This paper focuses on the role of Islam in the Kurdish separatist movement in Turkey. More specifically, it compares Islam as a tool of assimilation in the hands of the Turkish state with Islam as a tool of resistance in the hands of Kurdish Muslim clergymen. Because Kurdish separatism is mainly based on ethnicity and because the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) originated as an atheist Marxist-Leninist movement that has been aloof to religion since its foundation in 1978, most works on the Kurdish movement tend to ignore religion in their analyses. They assume that Islam has no role to play in this ethno-nationalist conflict other than being employed by the state for manipulative purposes. This paper argues that such an approach is incomplete and misleading. It is true that the piety of Kurdish people has historically been exploited by the state to soothe the discomfort among Kurds. Especially since Justice and Government Party (AKP)’s ascend to power in 2002, the official state discourse that portrays the Kurdish and Turkish people as “religious brethren” has gained full momentum. The idea that Islam, by acting as a bridge between Sunni Muslim Kurds and Turks, could be a remedy for the thirty-year-long conflict has been promoted vigorously by the AKP. However, this rhetoric has lately been challenged by the formation of an alternative Islamic discourse by Kurdish clergymen. Concentrating on “Civil Friday Prayers” carried out as an act of civil disobedience in major Kurdish cities in Turkey since 2011, this paper will scrutinize the details of this pro-Kurdish Islamic discourse. Building on interviews conducted with Kurdish Muslim clergymen in Southeastern Turkey, it will display how these clergymen justify their support for the Kurdish movement on the basis of Islamic teachings. Exploring the deployment of Qur’anic verses and hadiths to challenge the assimilationist Islamic discourse of the state, the paper will highlight the ways in which religion could be employed as a “weapon of the weak” (Scott 2010) rather than “an opium of the masses” (Marx 1978).