Ali Bapir

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Mamosta Ali Bapir
عه‌لی باپیر
Ali Bapir - Islamic Kurdish Politician
Founder and Leader of Kurdistan Justice Group
Incumbent
Assumed office 2001
Iraq Council of Representatives
In office 2009–2013
member of political bureau of Kurdistan Islamic Movement
In office 1991–2001
Personal details
Born	1961 (age 62–63) Pshdar district, Sulaymaniyah, Kurdistan Region
Political party	Kurdistan Justice Group
Children	Sharif Ali Bapir
Occupation	Political leader
Profession	Author, Politician, and Islamic Scholar
Website	http://alibapir.net http://alibapir.com

Ali Bapir, also known as Mamosta Ali Bapir, (Kurdish: عه‌لی باپیر) is a Kurdish Islamic scholar and politician in Iraqi Kurdistan. He is the founder and current president of the Kurdistan Justice Group (formerly known as the Islamic Group of Kurdistan).^[1] He was born in 1961 in the Pshdar district, Iraqi Kurdistan. He has written over 150 books on politics, Islam, society, Kurds, and Kurdistan. He is the most popular politician with the Kurdish Islamism ideology.

In the 2009 Iraqi general elections for the Council of Representatives, he was one of the 10 candidates with the most votes in the country.^{[citation needed]}

Bapir fought against Saddam Hussein's regime in the 1980s as a Peshmerga fighter. Bapir also notoriously killed his own brother, who worked with Saddam Hussein's regime to kill an IMK member.^[2] After splitting from Islamic Movement of Kurdistan (IMK) in 2000 and establishing the Kurdistan Justice Group, he stayed in the Halabja area adjacent to the Iranian border where extremists had established an Islamic emirate.^[3]

When the Americans attacked extremists of the Ansar al-Islam group in March 2003, approximately two dozen soldiers loyal to Bapir were killed as well.

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. In 2016, Bapir participated in a discussion panel in Turkey and stated that “Turkey must stop oppressing the Kurds in the North” and that “the issue of the Muslim world is that they have let go of Islam and tradition to play by the rules of the Sykes Picot agreement in 1916 which has divided the nations along illegitimate borders.”^[4]

Shortly after the emergence of ISIS, 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.^[5]

When ISIS attacked the Kurdistan in 2015, Ali Bapir released a statement urging the people to defend the region, saying “Defending religious life, people, and land, is a religious obligation, for that reason I urge all of you to be completely prepared and to do whatever it takes to protect the [Kurdistan] region,”^[6]

On April 5, 2014, the Garmian Center for Referendum awarded Bapir a medal for his efforts in promoting reform and re-conciliation between the political parties in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.^[7]

A debate with the title “Kurdistan between Democracy and Secularism” was held on April 10, 2016 in Tawar Hall in the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah between Ali Bapir and Mala Bakhtiyar, the Chief of the Executive Body of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, under the supervision of the Department of Humanities of a French university. The debate was later printed as a book of the same title in 2016. It was translated and published in Arabic and English.^[8]