12 Facts About Ali Bapir

Ali Bapir, known as Mamosta Ali Bapir, is a Kurdish Islamic scholar and politician in Iraqi Kurdistan.

Ali Bapir is the founder and current president of the Kurdistan Justice Group.

Ali Bapir was born in 1961 in the Pshdar district, Iraqi Kurdistan.

Ali Bapir has written over 150 books on politics, Islam, society, Kurds, and Kurdistan.

Ali Bapir is the most popular politician with the Kurdish Islamism ideology.

Ali Bapir notoriously killed his own brother, who worked with Saddam Hussein's regime to kill an IMK member.

Ali Bapir is one of the first Kurdish politicians from Iraqi Kurdistan to speak against Turkey's treatment of its Kurdish citizens while on an official visit to Turkey.

Shortly after the emergence of ISIS, Ali Bapir released a series of books named "Denunciation of Extremism and Refutation of Extremist Ideas" in which he wrote that the teachings of Quran encourage tolerance and coexistence.

In 2015, after the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant made advances into the Kurdistan region, Ali Bapir called for the defense of the Kurdish region and urged ISIL to not attack.

Ali Bapir released the statement that were against these ISIS advances on his personal social media after his polity, the Kurdistan Justice Group, was reluctant to release the same statement and voice their opposition against the terrorist group.

Regardless of this public statement, in 2016, Mala Khidir Mustafa Younis, Chairman of the Fatwa Committee of the Union of Islamic Religious Scholars of Kurdistan, said that Ali Bapir had engaged in radicalizing numerous youth to join ISIS and fight against the Peshmerga.

Ali Bapir said that ISIS and him ultimately had the same goal.