Imam Mohamad Tawhidi, an Iranian-born self-declared Islamic reformer, has caused outrage on social media for a post he tweeted on Thursday, where critiques believe he implies that Kurds "deserve dictators like Erdogan and Saddam Hussein who treat them like garbage."
He was responding to a video of a Kurdish man who smashes a birthday cake on his pet lion's face, which he, too, faced wide condemnation for, and was forced to release a public apology.
Kurds around the globe and in Australia have expressed their outrage regarding Imam Tawhidi's statement, including community organisations and academics.
Sydney Kurdish Youth Society (SKYS) released a statement on their Facebook page "strongly" condemning Imam Tawidi's comments.
"While we don’t support such behaviour nor any animal abuse by individuals one must not forget individual actions does not justify nor speak for a nation... If we all remember not long ago an Australian man came to spotlight by running over Emus with his car, does he mean Australians deserve a genocide because of actions of a lunatic? Australia has no place for this sort of behaviour and as Kurdish community, we are strongly against the statement made by this Imam on Twitter." SKYS statement read.
While many have also shown disgust for the man smashing the cake on the lion's face, in reply to Imam Tawhidi's tweet, some non-Kurdish people have also questioned the Imam's statement.
Prominent Kurdish writers and journalists have also reacted to the Australian Imam's comments.
Kamal Chomani, a Kurdish political analyst and Tahrir Institute (TIMEP) Nonresident Fellow, retweeted the post asking; "The "Peace Advocate, Reformist Imam, Ordained Scholar" who is "always keep a balance in life" has found work of a Kurdish animal abuser to justify genocides of Erdogan & Saddam. The 40 million population must be genocided because of a crime of one person?"
Sydney-based Kurdish academic, Dr Roni Demirbag also slammed Imam Tawhidi for his "ignorant" comment in a Facebook post saying, "The Barzan area which ”these people” controlled most of the time even during Saddam era is a sanctuary for wildlife because hunting has been banned by ”these people” for more than a century. They didn't even hunt for food."
Journalist and Washington Bureau Chief for Kurdish media network Rudaw, Namo Abdulla, called on Twitter to ban the Imam. In a retweet of Imam Tawhidi's post he said that "the Kurds fought the most barbaric Islamic group on behalf of the world..."
Ruwayda Mustafa, a British-Kurdish writer and blogger also called for the Imam to be reported and banned for "promoting ethnic cleansing and genocide of Kurdish people", in a tweet.
Today Tawhidi, who has over 450,000 followers on Twitter, responded to one of the complaints with a screenshot of a response to the reporting of his page.
He denied that he was referring to the Kurdish people collectively, and he posted a screenshot of his tweet underlining the words "these people" and circling the footage, implying that he only meant the people in the video who are mistreating the lion.
Although this doesn’t convince everyone, as others have replied to him quoting rest of Imam Tawhidi‘s tweet where he continues saying “perhaps this explains why the nations that abuse animals the most...suffering the most.”
The Adelaide-based Imam's website states that he is an "Australian Muslim Scholar, Publicly Ordained Islamic Authority, Thinker, Educator, Speaker", but he has sparked controversy before. In 2017 he suggested Australia was "infested by extremist Muslims", and in 2018, responding to the Mediterranean migrant crisis he tweeted that "the 'women and children' refugees is - in most cases fake. They want to kill you anyway."
What happened to the lion?
Blend Brifkani, the man seen in the viral video throwing cake in the lion's face, apologised for the incident on social media. He apologised to the lion, Leo, and to those who were offended.
"For me this was an innocent act out of love but I now realise it was wrong. As many of you know I am the found of the American Kurdistan Cooperation Organisation. We protect animal rights in Kurdistan."
However, many haven't bought Brifkani's claim that he found Leo "in the wilderness, alone, small and weak without a mother."
