Battle to free Mosul of Daesh 'intellectual terrorism'

MOSUL, Iraq — In a classroom of the University of Mosul, in the Daesh group's former Iraqi capital, around 50 volunteers have undergone a week's training on how to combat the extremists’ ideology.

The ulema, or Islamic scholars, aim to set up "brigades" tasked with ridding Mosul residents of extremist ideas following the city's recapture last July which ended three years of Daesh rule.

"Mosul must be liberated from the thinking of Daesh after having been liberated militarily," said Mussaab Mahmud, who just completed the course.

"We were deceived by Daesh ideas and now we are trying to free ourselves from its ideology," said the 30-year-old day labourer.

The first group of volunteers came from all sectors of Mosul society, including mechanics, teachers and a sheikh.

The men aged from 25 to 45 signed up on Facebook for the course run by the Ulema Forum of Mosul, Iraq's second largest city which was left shattered by the months-long battle to expel Daesh.

The classes are being conducted by five teachers who are experts in Islamic jurisprudence from Mosul and Tikrit, a city to the south that was also previously under brutal Daesh rule.

"The lessons are concentrated on human rights, human development, peaceful coexistence and communal peace," the forum's President Sheikh Saleh Al Obeidi told AFP.

He said participants were tutored on "faith, Islamic jurisprudence and the Hadith [record of the sayings of the Prophet Mohammad] to allow them to counter the ideas of Daesh and its intellectual terrorism".

Priority on 'brainwashed' children 

Daesh imposed its own rigid interpretation of Islamic law on all aspects of everyday life, branding opponents "apostates" who should be killed.

Most members of religious and ethnic minorities who had lived in peace for centuries alongside Mosul's majority Sunni Muslims fled to escape the radicals with their beatings and public executions.

Sheikh Obeidi said the brigades will go out and "combat the extremist ideas on social media and by calling on residents in their homes".

His forum was established in 2014 in the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, to the north of Mosul, by ulema who had fled the city.

They broadcast on private television channels but residents risked the wrath of Daesh if they were caught tuning in to the forum's programmes.

Sheikh Obeidi said that the classes would expand to cover "all social groups and both sexes", although it was still looking for permanent premises in the war-battered city.