Translated material
"If a person exudes warmth"
Russia honors the memory of Yazidi Kurds killed in Iraq
At least seven people were killed and more than 25 were injured yesterday when a bomb exploded near a Shiite mosque in the Kazymiya district of northern Baghdad. A day earlier, US President Barack Obama, who appeared in Baghdad on an unannounced visit, told Iraqi leaders that the next 18 months would be the most “critical” in terms of ensuring stability in that country. During this period, he plans to withdraw most of the US forces from Iraq and transfer responsibility for Iraq's security to his authorities. Iraqi Kurdish President Jalal Talabani agreed that it was time for his country to move toward “civilized development,” but as he said so, a bomb killed nine people outside another Shiite mosque in the capital on April 7.During the same hours, Moscow paid tribute to about a thousand victims of the deadly terrorist attacks carried out in August 2007 by unidentified suicide bombers. Then, in the Kurdish region of Sinjar (the Kurds call this mountainous area of Shingal) in northern Iraq, the largest explosions in the country in recent years occurred. Terrorists detonated explosive devices planted in fuel tankers. Almost all those who died then, most of them old men, women and children, were not just Kurds, but Yazidi Kurds. That is, representatives of one of the most ancient and mysterious religions in the Middle East.
A book-photo album, now presented at the RIA Novosti agency, is dedicated to them, telling about the main Yazidi shrine - the Lalish Temple located in Iraqi Kurdistan. The presentation of the first publication of its kind was carried out by Chelyabinsk scientists: historian Lada Ivasko and archaeologist Stanislav Grigoriev. They told Vremya Novostey that the regional government of the Kurdish Autonomy took upon itself the financing and organizational support of their two expeditions. The richly illustrated album was printed in Yekaterinburg with funds from Russian businessmen of Kurdish origin, many of whom are Yazidis.
The Yezidis believe in a single creator God - Khude or Ezid, and Russian Kurdish studies, which in terms of the scale and depth of its research have no equal in the world, considers Yezidism the most ancient monotheism, whose legends and symbols were later reflected in the Torah, Bible and Koran. On the walls of the Lalish temple you can see images of a cross, flower-type rosettes (the so-called solar signs - symbols of the sun), and a six-pointed star (in the picture) .
Thousands of years ago, all Kurds were Yazidis, but under the pressure of historical circumstances, most of them adopted other faiths, including Islam. The remaining Yezidis, whom the militant representatives of the new religions called pagans, fleeing often forced assimilation, began to hide their religious affiliation. Apparently, for the same reason, they declared that one can only be born a Yazidi, but cannot become one, and as a result they separated into an ethno-confessional group: all Yazidis are Kurds, but not all Kurds are Yazidis. Now in the world, according to various sources, out of 30 or 40 million Kurds, there are about 1 million Yazidis, and some of them live in the CIS countries, including Russia. The Russian Yazidi community is the second largest after Iraq. In Iraq, they live in the Kurdish autonomy, but are also found in the Arab provinces.
Despite the closed nature of Yezidism and the presence of castes within it (lay murids, clergy and teachers - sheikhs and pirs) with strict regulation of marriages, it is a tolerant religion that allows everyone to participate in many of its rituals and even sacraments. The Yazidi moral commandment says: “If a person exudes warmth, do not ask who he believes in, but make him a guest of your home.” This, however, did not protect them from terrorist attacks aimed, as Yuri Nabiev, one of the representatives of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Russia and the CIS, explained to VN, “to oust Iraqi Yazidis from areas disputed with Iraqi Arabs, and Shingala is such an area.”
The deputy head of the Council of the Federal National-Cultural Autonomy of the Kurds of Russia, Sultan Khalil, told VN that “the deliberate division of the Kurds into Yazidis and Kurds proper is aimed at dividing a single people and depriving them of a precious historical heritage.” According to him, “although the crusaders in Jerusalem were defeated by a Kurd from Iraqi Tikrit and, according to many sources, by Yazidi Saladin, now, after more than 800 years, in countries where Kurds live compactly - Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey - Yazidis are There are no significant positions.” “Now the civic activity of the Yazidis is growing, in Iraq they are preparing to create their own political party,” our interlocutor noted.