Religious Rhetoric and Genocidal Violence: The Massacre of Kurds in Rojhelat Under Khomeini’s Fatwa
摘要
This chapter provides an overview of the villages that fell victims of genocidal massacres by the Iranian regime in Rojhelat. It also includes an account of the mass executions of Kurds, who were perceived as a threat to Iran’s territorial integrity due to their ethnic identity. Ayatollah Khomeini’s Fatwa, supported by other religious authorities, labeled Kurds as infidels and sanctioned a jihad against them. Religious leaders such as Khalkhali and Hassani actively participated in these massacres, exemplifying the necropolitical framework of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary regime, where the power to dictate life and death is used to suppress Kurdish liberation struggles. From the onset of the Islamic Revolution in early 1979, the regime has prioritized the extermination and repression of the Kurdish nation. Violent oppression and the elimination of Kurdish civics and dissidents have become the government’s central strategy for securing its political survival and stability, justified under the slogan of defending the foundations of the Revolution and Islam. The systematic killing of Kurds and the suppression of their movements for liberation underscore the regime’s commitment to maintaining territorial and ideological control through religiously sanctioned violence.