Who are the Yazidis and why is Isis Killing them
Written by : Mohamed Abdel Fattah
08/ Aug/2014
The Sunni militant group ISIS, which calls itself the Islamic State, has steamrolled into Iraq's north, forcing hundreds of thousands of minorities from their homes.
TheISIS, which has captured large areas of Syria and Iraq, see Shia Muslims and minorities such as Christians and Yazidis, a Kurdish ethno-religious community, as infidels. ISIS has called on the Yazidi community to either convert to Islam or accept being killed.
Nearly 40,000 Yazidis are trapped on the top of Mount Sinjar with few resources; many with just the clothes on their back, U.S. President Barack Obama said in an address late Thursday evening.
Initial reports say that hundreds of Yazidis have been killed by ISIS and that dozens of children have died of thirst.
The Yazidis are not the only religious minority threatened by the Islamic State. Thousands of Christians have fled Mosul since the extremists captured the city in early June.
The ISIS has also given Christians another option if they want to remain in Iraq: To pay jizya. Jizya is a tax that Muslim empires imposed upon non-Muslim constituents in return for military exemption, protection against persecution, and considerable religious freedoms.
The strongest argument against ISIS persecution of Christians is the fact that such actions are in direct violation of the Prophet Muhammad’s own treaties with Christians in which he guarantees the protection of religious freedom and other rights.
Who are the Yazidis?
The Yazidis are one of the world's smallest and oldest monotheistic religious minorities. Their religion is considered a pre-Islamic sect that draws from Christianity, Judaism and the ancient monotheistic religion of Zoroastrianism.
Yazidis worship one God and honor seven angels. Unlike Muslims and Christians, they reject the idea of sin, the devil and hell itself.
This combining of various belief systems, known religiously as syncretism, was what part of what branded them as heretics among Muslims. While its exact origins are a matter of dispute, some scholars believe that Yazidism was formed when the Sufi leader Adi ibn Musafir settled in Kurdistan in the 12th century, and founded a community that mixed elements of Islam with local Zoroastrian beliefs.
Yazidis are predominantly ethnically Kurdish, and have kept alive their syncretic religion for centuries, despite many years of oppression and threatened extermination.
Estimates put the global number of Yazidis at around 700,000 people, with the vast majority of them concentrated in northern Iraq, in and around Sinjar.
The Yazidis have inhabited the mountains of northwestern Iraq for centuries, and the region is home to their holy places, shrines, and ancestral villages. Outside of Sinjar, the Yazidis are concentrated in areas north of Mosul, and in the Kurdish-controlled province of Dohuk. For Yazidis, the land holds deep religious significance;
Many Muslims consider them to be devil worshipers,” says Thomas Schmidinger, an expert on Kurdish politics the University of Vienna. “So in the face of religious persecution, Yazidis have concentrated in strongholds located in remote mountain regions,” he adds.
Yazidis live in Armenia, Georgia, Turkey and Iraq. Yet, the number of Yazidis in Turkey, Armenia and Georgia has dramatically decreased after members of the community preferred migrating to European countries due to the religious discrimination they faced in the aforementioned countries
Yazidis were not able to continue their belief in the era of the Ottoman Empire , ISIS is not tolerant of them and is actively trying to wipe out this regional ethno-religious community.
Under Ottoman rule in the 18th and 19th centuries alone, the Yazidis were subject to 72 genocidal massacres. More recently in 2007, hundreds of Yazidis were killed as a spate of car bombs ripped through their stronghold in northern Iraq.
The leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS leader declared himself as the new “caliph” of Muslims worldwide. In the sermon he attempted to reflect the personality of Islam’s first caliph.
Abu Bakr al-Sadiq, in asking those gathered to help him when he is right and correct him when he is wrong and to only obey him so long as he obeys God and the Messenger. But, the Qur’an warns its readers to not be swayed by charismatic figures who, in reality, only spread evil in the world:
US warplanes have launched several waves of airstrikes against IS group fighters in northern Iraq since Friday.
Aerial drones and F-18 fighter jets have attacked fighter positions close to the Kurdish capital of Erbil.
The airstrikes seek to allow the federal and Kurdish governments to claw back areas lost in two months of conflict.
On Friday and Saturday, the US also dropped food and water for the Yazidis hiding on Sinjar Mountain. The UK is also delivering aid and has announced it is sending medics to northern Iraq.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazidi
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2014/08/08/who-are-the-yazidis-and-why-does-isis-want-to-kill-them/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/07/who-yazidi-isis-iraq-religion-ethnicity-mountains
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/08/140809-iraq-yazidis-minority-isil-religion-history/
08/ Aug/2014
The Sunni militant group ISIS, which calls itself the Islamic State, has steamrolled into Iraq's north, forcing hundreds of thousands of minorities from their homes.
TheISIS, which has captured large areas of Syria and Iraq, see Shia Muslims and minorities such as Christians and Yazidis, a Kurdish ethno-religious community, as infidels. ISIS has called on the Yazidi community to either convert to Islam or accept being killed.
Nearly 40,000 Yazidis are trapped on the top of Mount Sinjar with few resources; many with just the clothes on their back, U.S. President Barack Obama said in an address late Thursday evening.
Initial reports say that hundreds of Yazidis have been killed by ISIS and that dozens of children have died of thirst.
The Yazidis are not the only religious minority threatened by the Islamic State. Thousands of Christians have fled Mosul since the extremists captured the city in early June.
The ISIS has also given Christians another option if they want to remain in Iraq: To pay jizya. Jizya is a tax that Muslim empires imposed upon non-Muslim constituents in return for military exemption, protection against persecution, and considerable religious freedoms.
The strongest argument against ISIS persecution of Christians is the fact that such actions are in direct violation of the Prophet Muhammad’s own treaties with Christians in which he guarantees the protection of religious freedom and other rights.
Who are the Yazidis?
The Yazidis are one of the world's smallest and oldest monotheistic religious minorities. Their religion is considered a pre-Islamic sect that draws from Christianity, Judaism and the ancient monotheistic religion of Zoroastrianism.
Yazidis worship one God and honor seven angels. Unlike Muslims and Christians, they reject the idea of sin, the devil and hell itself.
This combining of various belief systems, known religiously as syncretism, was what part of what branded them as heretics among Muslims. While its exact origins are a matter of dispute, some scholars believe that Yazidism was formed when the Sufi leader Adi ibn Musafir settled in Kurdistan in the 12th century, and founded a community that mixed elements of Islam with local Zoroastrian beliefs.
Yazidis are predominantly ethnically Kurdish, and have kept alive their syncretic religion for centuries, despite many years of oppression and threatened extermination.
Estimates put the global number of Yazidis at around 700,000 people, with the vast majority of them concentrated in northern Iraq, in and around Sinjar.
The Yazidis have inhabited the mountains of northwestern Iraq for centuries, and the region is home to their holy places, shrines, and ancestral villages. Outside of Sinjar, the Yazidis are concentrated in areas north of Mosul, and in the Kurdish-controlled province of Dohuk. For Yazidis, the land holds deep religious significance;
Many Muslims consider them to be devil worshipers,” says Thomas Schmidinger, an expert on Kurdish politics the University of Vienna. “So in the face of religious persecution, Yazidis have concentrated in strongholds located in remote mountain regions,” he adds.
Yazidis live in Armenia, Georgia, Turkey and Iraq. Yet, the number of Yazidis in Turkey, Armenia and Georgia has dramatically decreased after members of the community preferred migrating to European countries due to the religious discrimination they faced in the aforementioned countries
Yazidis were not able to continue their belief in the era of the Ottoman Empire , ISIS is not tolerant of them and is actively trying to wipe out this regional ethno-religious community.
Under Ottoman rule in the 18th and 19th centuries alone, the Yazidis were subject to 72 genocidal massacres. More recently in 2007, hundreds of Yazidis were killed as a spate of car bombs ripped through their stronghold in northern Iraq.
The leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS leader declared himself as the new “caliph” of Muslims worldwide. In the sermon he attempted to reflect the personality of Islam’s first caliph.
Abu Bakr al-Sadiq, in asking those gathered to help him when he is right and correct him when he is wrong and to only obey him so long as he obeys God and the Messenger. But, the Qur’an warns its readers to not be swayed by charismatic figures who, in reality, only spread evil in the world:
US warplanes have launched several waves of airstrikes against IS group fighters in northern Iraq since Friday.
Aerial drones and F-18 fighter jets have attacked fighter positions close to the Kurdish capital of Erbil.
The airstrikes seek to allow the federal and Kurdish governments to claw back areas lost in two months of conflict.
On Friday and Saturday, the US also dropped food and water for the Yazidis hiding on Sinjar Mountain. The UK is also delivering aid and has announced it is sending medics to northern Iraq.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazidi
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2014/08/08/who-are-the-yazidis-and-why-does-isis-want-to-kill-them/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/07/who-yazidi-isis-iraq-religion-ethnicity-mountains
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/08/140809-iraq-yazidis-minority-isil-religion-history/
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