In April 2017 Rakhmat Akilov , a 39-year-old rejected asylum seeker born in the Soviet Union and a citizen of Uzbekistan , drove a truck down a pedestrian area in Stockholm and killed 5 people and injured dozens of others in the 2017 Stockholm truck attack . He has expressed sympathy with extremist organizations , among them the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant ( ISIL ) , Historians have said that militant Islamism first gained ground among Kurds before its appeal grew among ethnic Turks and that the two most important radical Islamist organizsations have been an outgrowth of Kurdish Islamism rather than Turkish Islamism . The Turkish or Kurdish Hizbullah is a primarily Kurdish group has its roots in the predominantly Kurdish southeast of Turkey and among Kurds who migrated to the cities in Western Turkey . The members of the IBDA-C were predominantly Kurds , most members if not all are ethnic Kurds like its founder , as in the Hizbullah . The IBDA-C stressed its Kurdish roots , and is fighting Turkish secularism , and is also anti-Christian . The Hizbula reestablished in 2003 in southeastern Turkey and " today its ideology might be more widespread thean ever among Kurds there " . The influence of these groups confirms " the continuing Kurdish domination of Turkish islamism " . Notable Kurdish Islamists include also ( an Iraqi Kurd born in Sudan ) co-founder of the Islamist terrorist network al-Qaeda . There is a strong Kurdish element in Turkish radical Islamism . Kurdish and Turkish Islamists have also co-operated together , one example being the 2003 Istanbul bombings , and this co-operation has also been observed in Germany , as in the case of the Sauerland terror cell . Political scientist Guido Steinberg stated that many top leaders of Islamist organizations in Turkey fled to Germany in the 2000s , and that the Turkish Hizbullah has also " left an imprint on Turkish Kurds in Germany " . Also many Kurds from Iraq ( there are about 50,000 to 80,000 Iraqi Kurds in Germany ) financially supported Kurdish-Islamist groups like Ansar al Islam . Many Islamists in Germany are ethnic Kurds ( Iraqi and Turkish Kurds ) or Turks . Before 2006 , the German Islamist scene was dominated by Iraqi Kurds and Palestinians , but since 2006 Kurds and Turks from Turkey are dominant
2017 Stockholm truck attack
2017 Stockholm truck attack
Islamic terrorism