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In Kurdistan, “Hitler” Restaurant Shut Down Despite Its Popularity

Oct 28, 2019 10:00 am By Hugh Fitzgerald

With the Kurds in the news, it is instructive to recall that several months ago in Duhok, in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq, a restaurateur gave his new restaurant the name “Hitler.” It seemed to go over well with his clientele; Iraqis flocked to the place. But criticism from some, less morally obtuse, Kurds caused the local government to finally act and it closed the restaurant. It was, of course, given the chance to reopen under another name. The story is here:

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A restaurant named after the genocidal German dictator Adolf Hitler in Duhok has triggered much controversy on social media, with some welcoming the move and others criticizing the government for permitting the issuance of licences under such notorious names.

The owner of the restaurant said he does not necessarily like the mastermind behind the Holocaust, despite naming his restaurant after him, and simply wanted publicity.

“Hitler was the dictator of Germany and has nothing to do with me. I know I have named my restaurant ‘Hitler’, but that does not mean that I love him,” Rebar Mohammed told Rudaw English. “I have done it just to make my restaurant famous among people.”

Hitler led the National Socialist German Workers Party, commonly known as the Nazi party, and Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. His invasion of Poland in 1939 brought about World War II. During the course of the war, which ended in 1945, Hitler was responsible for the mass murder of six million Jews in concentration camps, as well as five million gypsies, political dissidents, Poles, homosexuals and others. Overall, more than 70 million died in the war.

Rebar Mohammed explains that he doesn’t see what all the fuss was about. He merely wanted to “make my restaurant famous” by naming it after Hitler. Apparently the officials with whom he had to register the name found nothing wrong with that name either. It was meant to attract customers; it apparently worked. Business was booming, and no one among his clientele found anything objectionable in his choice of name. Of course, those who did object strongly would undoubtedly have stayed away.

Mohammed said officials did not pay the name much attention when he was registering the restaurant.

“Even when I started the paperwork seven months ago to register my restaurant’s name, I did not receive any negative reactions from the government or security forces,” he said. “It was quite normal.”

So the officials with whom he had to register the name were not concerned. What must they have been thinking?  Possibly something like this: Why should we object to the name? Hitler isn’t our affair. He’s famous, that’s all. He didn’t do anything to us, the Muslims in the Middle East. Besides, Hitler is long dead. Must we keep on forever being sorry for what happened to Jews in Europe? Isn’t it time that the Jews – the Zionists – were stopped from always bringing up “Hitler” and the “Holocaust” and “the camps” — which they do to make sure that Israel is supported? Naming a restaurant “Hitler” is not any different than naming it after John Lennon, or Nelson Mandela, or Batman. It’s just a way to get attention, attract customers.

Customers have a similarly nonchalant attitude to the Hitler signpost hanging on the wall, according to Mohammed.

“Whoever visits my restaurant says they do not care what the name of my restaurant is,” he said. “What is important for them is the cleanliness and taste of my food.”

His customers, Muslim Kurds and Arabs, were not only “nonchalant”; some are no doubt secretly approving of the name “Hitler.” Wasn’t it Hitler who took care of the Jewish problem in Europe? Wasn’t he the friend of the Mufti of Jerusalem, the distinguished scholar of Islam, Haj Amin el Husseini, who gave him advice on how to deal with Jews (he asked Hitler not to let them leave Europe for Palestine), and was even friendlier with Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Eichmann? El Husseini helped the German war effort, raising three S.S. brigades from among the Bosnian Muslims.

Some customers agree. Hitler Restaurant was bustling with customers on Monday, many of whom seemed to not care about Hitler’s involvement in crimes against humanity and genocide.

“For me, the name of the restaurant is not an important thing,” Tahir Mohammed, a customer at the Hitler restaurant, told Rudaw while waiting for his meal. “I come here because I prefer the dishes they serve.”

Tahir Mohammed could have objected to the name “Hitler.” He could even have suggested to Rebar Mohammed, the restaurant’s owner, that its name be changed. But for him it was unimportant; all that mattered was the quality of the food. He, and other customers similarly indifferent to the name, were morally deficient. They were apparently incapable of realizing that even if the owner did not intend to promote Hitler, that was the effect of naming the restaurant after him. Such moral idiocy is both unacceptable and shameful.

Some Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) officials are now speaking out.

Abbas Fatah Salim, deputy head of the Legal Committee in the Kurdistan Parliament, denounced the name.

“Though there is no law as far as I know to disallow any names from being used for businesses, per our customs, we do not have to allow such named to be used,” Salim told Rudaw.

“We have to take into account the fact that Germany helped us in the fight against Daesh,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State (ISIS).

So it’s not the offense to Jews that worries Salim. It’s the effect on Germans, who also suffered, in a different way, the consequences of Hitler’s war. Kurds should be solicitous of Germans, apparently, because they helped “in the fight against Daesh”; that’s the only reason he offers for opposing “Hitler” as the restaurant’s name. Perhaps he really is offended by use of the name “Hitler.” But even if so, it is telling that in order to rally support for a name change, he assumes he must appeal to Kurdish gratitude for German aid against Daesh. Simply insisting that Hitler was a monster who must never be memorialized will not do.

The Duhok Chamber of Commerce and Industry said no law restricts and prevents certain names for businesses to be registered under, and that people are free to choose the name of their businesses.

The head of the chamber said that while Hitler may be reviled in Europe, people in the Kurdistan Region are not concerned about him.

“Maybe for the German nation and Europe who suffered a lot under Hitler, it will not be accepted or welcomed,” Ayad Hassan told Rudaw. “But for this region, it will not be an issue to [name a business after] someone who has done good or bad things in history.”

The head of the Duhok Chamber of Commerce claims “it will not be an issue” to name a business after some historical figure, “someone who has done good or bad things.” Is this true?

Would Ayad Hassan, or the restaurant’s owner, Rebar Muhammad, or any of the restaurant’s clients, be similarly “nonchalant” about a restaurant in Baghdad — owned and much frequented by Arabs – named “Ali Kimyawi” (“Chemical Ali”), after Ali Hassan al-Majid, the general responsible for the chemical attack that killed 3,000 Kurds in Halabja? Would that hypothetical drive the moral point home, to both the morally obtuse owner of the “Hitler” restaurant and his equally obtuse, because uncomplaining, clientele?

The Kurdistan Regional Government understood that a restaurant named “Hitler” would be bad for the region’s image, and shut the restaurant down until such time as it is given a new name. Some in the government, one suspects, may even have been genuinely appalled, and not only worried about Kurdistan’s “image.”

Now the Kurdistan government could turn this “Hitler” restaurant contretemps into a teaching moment. It could use the “Chemical Ali” hypothetical I’ve offered, to drive the point home: no matter who we are, we must not be indifferent to, or “nonchalant” about, a mass murderer, even if our own people were not among his victims. Empathy is required, and that doesn’t come naturally to Muslims, who are inculcated with the idea that they are the “best of peoples” and non-Muslims the “most vile of created beings.” They are very good at feeling sorry for themselves, but not very good, I’m afraid, at feeling sorrow for others. Perhaps this little episode, in dusty Duhok, will have a salutary effect. It might even be one for the books — the schoolbooks, that is.

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Filed Under: Featured, Hugh Fitzgerald, Islamic antisemitism, Kurdistan Tagged With: Duhok, Hitler Restaurant, Rebar Mohammed


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Comments

  1. Angemon says

    Oct 28, 2019 at 10:16 am

    “Hitler was the dictator of Germany and has nothing to do with me. I know I have named my restaurant ‘Hitler’, but that does not mean that I love him,” Rebar Mohammed told Rudaw English. “I have done it just to make my restaurant famous among people.”

    Right – it’s not him, it’s everyone else…

    • gravenimage says

      Oct 28, 2019 at 10:20 pm

      If he just wanted to make his restaurant famous he could have named it Churchill…

  2. mortimer says

    Oct 28, 2019 at 11:06 am

    So what will the Dems do now? Are the Kurds neo-Nazis? Are the Dems supporting neo-Nazis now … just as they supported the KKK and slavery in the past?

  3. mortimer says

    Oct 28, 2019 at 11:07 am

    Spelling mistake! Rebar Mohammed said, “I have done it just to make my restaurant famous among people.”

    Corrected spelling: INFAMOUS

  4. Wellington says

    Oct 28, 2019 at 11:34 am

    Kurds may be our best Muslim allies in the Middle East but it should never be forgotten they are still Muslim. Might as well have forgotten Stalin was Communist (which FDR kinda’ did) when allied with America and Britain during WWII.

    • Infidel says

      Oct 28, 2019 at 9:09 pm

      Not just that, if we are ‘morally’ obligated to support a Kurdistan, as advocates of our troops remaining in the region indefinitely advocate, why not also support an independent Assyria – a country that provides refuge to Assyrian Christians, Yazidis and any other non-Muslim people in the area? So that they don’t have to live under shariah and constant threats from their Muslim neighbors

      • Ginny says

        Oct 29, 2019 at 3:47 am

        Amen.

    • gravenimage says

      Oct 28, 2019 at 10:21 pm

      +1

  5. Rarely says

    Oct 28, 2019 at 11:46 am

    Insensitive? Of course. But apparently as irrelevant to them as if it had been called “Stalin’s” or “Napoleon’s”.
    Muslim’s and islam don’t need to piggyback on Hitler to either justify or express their antisemitism — it’s can stand alone without assistance. There’s no reason to be subtle and they aren’t.

  6. jewdog says

    Oct 28, 2019 at 12:05 pm

    The Kurds, known as moderate Muslims and pro-Western allies, are yet tainted by the casual acceptance of crude antisemitic tropes common in Islamic culture. It’s the polluted sea they swim in, and it’s oozing our way.

    • Lion heart says

      Oct 28, 2019 at 2:22 pm

      Just a reminder for Muslim Kurds ! Kurds participated along with the Turks in a genocidal campaign against Iraqi Christians where they killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Chaldean , Assyrian Christians during the first world war plus , they helped Iraqi government in 1933 to kill 5000 Iraqi Christians in what’s called the “ Massacre of Simelle “ and fast forward , in 2011 in the city of Zakho in the Kurdistan region after a Friday prayer sermon in a mosque and after the imam of that mosque had fuelled the Muslims especially the youth with hate towards non.Muslims especially towards the Christians , then the Muslims started to launch a campaign of burning down the liquor stores of Christians so much so their violence turned into physical abuse against the Christians and calling them infidels etc.. and if it was not for government which interferes at the last moment , things world have been more disastrous to Christians! and those young Muslims who caused all that mayhem were supposedly “ MODERATE “ Muslims ! and I am a Canadian Christian guy originally from Baghdad originally ! So Kurds did to Christians the same as Arab Muslims did to Christians in Baghdad , Mosul , Basra etc.. so Kurds and Arab Muslims are the same and believe in the same evil ideology of Islam ( except some nice among them who are far from Islam ) .

      • jewdog says

        Oct 28, 2019 at 2:43 pm

        Moderate Muslim is a very relative thing, and probably would still get you dismissed from the Boy Scouts. I’ve read that the Kurds helped massacre the Armenians in 1918. But remember, we were allied with Stalin against Hitler in WWII, so sometimes you have to get in bed with the bad guys to defeat the worse guys.

    • Infidel says

      Oct 28, 2019 at 9:10 pm

      One more historical reminder – Saladin too was a Kurd, and not just that, Kurds today revere him as one: they don’t recognize him as an Arab or Turk

  7. Kepha says

    Oct 28, 2019 at 9:08 pm

    For all who applaud China’s treatment of its Uighur minority (and dissent among the Hui):

    There is also a strange fascination with Hitler in China. When I let a minion of their foreign ministry understand that if German-Americans have any WWII hero, it’s General Eisenhower, it didn’t register–until I explained that “Eisenhower” is German for “iron cutter”; and left my interlocutor with the impression that America is a nation of race-traitors. I really would’ve liked to ollow up with a comment that if China isn’t careful, it just might find itself under a US military government headed by a general named Huang or Zhao, but diplomaticaly bit my tongue. Indeed, thei mage of Hitler in China is that he unified and strengthened the nation; indeed, something of a hero.

    Recently in Germany, two Chinese tourists were arrested for making the Hitler salute outside the Reichstag.

    This, more than a bunch of squabbling Muslim peoples admiring Hitler, alarms me far more.

  8. gravenimage says

    Oct 28, 2019 at 10:24 pm

    In Kurdistan, “Hitler” Restaurant Shut Down Despite Its Popularity
    ………………………

    Muslims generally hate the Infidels, but so often make an exception *for Hitler*. This is even true among many Kurds.

  9. UNCLE VLADDI says

    Oct 29, 2019 at 5:21 am

    “A few months ago!”? That was YEARS ago.

  10. shortfattexan says

    Oct 29, 2019 at 7:03 am

    Brings back memories of this little gem from days gone by:

    https://www.jihadwatch.org/2008/06/hizballahburger

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