan Al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 in Egypt, the book takes this Islamist organization to fraternize with Nazis. And circulated it in Egypt and Palestine. Arabic versions of Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was a hoax, revealing the “Jewish conspiracy”.
Although in the streets, veiled women can be seen quite often. However, one hardly expects to find in Iraqi Kurdistan such publications. The autonomous region professes a moderate Islam. It hosted some of the Christians fleeing ISIS, even giving a few of them seats in the regional parliament. While the majority of Kurds are Sunni Muslims, the region also has Shias and Yazidis, who trace their religious calendar to nearly 7000 years. Media propaganda shows female units of Peshmerga — the Kurdish fighters — Kalashnikovs over their waists with flowing hair.
Despite traditionally, Kurdish women were not veiled, uou would not know that walking through the streets of Erbil, Dohuk, and Kirkuk where it is impossible to miss the masses of women completely veiled from head to toe in all black garb today. All over, I see an Islamization of the Kurdish society. I recently witnessed Kurdish children suddenly stop playing with a little girl after they noticed she was wearing a cross. “I feel a real hostility coming from some of the Muslims towards us,” said a nun based in the refugee camp of Ashti in Ankawa, a suburb of Erbil.
In this camp, home to 6,000 refugees, mainly Christians, Bishop Petros Moshe, the Syrian Catholic Bishop of Mosul, was only able to finally celebrate the first Mass in the new church of Notre Dame Our Lady of the Annunciation on the last 5th of November. Showing that the Christian minorities are not scorned by the local authority. But Christine Chaillot, author of several books on the Eastern church, noted that “that Islamist Kurds make up 15% of the Parliament in the Kurdistan region,” and that the rise of radical Islam, with the construction of many mosques, contrasts with the rather secular vision that some journalists give abroad about the region of Iraqi Kurdistan and its government”(*).
The Kurdish authorities do not try to deny the problem. They have recently attempted to close down several particularly virulent Islamist radio stations. They do not go out of their way to deny that there are Sunni Kurds who enlist in ISIS either. “Eighty-five nationalities are found in the ranks of the Islamic State, were they not?” asks Dara Barawy, politburo member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party. As proof, the suicide car bomb against the US consulate in Erbil on April, which left four dead and twenty wounded, was committed by a religious Kurd, who joined the “enemy”.
(*) Middle East: the uncertain fate of the Assyrian Christians forgotten between the Islamic state and Kurdish nationalism.
English translation from the original French article linked below: