Kurdish Teenager Stoned To Death Near Mosul

Italian translation (traduzione in Italiano).

Original video here. Thanks to Not Ready For My Burqa for this one.

This video of a Kurdish Yezidi woman being stoned to death by her relatives for running away with a Muslim man and converting to Islam is one of the most disturbing videos making the rounds these days.

This incident occurred around April 10 in the Yezidi village Ba'shiqa, near Mosul, not in Mosul itself as many news reports are saying. Doa Khalil Aswad, 17, a Yezidi student from Ba'shiqa, had fallen in love with her neighbor, a Muslim Kurdish shopkeeper. Then she ran away from home to marry him and converted to Islam.

This is shameful and forbidden, according to the Yezidi religion, an ancient religion that combines aspects of Gnosticism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Mithraism and Judaism, but likely predates all of the above.

It is thought to be one of the oldest religions on Earth, possibly dating back 10,000 years or more.

The girl was apparently sheltered in the home of a Muslim cleric for several months to keep her away from enraged townspeople. In early April, her family encouraged her to return home on the promise that her relatives had forgiven her for her mistake. But it was all a ruse.

This video shows what happened when she came home. A group of up to 1000 Yezidi men ambushed her on her way home, grabbed her and threw her to the ground. A small group of the men, about a dozen or so, all members of Doa's extended family, then partially disrobed her and stoned her to death, while cellphone videocameras recorded the sordid deed for all time.

In the video, she is partially disrobed, attacked with stones, then taunted and kicked until a man finishes her off with a rock to the head. If you look at the video closely, you can see she is still in pretty good shape up until between 41-44 seconds into video, when a man steps up and bashes her over the head with a large concrete block. After that, she is bleeding badly from the head and never moves again.

A couple of photo grabs are here and here. Another set of five of the videos, which adds some footage not seen here, can be seen here.

The stoning went on for 30 minutes until the girl finally died. She was probably partially stripped to symbolize how she had dishonored her family and her religion by marrying a Muslim and converting to Islam. At the end of the video, you can see one of the men covering her legs with a jacket.

It is interesting that they think it is shameful to have a girl's bare legs showing in public, but it is not shameful at all to brutally murder a girl in public.

After she was killed, her body was taken outside of town, burned, and buried with the bones of a dog, to show how worthless she was. An autopsy showed she died of a fractured skull and spine.

This is not the first time the Yezidis have killed one of their women for such an offense. A few months ago, another Yezidi woman converted to Islam and her family killed her with a single bullet to the head.

Note the Kurdish police at the scene who apparently went along with the whole outrage. After a while, Kurdish Army soldiers came by and refused anyone entry to the scene of the crime. There was a significant blowback from this barbaric incident.

Many local Yezidi religious figures, to their credit, condemned this bit of depravity. Unfortunately, local Muslims went nuts afterward, attacking Yezidis and their institutions in response to "the killing of a Muslim woman". Never mind that these same Muslims would gleefully kill any Muslim who dared to convert out of Islam...

The Muslims of Kurdistan are incredible hypocrites about this stuff, as usual for Islam, a religion that oozes hypocrisy from its very essence. Four months ago, a Muslim girl and a Yezidi man eloped . Local Muslims set fire to Yezidi homes in the village where this took place. They also found the girl, brought her home, beheaded her.

So...let's see now...non-Muslim women get to run off and marry Muslim men and convert to Islam - no problem. But a Muslim woman goes off with a non-Muslim man and marries him, they get to kill her and then burn down the non-Muslims' villages? WTF? You call that a religion? Is this the Islam of Kurdistan? Are Kurdish Muslims proud of the behavior of the Muslims of Kurdistan?

Iraqi Al Qaeda stopped a bus full of Yezidi workers in Mosul, separated the Yezidis from the others, drove the bus to (Kurdish) Eastern Mosul and executed 23 Yezidis in broad daylight. Attackers shouted "God curse your Devil!" a reference to the fact that many Muslims think that Yezidis are devil worshipers.

The Islamic State of Iraq, which is just a fake name for Iraqi Al Qaeda, took credit for the attack in this statement, where they threatened "the worshipers of Satan" (read: Yezidis) in general. Nice people. Kurdish Muslims and local Sunni Takfiris have been issuing threats to the Yezidis of Kurdistan.

On April 26, a Yezidi baker and three of his Yezidi workers were murdered in Mosul. Two days later, two Yezidi policemen were murdered. The Takfiri group the Mujahedin Army ordered all Yezidis in Mosul to either convert to Islam, or be killed if they wish to stay in Mosul. Otherwise, they need to leave the city.

Over 800 Yezidis fled Mosul University after local Muslim animals issued the typical Muslim "convert or die" orders. Yezidi workers also fled Mosul. In addition, Yezidis were attacked at their workplaces and dormitories in Erbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniyah, inside the Kurdish Autonomous Zone. Most are fleeing back to their Yezidi villages. In Bashiqa, Yezidis were ordering Muslim residents of the town to leave.

"Convert or die", of course, is an ancient Muslim tradition that most other religions do not engage in in recent years. In recent weeks, the fundamentalist jihadis in Baghdad's Dora District have told the local Christians to pay the jizya tax and become dhimmis, convert to Islam, or be killed. Consequently, many Christians have fled.

Since the killing of Doa, honor killings have exploded in Kurdistan, and men seem to think they have the license now to kill women for any reason they want. Even previously, honor killings and female self-immolations were occurring at a rate of about one a day in Kurdistan.

Female self-immolations are often actually murders by men disguised as suicides. In other cases, the women are pressured to kill themselves for having violated the family's honor.

The Yezidis do worship Malak Taus, a blue peacock archangel, whom the Muslims mistake for the devil. In the Abrahamic religions, the archangel, of king of the angels, was condemned by God and sent to Hell, where he now rules as the Devil. Since the Yezidis worship the archangel, Muslims conclude they must be worshiping the Devil. However, the Yezidis vociferously disagree that Malak Taus is the Devil.

Yezidi cosmology is mostly secret and highly complex, but upon analysis, it appears that they may be right in that they do not worship the Devil at all. The holy books are only accessible by a tiny elite, are guarded, and outsiders are not allowed to access them.

However, recently, a copy of the Yezidi Holy Book was captured and translated and attempts were made to analyze the religion. The book and the analyses of it can be read on the web. I have read them but I still don't understand the religion. Most Yezidis are only told part of their religion and the secrets of the religion are kept from them.

The situation with the Alawi, the sect that rules Syria, is similar. There are also parallels with the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages, when services were done in Latin in part because the commoners could hardly understand the language. The idea was that keeping the common folks ignorant of even their religion was a good idea, as they lacked the skills necessary to properly understand it.

Yezidi culture and religion is derived from the ancient religion of Zoroastrianism. Like the Zoroastrians, the Yezidis still have a backwards caste system. I believe they have seven castes. Marriage to non-Yezidis is strictly forbidden, as is marriage across castes.

An excellent progressive analysis of this killing and why the Yezidis stoned this woman can be found here. Dr. Showan Khurshid, a Ph.D student of political theory at Cardiff University in Wales, takes on Muslim, Kurdish and Yezidi culture and gives them all the appropriate lashings that any progressive ought to mete out to these backwards societies. Khurshid is a Kurdish intellectual from Kirkuk (biography).

He has some interesting views - the thinks that Turkomen, Yezidis and Assyrians should all have their own ethnic cantons inside Kurdistan. He has unleashed some superb attacks on Islam from a progressive point of view (most anti-Islam polemics suffer from a pro-imperialist, pro-neoconservative, pro-colonialist or pro-Zionist mindset). Kurdistan needs more thinkers like Khurshid.

Two more Yezidis were killed and Yezidi buildings were set on fire in the unrest that followed the stoning. To their discredit, a number of Kurdish Muslim clerics issues fatwas sanctioning attacks against Yezidis for the stoning. Yezidis then rioted at the local KDP Headquarters, destroying furniture, throwing stones and setting cars on fire.

Not counting the 24 Yezidis killed in Mosul in the bus incident, another 192 Yezidis have been killed since the invasion, mostly by Islamists who have issued the usual charming "convert or die, infidels" orders to Yezidis in general.

Since Yezidis tend not to convert, they are being killed. Excuse me? Is there any other religion on Earth that issues demands that non-practitioners of the religion either convert to the religion or be killed? You call that a religion? For how long have Muslims been ordering non-Muslims to "convert or die"? From the start of Islam. When will they stop? Can Islam be reformed?

Honor killings are very common in Iraq. In the Sunni Muslim areas, one woman a day was being killed in honor killings recently. They have gotten much worse as Islamists have taken over Iraqi society. In the Kurdish north, they are also very common, even though the Kurds are supposedly more secular.

The outrageous crime of female genital mutilation is epidemic (60%) in Kurdistan, while being uncommon in much of the Arab World. It is widely practiced in Egypt (70%) and Yemen (20%) but these areas have strong African influence. Outside of Africa, FGM is uncommon, despite attempts of anti-Arab propagandists to smear Arabs with this practice.

There is a bit of FGM amongst Bedouin tribes in Palestine, Israel (in the Levant it tends to take less more trivial forms) and Saudi Arabia and there is some amongst the Bedouin in Southern Libya, although Qaddafi has tried to quash it. Other than that, FGM is mostly confined to Sub-Saharan Africa, where it tends to be associated with Islam, with a locus on the Horn of Africa for some reason.

Propagandists screaming about FGM and Islam are being disingenuous. FGM, while associated with Islamic Africa, is best seen as an Africanism. Hence the FGM epidemic in Kurdistan is both curious and outrageous.

Although this killing was done by tribal Yezidis, honor killings tend to be associated with Islam. They are common in Morocco but not in the rest of North Africa - they are rare in Libya, Tunisia (there has not been an honor killing in 16 years in Tunisia) and Algeria. They are unheard of in all of Muslim West Africa, Bangladesh and Indonesia, for some odd reason.

They are very common in Israel, Palestine, Syria , Jordan, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq. They are common in the Kurdish areas of Turkey and in Iran. They are also very common in Afghanistan, Somalia and Pakistan (there is a veritable honor killing epidemic in Pakistan).

Although the Kurdish government has supposedly introduced reforms to try to crack down on the insane barbarism of honor killings, the crimes are almost never investigated, much less prosecuted.

Muslims say that honor killings have nothing to do with Islam. That may be true, but why have they persisted mainly in Muslim areas, and why is it the Islamists who always defend them so much?

If you, like me, regard honor killings as the nadir of barbarism and beastliness, you might want to check out the Stop Honor Killings webpage.

Predictably, this crime is being used by the Muslim-haters to bash Muslims, as if Muslims did it, when in fact it was done by Yezidis.

Spogliata e Lapidata: Delitto D'Onore

This is the Italian translation of my post Kurdish Teenager Stoned to Death Near Iraq, which deals with the tragic and outrageous stoning to death of Dua Khalil Aswad, a Yezidi girl who was killed by her fellow Yezidis for eloping with a Muslim man, as intermarriage is forbidden in their religion. The title, translated to English, is Stripped and Stoned: An Honor Killing.

Viewer discretion is advised - watch at your own risk.

Chiunque volesse avere maggiori informazioni sugli Yazidi, può leggere (in inglese, per il momento) i miei articoli: Do Yezidis Worship the Devil? e Yezidis, a Mysterious Kurdish Religious Sect. Quest'ultimo è molto antecedente al fatto che vado a descrivere.

Come purtroppo avete già capito, il filmato è impressionante, non fatelo vedere ai minori o alle persone sensibili, per favore.

In effetti, la lapidazione della ragazza Curdo-Yazida accusata dai propri familiari di essersi innamorata di un Mussulmano (ed addirittura di aver abbracciato l'Islam), ha destato molta impressione, sconcerto, rabbia e tristezza.

L'epilogo della vicenda si è svolto nell'aprile del 2007, nel villaggio Ba'shiqa, vicino a Mosul (e non in Mosul come erroneamente riportato da certa stampa). Nel 2006, Doa Khalil Aswad, una studentessa di 17 anni natìa di Ba'shiqa, si era innamorata di un vicino di casa, un Curdo-Mussulmano, di professione negoziante. Dopo essere scappata da casa, Doa si è sposata e convertita all'Islam.

Purtroppo Doa ha commesso dei 'peccato' estremamente gravi: non solo ha disonorato la propria famiglia non obbedendo ai loro voleri, ma si è anche convertita all' Islam. Queste religioni continuano a considerare la donna un 'essere' sottomesso che non può decidere della propria vita.

Povera Doa, una storia d'amore finita tragicamente!

Nota:

La religione Yazidi è una delle più vecchie del pianeta, sembra che le origini siano risalenti a più di 10.000 anni fà. Nel loro culto ci sono elementi propri di Gnosticismo (v. Manicheismo), Giudaismo, Islam, Mazdeismo (v. Zoroastro), Cristianesimo, Buddismo, Induismo, Mitraismo.

Leggete il mio vecchio articolo The Yezidis, a Mysterious Kurdish Religious Sect, ci sono informazioni molte interessanti.

Ritorniamo a Doa. Dopo aver trascorso alcuni mesi in casa di un religioso Mussulmano, ben protetta dalla rabbia dei propri familiari e concittadini, la povera ragazza ha commesso lo sbaglio di credere al perdono offertogli dalla famiglia.

Sì, la famiglia gli ha offerto il perdono come trappola per topi, per farla uscire dal suo nascondiglio. Che Bastardi!

Il video ci mostra la Via Crucis di una povera ragazza di 17 anni!

Ad attenderla sulla via del ritorno a casa c'era una folla di un migliaio di uomini imbestialiti, ululanti, schiumanti di rabbia. Viene lasciata in balìa dei suoi parenti (una dozzina di uomini). Accerchiata, percossa e gettata a terra come una bambola di pezza, Doa viene così UMILIATA e SPOGLIATA!!!

Vediamo poi solo alcuni momenti dell'intera lapidazione: la 'Cerimonia è durata almeno 30 minuti!

L'atroce tortura finisce con il colpo di grazia alla testa di Doa. Un bastardo gliela spacca con un blocco di cemento...però alla fine le coprono le gambe con una giacca! Bisogna sempre salvare 'il comune senso del pudore', eh?

Quanti di loro si saranno eccitato a vedere le gambe nude e gli slip neri della ragazza? Tanti, sicuramente.

Come posso definire esseri umani coloro che si 'stracciano le vesti' se una donna osa mostrare le gambe o un lembo di carne in pubblico e non esitano a denudare e uccidere selvaggiamente una ragazzina (hai peccato di 'sesso' e sei diventata Mussulmana: ora ti lapidiamo nuda...)??

Mi ha colpito un fatto: il contrasto tra un atto così incredibilmente barbaro e arcaico e la feroce, morbosa presenza di molte persone che cercavano in tutti i modi di registrare 'l'evento' con i propri videofonini.

Ma non sta succedendo così anche nella nostra cosidetta società 'civile'? La progressiva scomparsa del sentimento umano di pietà, di soccorso; prevale l'insensibilità, l'egoismo.

In definitiva è questa la malattia del mondo moderno: non solo non lottiamo (o lo facciamo blandamente) contro i soprusi, ma siamo anche dei 'guardoni', meri osservatori che registrano e godono delle disgrazie altrui (ehi, lo metto anch'io su Youtube questo filmatino, andate avanti ragazzi...un sorriso alla camera...ok...spostatevi, idioti che non riesco a riprendere bene, ah, ok, così va meglio).

Se volete vedere alcune istantanee del video cliccate qui e qui. Per gli 'amanti' delle foto inedite, ce ne sono altre cinque qui...

Dopo l'assassinio, il corpo straziato di Doa è stato bruciato e seppellito assieme alle ossa di un cane, come segno di massimo disprezzo.

Non è la prima volta che i Yazidi giustiziano una delle loro donne per fatti del genere. Ad una di loro, convertitasi all'Islam, la sorte è stata 'migliore': una pallottola al cuore dal Capofamiglia.

La vicenda di Doa ha sollevato alcuni punti interrogativi.

Perchè la polizia Curda non è intervenuta al momento della lapidazone? Erano complici? Cosa ha significato il successivo intervento di reparti dell'esercito Curdo, che ha transennato e proibito l'ingresso alla 'scena del crimine'?

Sebbene influenti personalità religiose della comunità Yazidi abbiano condannato la barbara uccisione di Doa, i Mussulmani hanno reagito violentemente, attaccando sia persone che istituzioni Yazidi. Una donna Mussulmana è stata uccisa!!! Già, Mussulmana...peccato che quando devono giudicare un ex-Mussulmano, la sentenza è una sola: morte!!

I Mussulmani curdi si sono dimostrati incredibilmente ipocriti in questo caso, ma d'altra parte è tutta l'essenza della religione Mussulmana che è impregnata di ipocrisia. Quattro mesi fa c'è stato il caso di una donna Mussulmana ed uno Yazidi. La 'scappatella' è finita tragicamente sia per la donna (decapitata) che per la Comunità Yazidi del villaggio (tutte le case sono state bruciate).

Allora, se una donna non Mussulmana si sposa con un Mussulmano e si converte all'Islam, và tutto bene.

Ma se una donna Mussulmana si sposa con un non Mussulmano allora si deve ucciderla e bruciare tutte le case dei non Mussulmani? Ma che cazzo?

E la chiamate religione? E' questo l'Islam del Kurdistan?

I Curdi Mussulmani sono orgogliosi del comportamento dei Mussulmani del Kurdistan?

Un altro clamoroso esempio: tempo fà, un gruppo di terroristi Iracheni di Al Qaeda ha bloccato un autobus di lavoratori a Mosul. Dopo aver selezionato gli Yazidi, l'autobus si è diretto in una zona est di Mosul. 23 persone sono state giustiziate al grido: "Dio maledica il vostro diavolo!" In effetti molti Mussulmani pensano che gli Yazidi siano adoratori del Demonio.

Lo Stato Islamico Iracheno, ovvero Al Qaeda in Iraq, ha rivendicato questa azione ed allo stesso tempo ha 'graziosamente' minacciato tutti 'gli Adoratori di Satana' (gli Yazidi).

Ma che bella gente!

Sia i Mussulmani Curdi che i Sunniti Takfiris locali hanno inviato minacciosi messaggi di morte agli Yazidi del Kurdistan.

Lo scorso 26 aprile, un fornaio e tre lavoranti Yazidi sono stati uccisi a Mosul. Due giorni dopo anche due poliziotti Yazidi sono stati assassinati. L'Armata dei Mujahedin di Mosul (di etnia Takfiri) ha lanciato un chiaro messaggio a tutti gli Yazidi: o vi convertite all'Islam o dovete lasciare immediatamente la città.

A queste minaccie, Il panico si è diffuso tra gli Yazidi. Sia studenti universitari (più di 800 giovani) che comuni lavoratori hanno fatto i bagagli e sono scappati nei villaggi di origine. La paura ha preso il sopravvento.

In altre città della Regione Autonoma del Kurdistan, come Erbil, Dohuk e Sulaimaniyah, ci sono stati diversi attacchi Mussulmani a vari siti frequentati dagli Yazidi (dormitori, negozi, fabbriche, etc.). A Bashiqa, gli Yezidi hanno intimato ai Mussulmani di abbandonare la città.

Covertiti o muori è un'antica tradizione Mussulmana ritornata di attualità. Tranne alcuni casi (ex-Jugoslavia, Filippine, Libano) le altre religioni hanno abbandonato da tempo questa forma di pulizia etnica...

Nel quartiere Dora, a Baghdad, un solito gruppo Jihadista ha intimato ai Cristiani di pagare la tassa di 'protezione' e diventare dhimmis, ovvero: convertiti all' Islam o muori!

La fuga di molti Cristiani è stata l'ovvia conseguenza a queste serie minaccie.

Un altro effetto del casino provocato dall'uccisione di Doa: non si contano più i 'delitti d'onore' in Kurdistan. Il delitto d'onore e il sacrificio volontario di donne non sono una novità. Una tragedia al giorno era un evento abituale in Kurdistan.

Ma ora sembra che tutti gli uomini si arroghino il diritto di uccidere le donne come e quando vogliono. Bravi...

Certo è che molti omicidi vengono archiviati come 'suicidi' e che molte donne sono costrette ad uccidersi per salvare l'onore della famiglia.

Gli Yazidi venerano Malak Taus, un arcangelo dalle fattezze di un di pavone. E' un angelo caduto che si è pentito ed ha ricostruito il mondo.

Per i Mussulmani quell'angelo non si è affatto pentito, anzi, è il Diavolo in persona. Gli Yazidi sono dunque adoratori del Demonio. Differenze di interpretazione religiose? Mah, a me sembra la solita lotta tra etnie tribali, dove il proprio Dio è quello giusto e il Dio del nemico è il Diavolo.

La cosmologia religiosa Yazidi è criptica, complessa, ma non mi sembra che adorino una Divinità maligna. Il loro libro sacro è segreto e solo una piccola èlite religiosa può custodire e tramandare i suoi segreti. Tentare di accedere alla visione di una copia di quel testo significare rischiare la morte.

Eppure, poco tempo fà, qualcuno è riuscito ad impadronirsi di una copia del Libro sacro degli Yazidi ed a diffonderne in rete una traduzione ed anche una puntale analisi religiosa. Ho letto tutto quello che era possibile leggere ma continuo a non capirci granchè. E' inutile sperare di avere qualche forma di collaborazione da qualche Yazidi, non hanno alcuna voglia di svelare i loro segreti al mondo.

Non sono i soli. Pensiamo alla setta degli Alawi in Siria; possiamo paragonarli alla Chiesa Cattolica del Medioevo, dove tutti i riti religiosi si svolgevano in latino, lingua praticamente incomprensibile al popolino.

Si veniva così a creare quell'aurea di misticismo e superiorità della quale la Chiesa Cattolica ha goduto per secoli al fine di imporre il proprio dominio temporale.

La religione e la cultura Yazidi ha molti punti in comune con il Mazdaismo (o Zoroastrismo). La suddivisione della società in caste (7 livelli) è simile, i matrimoni con appartenenti ad altre religioni sono vietati e puniti severamente. Non è possibile contrarre matrimoni tra membri di caste diverse.

Un'ottima analisi delle ragioni della lapidazione della povera Doa è stata fatta dal Dr. Showan Khurshid, ricercatore di scienze politiche presso l'Università di Cardiff, in Galles.

Khurshid è un intellettuale moderno, ha analizzato crudemente e senza peli sulla lingua le barbare usanze e le retrograde tradizioni dei Curdi, Yazidi e Mussulmani.

Khurshid, natìo di Kirkuk e quindi Curdo, sostiene delle affascinanti tesi Turkmeni, gli Yazidi e Assiri fossero divisi nell'antichità in comunità etniche nella regione Curda.

L'attacco all'Islam di Khurshid è veramente efficace e scevro dai soliti luoghi comuni. Nessuna teoria conservatrice, sionista, imperialista, teodem o neodem comune ai soliti nemici dell'Islam, quindi. Il Kurdistan avrebbe veramente bisogno di altri intellettuali come Khurshid...

Nei disordini seguìti alla lapidazione, altri due Yazidi sono stati uccisi e diversi edifici sono stati bruciati. A condanna di tali fatti, alcuni religiosi Mussulmani hanno emesso delle Fatwa contro i responsabili. La reazione degli Yezidi è stata parimenti dura, hanno attaccato la sede del KDP distruggendo a sassate tutti i mobili ed hanno poi bruciato le automobili dei funzionari Mussulmani.

Senza contare i 24 Yazidi uccisi a Mosul, altri 192 Yazidi hanno perso la vita a seguito dell'Invasione. La maggior parte di loro si era rifiutata di obbedire all'ultimatum 'convertiti o muori' intimatogli dai Mussulmani.

Visto che gli Yazidi non hanno alcuna voglia di convertirsi, devono forse essere sterminati? C'è qualche altra religione in questa terra che prevede lo sterminio dei non-convertiti? La possiamo chiamare religione? I Mussulmani hanno da sempre considerato gli infedeli degni solo di morire, non sono mai cambiati. Ci potrà mai essere un'evoluzione pacifica della loro religione?

I delitti d'onore sono molto diffusi in Iraq. Nell'area Sunnita a maggioranza Mussulmana ogni giorno viene uccisa una donna. Nemmeno a seguito di un'ipotetica presa di potere dei Mussulmani in Iraq si avrebbe potuto pensare ad un tale deterioramento della situazione. Neanche nel Kurdistan del Nord, regione in apparenza laica e secolarizzata, i delitti d'onore si sono ridotti, anzi...

L'oltraggio dell'infibulazione è praticato al 60% delle donne Curde. E' un'epidemia che non colpisce la maggior parte dei paesi Arabi. In Stati come Egitto (70%) e Yemen (20%), l'alto numero di mutilazioni è causato dalla notevole influenza di usi e costumi Africani.

Al di fuori della sfera di influenza Africana, l'infibulazione non viene praticamente praticata. Gli Arabi possono essere colpevoli di altri delitti, ma attribuire la paternità di questa barbara usanza sulla donna è un atto propagandistico ed un puro falso ideologico.

Ci sono dei casi di infibulazione all'interno di Tribù di Beduini presenti in Palestina, Israele (ad Oriente si hanno usanze meno tribali) ed Arabia Saudita. Nonostante la dura repressione di Gheddaf, nel Sud della Libia ci sono altri Beduini che praticano questa mutilazione femminile...

(Ndt. e qui una nota per quella merda di Gheddafi, vero terrorista ed assassino spietato, divenuto dopo l'11 Settembre un campione della libertà e delle lotta ai terroristi Mussulmani! Grazie, George W. e S.B., affanculo anche a voi! Doveva essere giustiziato Gheddafi e non Saddam!)

L'infibulazione viene praticata anche nell'Africa Sub-Sahariana, dove viene associata all'Islam, e nell'intero Corno d'Africa.

Non possiamo unirci ad una parziale propaganda anti-Mussulmana, la pratica dell'infibulazione è sopratutto un'usanza tribale Africana e non può essere associata solo all'Africa Mussulmana. Per questo mi sembra incredibile, oltraggioso ed anche strano quello che stà succedendo in Kurdistan.

Ritorniamo ai delitti d'onore. Anche se il 'fattaccio' è stato compiuto da barbari Yazidi, il delitto d'onore è diventato sinonimo di pratica Islamica. E' comune in Marocco, ma nel resto del Nord Africa ci sono stati pochi casi in Libia, Tunisia (nessun delitto d'onore da 16 anni a questa parte) e Algeria. Non si hanno notizie di tali delitti ne' in tutta l'Africa Occidentale, ne' in Bangladesh ed Indonesia (per particolari ragioni).

Sono molto comuni in Israele, Palestina, Siria, Giordania, Libano, Yemen ed Iran. Aggiungiamo alla 'lista nera' anche l'Afghanistan, la Somalia ed il Pakistan (si parla addiritura di epidemia di uccisioni di donne in Pakistan...)

Sebbene il Governo del Kurdistan abbia già introdotto alcune leggi contro i delitti d'onore, la realtà è che gli organi di polizia se ne fregano ed i tribunali non condannano gli assassini.

I Mussulmai dicono che il delitto d'onore non ha nulla a che fare con l'Islam. Bah, ipocrisia. Perchè continua ad essere un 'biglietto da visita' riservato soprattutto agli uomini dei paesi Mussulmani? Perchè tanti esimi Islamisti continuano a difendere il principio del delitto d'onore?

Io penso che il delito d'onore sia l'apice dell'abbruttimento del maschio, l'atto più disgustoso che si possa fare contro una donna. Se la pensate come me, visitate il sito: Stop Honour Killings .

E' comunque deprecabile che la notizia sia stata usata in chiave Anti-Mussulmana (vero seguaci della defunta profetessa dell'odio, Oriana Fallaci?). Gli assassini della povera Dea sono stati proprio i suoi familiari e la folla loro complice, gli Yazidi!!

Thoughts on Ethnocentrism and "Race-Mixing"

White nationalists tend to say that any White person who dates or marries outside the White race is a "race traitor" who is engaging in "race mixing" and is fostering "racial suicide". They also say that any such person must be a "White self-hater" with no love or pride on their own people.

This post will examine whether or not that is so. It will also examine ethnocentrism cross-culturally, with a view towards whether or not it is normal. It will also examine the tendency among human groups to simultaneously guard their women from outsiders while the males also attempt to mate with outsiders.

I argue that all of these things are cultural norms in human beings and may have biological or genetic origins.

I've been talking to some of my smart friends about this stuff, and here's what we came up with.

I noted that I have met persons from all over the world. One tendency that I noted among most, but not all, persons, was ethnocentrism, often of an extreme type. They all had a lot of pride in their race, nation, ethnic group, religion, or whatever. In particular, they did not like to hear criticism of it from outsiders.

At the same time, many were not particularly racist. They certainly were friendly enough towards me. These same people, if they were young and unmarried, often combined a profound ethnocentrism with a desire to marry outside their group. In this case, many of them wanted to marry an American, especially a White American.

This would seem to strongly contradict White nationalist theory that everyone who desires to marry outside their race, nation or ethnicity is race-traitor who is full of hatred for their own kind. That just doesn't seem to be true. White nationalists are flat out wrong. It's perfectly possible to love your people and marry outside of them.

Oddly enough, people seem to be able to combine an often profound ethnocentrism with a desire to marry out and commit "race-treason" or "racial suicide".

I talked to one of my friends, and while he is not a White nationalist (He despises them), he admitted that he thinks Whites, specifically Northern Europeans, are superior to all other groups. He also said that he had been in love with a number of non-White women, and he would have gladly married them.

He said that even after he married them, he would probably still have felt that Northern Europeans were superior, even though he loved his wife. He suggested that many people of other races who marry non-group members probably feel the same way.

How can we make sense of these findings?

First of all ethnocentrism does seem to be a norm in human societies. As an example, let us look at a tribe in the Brazilian Amazon called the Pirahã.

This tribe has been the subject of a lot of research lately because they appear to lack recursion in their language. As recursion is said to be a human linguistic universal (or part of universal grammar in the Chomsky-Pinker paradigm) that is genetically coded into our brain, its absence in the Pirahã implies either that they are genetically distinct (dubious) or that the Chomsky-Pinker theory of universal grammar needs a lot of work.

Leaving aside the Pirahã's lack of recursion for a moment, let us look at their extreme ethnocentrism. The Pirahã have been in contact with Europeans for a good 200 years. During that time, many a missionary has tried to convert them to Christianity. However, for a primitive people, the Pirahã are very scientific-minded, so they have never accepted Christianity.

Anthropologist/linguist Daniel Everett has worked with the Pirahã for 30 years. He originally started out as an evangelical minister to them, but their rejection of his preaching caused him to question his own religion, and he is now an atheist.

He used to talk to them about religion and the Pirahã would say, "Well, who is this Jesus guy? Have you ever seen him? Have you ever met him? Do you know anyone who has seen him or met him?" He would have to answer no to all of these questions. The Pirahã would then say, "So why should we believe this stuff?"

According to their culture, one can only believe things that one has experienced with their own senses, or that someone you know has experienced sensually.

Anyway, this is why the Pirahã have been rejecting missionaries for 200 years now. Not only have they rejected missionaries, but they have also rejected the Portuguese language and modern living, which they have also been exposed to for 200 years. They know what the Portuguese language is, and they know what modern living is, but they want no part of either.

Portuguese language classes have often been offered to the Pirahã, and they attend the classes and pretend to be engaged, but actually refuse to learn any of the language. Some of the children start to learn Portuguese, but as soon as they show signs of learning the language, the parents pull them out of class and refuse to let them return. They don't want to learn Portuguese! Period!

Further, they want no part of modern culture. They have been told over and over the advantages of modern culture, but they're not buying.

These refusals are rooted in the Pirahã's profound sense of ethnocentrism. The Pirahã see themselves as superior to all other races, and they are even superior to all of the Indian tribes around them, whom they want nothing to do with. I've seen pictures of the Pirahã, and they just look like Amazonian Indians to me. In my ethnocentric mind, I can't see how they have anything to feel superior about. But they do feel this way.

From this interesting post in Majority Rights, a White Supremacist site that is nevertheless intelligent, interesting and relatively easy to tolerate, we can see that this feeling is not limited to the Pirahã. It's a discussion of racism in China. One commenter, who is Chinese, notes that most NE Asian groups see their race, nation or ethnic group as superior to all others, including surrounding Asians.

A White commenter who met Vietnamese students in Europe noted that these Vietnamese felt the same way. Furthermore, he noted that the Vietnamese place strong restrictions of their women marrying out.

The commenter said that a female member of the group that married out to a White man would be considered a whore who was lower than dirt who had just married into a subhuman race, the Whites. But if she married into an Asian group not her own, that would be even worse. She was now worse than a whore for marrying into a group that was even lower than Whites. The commenter noted that the Chinese felt much the same way.

I would imagine many other East Asians, especially the ethnocentric Koreans and Japanese, feel the same.

We really could go on and on here, but ethnocentrism, even profound ethnocentrism, seems to be a human norm. We can certainly get away from it as individuals, but it's probably always going to be with us. It also implies that the thorough deracination of Western Whites, to the point of deliberate self-abnegation, is simply not normal. Much as I dislike them, the White nationalists are correct on this point.

Another commenter linked to this article, reported in the press as racist anti-African riots by Chinese students in China against African students. To the extent this stuff was written up at all in the Western press, it was as irrational racist riots against innocent Africans by racist Chinese.

The truth seems to be more complicated. A White American who was a student in China at the time noted that the African students were throwing wild parties in their dorms. Non-African males were allowed in, but not Chinese males. Chinese females were very much invited. He attended one of these parties and "rescued" two Chinese women by getting them out of there.

It was common knowledge at the time that the Africans were getting Chinese women drunk and then "raping" them. Whether that meant date rape or actual physical rape is uncertain, but after a while, Chinese students (probably mostly young males) had had enough and there were days of anti-African riots.

Among the regulations that followed was that African male students were forbidden from consorting with Chinese females in their dorms.

In the examples above we see another essential part of ethnocentrism - "Don't any of you outsiders dare to fuck with our women. We will defend the honor of our women with our lives and we will kill any outsider males who take liberties with our females."

You don't have to study a lot of anthropology or history to see how this line seems to be written all through human history. The horrible stoning of Dua Khalil Aswad, a 17 year old Yezidi girl who eloped with a non-Yezidi man, is an example. She was stoned to death by a crowd of 10,000 Yezidi men for "marrying an outsider".

One of the best ways to rile up a population against an invader or an enemy is to suggest that "they are taking liberties with our women." Countless male armies have been roused to defend the honor of the nation's or group's females.

We also see this in the Jim Crow laws of the South where Black males were lynched for looking at, whistling at, talking to, having sex with, or raping White women. The image of pure Southern womanhood was to be upheld with blood.

What's up with this? Kevin MacDonald argues that there are probably dual imperatives operating here. The first is protection of the females of the tribe from mating with outsiders. This is probably done in the furtherance of "ethnic genetic interests." That is, most tribes probably want to survive for as long as possible as an entity. The best way to do this is to keep outsiders away from your women.

At the same time, MacDonald argues that there is an opposite genetic imperative at work, that the males seek to mate with outsiders, while protecting their females from doing so. MacDonald sees this as attempting to add genetic diversity to the group to make it more fit, but I see it as more base than that.

Probably many of these mating occurred during raids in which the outsider females were raped. In many cases, they were captured as some sort of slaves, brought back to the group, and forced into marriages with males of the group.

In this way, the tribe poaches the women (probably the best, or most attractive women were favored), removes them from the competing group, and brings them into one's own group. Though White nationalists would argue that this is genetic contamination, it surely was not seen that way. The tribe simply wishes to perpetuate itself, and the genes it utilizes in that goal are not relevant.

In older times, a woman who mated out probably was carted off by invading outsiders or went off with the outsider willingly, and hence was simply lost to the group. If all the women did this, the tribe would go extinct.

Yet males could mate out and still live with the group, since they would bring any captured women back to reside with the tribe of the man who captured her.

Further, by capturing the best females of competing outsiders, you deplete them of their best resource. If you rape them and run off, you force the outsiders to bear the children of your tribe (assuming they raise the child and don't kill it), interjecting the genes of your own tribe into theirs against their will. It's a form of domination and aggression of a very base sort.

Racists typically use these facts to try to justify racism by saying that everyone is a racist and that anti-racism is abnormal. This is to be condemned. At least here in the modern West, there seem to be an awful lot of folks that are significantly free of racist feelings, so it would seem we are not genetically doomed to racism.

Modern political correctness argues that the tendencies above, ethnocentrism and protection of one's women from outsiders, are examples of the most horrible and evil racism.

The Left would simply argue that these are reactionary archaisms that must be swept away via revolution. They would probably throw in something stupid and say that these backwards tendencies are all related to economics.

But it seems so much deeper than that.

Though civilized man is capable of transcending most of his base instincts much of the time, the fact remains that at the end of the day, we are just long-legged bipedal apes.

Any sensible analysis of human behavior needs to recognize that.

Over 400 Yezidis Killed by Al Qaeda in Iraq

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated January 23, 2008. The official report is now at 354, not 400, with 80 people still missing. There are 600, not 400, wounded, and many are not expected to make it. 10 more bodies were found on Sunday, August 19.

Genocidal Al Qaeda Sunni Muslim Nazis continued to attack non-Sunni Muslims in Iraq, this time driving four vehicle bombs at two Yezidi villages, Qataniya and Adnaniya, in Iraq near Sinjar, near the border with Syria. The attack occurred on Tuesday, August 13.

They drove four vehicles towards the two villages at once, aiming them at the residential compounds where many Yezidis were milling about outside in the cooling evening air. Some reports say the villages are near Mosul, but actually they are right next to the Syrian border.

Large areas of these villages lie in ruins and the scene resembles a nuclear bomb blast. 334 were confirmed dead as of Friday afternoon, August 17. Other reports on the same day said the toll had gone over 400. Another 400 were wounded and another 70 or so are feared buried in the rubble. All of the homes in both villages, 150 homes, were leveled.

Many of the wounded are missing hands and legs. Many of the wounded are critically hurt and have been dying in the hospital. It surpassed the previous high death toll for an attack of over 200 for an mortar and multiple car bomb attack in Sadr City in November 2006.

The Islamic State of Iraq was seen handing out flyers near the towns in the past week telling Arabs to stay away from the villagers because the Yazidis were anti-Islam.

There is little Iraqi government presence in the region near the Syrian border and Iraq is not able to control the border. Recently, dozens of local Iraqi security forces resigned after receiving threats from guerrillas. There is an excellent BBC video analysis of the attack on this page.

I do not agree with the US imperialist talking head in the video, Anthony Cordesman, who implies in the video that the US "surge" is working and that Al Qaeda is being driven to the far corners of Iraq and is desperately seeking to ignite divides between all of Iraq's ethnic and religious groups in order to set off a civil war.

There is already a civil war in Iraq. This blast shows that the surge is hardly working and that Iraq is a clusterfuck to nowhere. Worse, it's genocide in slow motion.

Juan Cole suggests that this attack shows that Sunni Arabs are fighting with the Yazidis over territory. Cole also carries an excellent comment from "Ivorybill" that shows the attack may indeed have been an intergroup battle over territory.

The Yazidis supported the Kurdish rebellion in the 1970's and subsequently Saddam's Arab Nazis (Arab nationalists) destroyed the villages, rebuilt them and repopulated them with Arabs as part of Saddam's sickening fascist "Arabization" policy.

In 2003, the Arabs were moved out, typically at gunpoint, and they fled to Mosul. I think they could have been put up in housing nearby if the Arabs wanted to be reasonable about it. The Arabs are now concentrated in Ba'aj, a Bedouin town in the desert, and relations between Arabs and Yazidis are very tense.

Interestingly, the Yazidis captured a videotape of Saddam meeting with Izzat Ad-Duri, his right-hand man, in 1998. Ad-Duri suggested "completely eliminating" the Yazidis in the Sinjar area, whatever that means. Saddam said no.

There is a possibility that the Baath Party (now led by Ad-Duri) may have been behind this attack along with Al Qaeda. In that case, we may blame Arab Nazis along with Muslim Nazis. Al Qaeda are a genocidal mixture of Arab Nazis and Muslim Nazis.

Along related lines, Yazidis report that all of the Yazidis in the area had been threatened for some time now by local Arabs because the Yazidis had planned to vote to annex their part of Iraq into the Kurdish Zone. The suggestion is that this is an attack to get them to flee so they won't vote to leave Iraq.

And pickup trucks from the surrounding Arab villages had recently been spotted scouting out the Yazidi towns that were attacked. This shows clearly that the local Arab villages were involved in this genocidal attack and probably enlisted Iraqi Al Qaeda to do it. Iraqi Al Qaeda now styles itself charmingly "the protector of the Sunnis", and the Arab-fascist dog "Marxist" Al-Kubaysi, discussed below, this sort of Nazi BS is just dandy.

But I agree with Eugene Robinson that this looks like something more - genocide. Like an ancient feud between two groups of people. And it's genocidal bigotry too - a Yazidi survivor notes that every time they go to Mosul or Tel Afar, the (Sunni) Arabs or the (Shia) Turkmen try to kill them.

Why? Because these Muslims feel that the Yazidi are "devil worshipers", that's why. For an article on this blog that effectively destroys that notion, see here . It's just Iraqi Al Qaeda taking their usual 1-100 revenge (a philosophy another tribal people called Jews are fond of) for the stoning of Dua Aswad Khalil.

A photo of Dua Khalil Aswad, a beautiful young Yazidi teenager. At age 17, Dua fell in love with a Muslim man, eloped with him, converted to Islam and married him. Her family was furious, but she was told that she would be forgiven if she went back home. She had been staying in a Muslim cleric's home.

When she went home she was accosted by 10,000 men in her village, then stripped and stoned to death by her own relatives. The death was captured on cell phones and can be seen on this blog here. More civilized Yazidis in the cities were appalled by her death and ashamed of the backwards tribal behavior of the Yazidis of the countryside. Al Qaeda, a radical feminist organization if there ever was one, was so outraged by this barbarism that they pledged to kill every Yazidi in Iraq.

Sure, Al Qaeda kills women all the time, Sunnis, Shia, Christians, Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen. Hell, they don't discriminate. But this was different. "Infidels" killed a Muslim and the evil Takfiris of Al Qaeda would not stand for that affront.

As if Al Qaeda does not murder Muslim women every day of the week in Iraq! After the stoning, Al Qaeda murdered 23 Yazidi men on a bus in Mosul. They distributed literature in mosques urging the killing of all Yazidis. They hate the Yezidis because they are infidels and because, even worse, they are suspected to be devil worshipers.

If Al Qaeda ever moves into any other nation in large force, they will do the same thing they are doing in Iraq - they will target the non-Muslim religious, Muslim Shia and Sufis and the secular for genocide.

We wiped fascism and Nazism off the face of Earth in WW2. We need to do the same to the Sunni Takfiris of Al Qaeda and their allied groups - wipe them out. I am sorry if that sentiment is not "progressive".

Online responses to the attacks varied. At the excellent MPACUK forum (derided as terror-supporting Al Qaeda-loving British Muslims by British Jewish Zionists) there was a civilized and heartwarming outpouring of sadness for the mass murders of the innocent, showing the Zionists to be the liars they always are.

The British London Times Online has a very nice story about the Yazidis, complete with a neat photo of Yazidi men in full religious garb. They also have one of the nicest looking news websites around (a redesign). There is another nice writeup on the MSNBC site. Incredibly, on this website heavily populated with supporters of Sunni Takfiri-Salafist jihadis, there were cheers for the genocidal attack on the Yazidis on the grounds that

1. They are devil-worshipers.
2. It's a legitimate revenge for the stoning death of Dua Aswad Khalil, the Yazidi woman who converted to Islam and then married her Muslim boyfriend.

1 Muslim = 400 Yazidis.

Dua Khalil Aswad at age 5, the "Muslim" whose death was worth 400 Yazidis is here. I am sure she would not approve of that calculation. I must admit that I just adore girls of about this age. Not really sexually, my fantasy chamber is full of mature females and I don't want or need room for much else. I just think they are the most beautiful and adorable human creatures on the planet. Of any race or culture, the 5 year old girl is the same. I love the way they play, laugh, run, tease and sing.

They are uninhibited, curious, and quite intelligent. I'd like to father a young girl myself some day if I could. At one, they are "cute" but very stupid. At 2, they are crying too much and too shy and afraid to show off their amazing intelligence of language. By 9 or so they are are more serious, the energy and non-stop joy level has declined.

This is, curiously, called maturity. The 5-year old girl is bold, curious and friendly, full of joy, happiness and incredible energy, yet still cautious enough to be reasonable. Life is to play, no? What else are we here for anyway? And ideally, is it not, if your work is play, as mine has been in the finest days of working life?

At one job I told my co-workers, "Coming here every day is like going on vacation." And of course it was. I didn't want to go home at night. What for? I wanted to come in on weekends. Why not? The spirit of the eternal 5 yr girl suffused my office, and the other workers, who, sensibly, all hated their jobs, resented it.

I love 5 year old girls. What real human could not? There is nothing sexual there, just the normal appreciation of a wonder of nature, like a waterfall or a wild animal in nature. Call me anything you want, quit reading my blog, report me to Google, or whatever you want. I will shout it to the sky with no shame.

Sure, that's fair.

This blog has posted two articles on the Yazidis, Do the Yezidis Worship the Devil? and The Yezidis, a Mysterious Kurdish Religious Sect. The first article is quite long and goes into exhaustive detail about the group. Here is another take on the Yazidis from a fundamentalist Christian POV, saying that they are the precursors to all of the Abrahamic religions - pre-Jews, that is. I find that a little dubious.

On the subject of Al Qaeda and the increasingly insane and evil "Iraqi resistance", this Maoist blog incredibly prints an interview with the repellent "Leftist" Abduljabbar al Kubaysi, leader of the Iraqi "resistance" and secretary-general of the Leftist Iraqi Patriotic Alliance (IPA). I always worried about this guy, but now he has proven to be a complete maniac.

First, according to him, 99% of the mass murders attributed to Al Qaeda are not done by them - apparently they are done by Iran, the CIA, the Mossad or all three. Right. Then he defends the few mass murders that are supposedly actually done by them as a good revenge against the Iraqi Shia, since they support the evil Iran and all that. The usual Arab nationalist (Arab Nazi) BS.

Kubaysi is a funny kind of "socialist" - I suspect he is a Strasserist or a "National" Socialist, like so many Arab nationalists. Or maybe he is a National Bolshevik (flag look familiar)? All progressives need to stay clear of this fascist cancer. Guys like Kubaysi show just how dangerous playing with nationalist matches can be. And shame on the Maoists at Naxal Revolution for praising this fascist rat.

Note: Readers should carefully read the Commenting Rules before commenting to avoid having their comments edited or deleted and to avoid being banned from the site.

Do the Yezidis Worship the Devil?

The latest death toll figures from Hurricane Katrina can be seen on this website here. The famous Russian neo-Nazi video is on this blog here.

Updated January 29, 2008:

The Yezidis, a Kurdish religious group in Iraq practicing an ancient religion, have been accused of being devil worshipers by local Muslims and also by many non-Muslims. I wrote about the Yezidis in depth in two previous posts; see them for more background on these interesting people.

The Yezidis have appeared in Western media lately due to the stoning death of a Yezidi teenage girl who ran off with a Muslim man. The stoning was done by eight men from her village while another 1000 men watched and cheered them on. Afterward, there has been a lot of conflict between Muslim and Yezidi Kurds.

As Western media turned to the Yezidis, there has been some discussion here about their odd religion. For instance, though the local Muslims condemn them as devil worshipers, the Yezidis strongly deny this. So what's the truth? The truth, as usual, is much more complicated.

The Yezidis believe that a Creator, or God, created a set of deities that we can call gods, angels or demons, depending on how you want to look at them. So, if we say that the Yezidis worship the devil, we could as well say that they worship angels. It all depends on how you view these deities.

In the history of religion, the gods of one religion are often seen as the devils of another. This is seen even today in the anti-Islamic discourse common amongst US neoconservatives, where the Muslim God is said to be a demonic god, and their prophet is said to be a devilish man.

Christian anti-Semites refer to the Old Testament God of the Jews as being an evil god. Orthodox Jews say that Jesus Christ is being boiled alive in semen in Hell for eternity.

At any rate, to the Yezidis, the main deity created by God is Malak Taus, who is represented by a peacock. Although Yezidis dissimulate about this, anyone who studies the religion closely will learn that Malak Taus is actually the Devil.

On the other hand, the Yezidis do not worship evil as modern-day Satanists do, so the Satanist fascination with the Yezidis is irrational. The Yezidis are a primitive people; agriculturalists with a strict moral code that they tend to follow in life. Why do they worship the Devil then?

First of all, we need to understand that before the Abrahamic religions, many polytheistic peoples worshiped gods of both good and evil, worshiping the gods of good so that good things may happen, and worshiping the gods of evil so that bad things may not happen. The Yezidis see God as a source of pure good, who is so good that there is no point in even worshiping him.

In this, they resemble Gnosticism, in which God was pure good and the material world and man were seen as polluted with such evil that the world was essentially an evil place. Men had only a tiny spark of good in them amidst a sea of evil, and the Gnostics tried to cultivate this spark.

This also resembles the magical Judaism of the Middle Ages (Kabbalism). The Kabbalists said that God was "that which cannot be known" (compare to the Yezidi belief that one cannot even pray to God), in fact, the concept of God was so ethereal to the Kabbalists that mere men could not even comprehend the very concept. A Kabbalist book says that God is "endless pure white light". This comes close to my own view of what God is.

Compare to the Yezidi view that God "pure goodness". The Yezidi view of God is quite complex. It is clear that he is at the top of the totem pole, yet their view of him is not the same as the gods of Christianity, Islam, Judaism or of the Greeks, although it is similar to Plato's conception of the absolute.

Instead, it is similar to the Deists. God merely created the world. As far as the day to day running of things, that is actually up to the intermediary angels. However, there is one exception. Once a year, on New Years Day, God calls his angels together and hands the power over to the angel who is to descend to Earth.

In some ways similar to the Christian Trinity of God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost, the Yezidis believe that God is manifested in three forms.

An inscription of the Christian Trinity, the father, or God, as an old man with a beard; Jesus, a young man, and the Holy Ghost, here depicted as a winged creature similar to Malak Tus, the winged peacock angel. Compare to Yezidi reference for Šeiḫ ‘Adî, Yazid and Malak Tus (Father, Son and Holy Ghost)

The three forms are the peacock angel, Malak Tus; an old man, Šeiḫ ‘Adî (compare to the usual Christian portrayal in paintings of God as an old man with a long white beard); and a young man, Yazid (compare to the usual Christian paintings of Jesus as a healthy European-looking man with a beard and a beatific look - a similar look is seen in Shia portraits of Ali).

Since there is no way to talk to God, one must communicate with him through intermediaries (compare to intermediary saints like Mary in Catholicism and Ali in Shiism). The Devil is sort of a wall between the pure goodness of God and this admittedly imperfect world.

This is similar again to Gnosticism, where the pure good God created intermediaries called Aeons so that a world that includes evil (as our world does) could even exist in the first place. On the other hand, Malak Tus is seen my the Yezidis as neither an evil spirit nor a fallen angel, but as a divinity in his own right.

One wonders why the Malak Tus is represented by a bird. The answer is that worshipping birds is one of the oldest known forms of idol worship. It is even condemned in Deuteronomy 4: 16, 17: "Lest ye corrupt yourselves and make a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of any winged fowl that flieth in the air."

More likely, the peacock god is leftover from the ancient pagan bird-devil gods of the region. The ancient Babylonians, Assyrians both worshiped sacred devil-birds, and carvings of them can be seen on their temples. The Zoroastrians also worshiped a sort of devil-bird called a feroher .

A winged demon from ancient Assyria. Yezidism appears to have incorporated elements of ancient Babylonian and Assyrian religions, making it ultimately a very ancient religion. Note that devils often have wings like birds. Remember the flying monkey demons in the Wizard of Oz?

The pagan Phoenicians, Philistines and Samaritans worshiped a dove, and the early monotheistic Hebrews condemned the Samaritans for this idol-worship. The pagans of Mecca also worshiped a sacred dove. Pagan Arabian tribes also worshiped an eagle called Nasar.

What is truly odd is that peacocks are not native to the Yezidi region, but instead to the island of Sri Lanka. The Yezidis must have heard about this bird from travelers and incorporated it into their religion somehow.

In the Koran, both the Devil and the peacock were thrown out of Heaven down to Earth, with the Devil and the peacock both suffering similar punishments. So here we can see Islam associating the peacock with the Devil also.

In popular mythology, peacocks tend to represent pride. Note that the Koran says that the Devil was punished for excessive pride (compare with a similar Christian condemnation of excessive pride). Peacocks are problematic domestic fowl, and tend to tear up gardens, and so are associated with mischief.

The Yezidis revere Malak Tus to such a great extent that he is almost seen as one with God (compare the Catholic equation of Mary with Jesus, the Christian association of Jesus with God, and the Shia Muslim association of Ali with Mohammad).

Malak Tus was there from the start and will be there at the end, he has total control over the world, he is omniscient and omnipresent and he never changes. They do not allow anyone to say his name, as this seems to imply that he is degraded. Malak Tus is the King of the Angels, and he is ruling the Earth for a period of 10,000 years.

They also superstitiously avoid saying an word that resembles the word for Satan. When speaking Arabic, they refuse to use the Arabic shatt for river, as it sounds like the word for Satan. They substitute Kurdish ave instead. Compare this to the Kabbalist view of God as "that which can not even be comprehended (i.e., spoken) by man.

In addition to Malak Taus, there are six other angels: Izrafael, Jibrael, Michael, Nordael, Dardael, Shamnael, and Azazael. They were all at a meeting in Heaven when God told them that they would worship no one other than him. This worked for 40,000 years, until God mixed Earth, Air, Fire and Water to create Man, as Adam.

God told the seven angels to bow before Adam, and six agreed. Malak Taus refused, citing God's order to obey only Him. Hence, Malak Taus was cast out of Heaven and became the Archangel of all the Angels. Compare this to the Christian and Muslim view of the Devil, the head of the angels, being thrown out of Heaven for the disobedience of excessive pride.

In the meantime, Malak Taus is said to have repented his sins and returned to God as an angel. So, yes, the Yezidis do worship the Devil, but in their religion, he is a good guy, not a bad guy. They are not a Satanic cult at all. In Sufism, the act of refusing to worship Adam (man) over God would be said to be a positive act, one of refusing to worship the created over the creator, as in Sufism, one is not to worship anything but God.

The Yezidis say that God created Adam and Eve, but when they were asked to produce their essences, Adam's produced a boy, but Eve's was full of insects and other unpleasant things. God decided that he would propagate humanity (the Yezidis) out of Adam alone, leaving Eve out of the picture. Specifically, he married Adam's offspring to a houri.

We can see the traditional views of the Abrahamic religions of women as being sources of evil, tempters, sources of strife, conflict and other bad things. The Yezidis see themselves as different from all other humans. Whereas non-Yezidis are the products of Adam and Eve, Yezidis are the products of Adam alone.

Eve subsequently left the Garden of Eden, which allowed the world to be created. So, what the Abrahamic religions see as man's greatest fall in the Garden, the Yezidis see as mankind's greatest triumphs. The Yezidis feel that the rest of humanity of is descended from Ham, who mocked his father, God.

Compare this to the Abrahamic religions' view of women as a source of corruption. Christians say that Eve tempted Adam in the Garden of Eden, causing them to be tossed out. In Islam, women are regarded as such a source of temptation and fitna (dissension) that they are covered and often kept out of sight at all times. In Judaism, women's hair is so tempting to men that they must shave it all off and wear wigs.

The Yezidis say they are descended directly from Adam, hence they are the Chosen People (compare to the Jewish view of themselves as "Chosen People").

Yezidism being quite possible the present-day remains of the original religion of the Kurds, we must acknowledge that for the last 2000 years, the Yezidis have been fighting off other major religions. First Christianity came to the region.

As would be expected, the Nestorian Christians of Northern Iraq, or "Nasara" Christian apostates, as an older tradition saw them, hold that the Yezidis were originally Christians who left the faith to form a new sect. The Nestorians and other ancient Christian sects deny the human or dual nature of Jesus - instead seeing him as purely divine.

This is in contrast to another group also called "Nasara" in Koran - these being the early Jewish Christian sects such as the Ebionites, Nazarenes and Gnostics, who followed Jesus but denied his divine nature, believe only in the Book of Matthew, and retained many Jewish traditions, including revering the Jewish Torah, refusing to eat pork, keeping the Sabbath and circumcision.

Mohammad apparently based his interpretation of Christianity on these sects. The divinity of Jesus was denied in the Koran under Ebionite influence. The Koran criticizes Christians for believing in three Gods - God, Jesus and Mary - perhaps under the influence of what is called the "Marianistic heresy". At the same time, the Koran confused human and divine qualities in Jesus due to Nestorian influence.

Finally, the Koran denied the crucifixion due to Gnostic influence, especially the apocryphal Gospel of Peter. The local Muslims, similarly, hold that the Yezidis are apostates, having originally been Muslims who left Islam to form a new religion.

There is considerable evidence that many Yezidis were formerly Christians, as the Christian story holds. Šeiḫ ’Adî, one of the tripartite of angels worshiped by the Yezidis, was a Sufi Muslim mystic from Northern Iraq in the 1100's. He attracted many followers, including many Christians and some Muslims who left their faith to become Yezidis. Yezidism existed before Šeiḫ ’Adî, but in a different form.

Šeiḫ ’Adî also attracted many Persian Zoroastrians, who were withering under the boot of Muslim dhimmitude and occasional massacre in Iran. Šeiḫ ‘Adî (full name Šeiḫ ‘Adî Ibn Masafir Al-Hakkari) was a Muslim originally from Bait Far, in the Baalbeck region of the Bekaa Valley of what is now Eastern Lebanon.

He came to Mosul for spiritual reasons. He was said to be a very learned man, and many people started to follow him. After he built up quite a following, he retired to the mountains above Mosul where he built a monastery and lived as a hermit, spending much of his time in caves and caverns in the mountains with wild animals as his only guests.

His followers were said to worship him as a God and believed that in the afterlife, they would be together with him. He died in 1162 in the Hakkari region near Mosul. At the site of his death, the Yezidis erected a shrine and it became one of the holiest sites in the religion. However, Šeiḫ ’Adî is not the founder of Yezidism, as many believe. His life and thought just added to the many strains in this most syncretistic of religions.

The third deity in the pseudo-"Trinity" of the Yezidis is a young man named Yezid. They say they are all descended from this man, whom they often refer to as God, as they sometimes refer to Šeiḫ ’Adî. In Šeiḫ ’Adî's temple, there are inscriptions to both Šeiḫ ’Adî and Yezid, each on opposing walls of the temple. In a corner of this temple, a fire, or actually a lamp, is kept burning all night, reminiscent of Zoroastrianism.

There is a lot of controversy about what the word Yezid in Yezidi stands for. The religion itself, in its modern form, probably grew out of followers of Yazid Ibn Muawiyah Ibn Abu Sufyan, the 2nd Caliph in the Umayyad Dynasty of Caliphs. Yazid fought a battle against Mohammad's grandson, Hussayn, in a battle for the succession of the Caliphate.

Hussayn's followers were also the followers of Ali, the former caliph who was assassinated. The followers of Hussayn and Ali are today known as the Shia. The Sunni follow in the tradition of the Umayyads. In a battle in Karbala in 680, Husayn and all his men were killed at Kufa and of the women and children with them taken prisoner.

To the Shia, Yazid is the ultimate villain. Most Sunnis do not view him very favorably either, and regard the whole episode as emblematic of how badly the umma had fallen apart after Mohammad died.

Nevertheless, there had been groups of Sunnis who venerated Yazid Ibn Muawiyah Ibn Abu Sufyan and the Umayyads in general in northern Iraq for some time even before Šeiḫ ’Adî appeared on the scene. Šeiḫ ’Adî himself was descended from the Umayyads.

Reverence for Yazid Ibn Muawiyah mixed with the veneration of Šeiḫ ’Adî in the early Yezidis. It was this, mixed in with the earlier pagan beliefs of the Semites and Iranians discussed elsewhere, along with a dollop of Christianity, that formed the base of modern Yezidism. But its ultimate roots are far more ancient. Yezidism had a base, but it was not yet formed in its modern version.

Here we turn to the etymology of the word Yezidi. It is possible that the figure of "Yezid", the young man-God in the Yezidi trinity, represents Yazid Ibn Muawiyah. By the mid-1200's, the local Muslims were getting upset about the Yezidis excessive devotion to these two men. In the mid-1400's the local Muslims fought a large battle against the Yezidis.

To this day, the top Yezidi mirs are all related to the Umayyads. Muslim scholars say that Yezid bin Unaisa was the founder of the modern-day Yezidis. Bin Unaisa was one of the early followers of the Kharijites, an early fanatical fundamentalist sect that resembled our modern-day Al Qaeda and other takfiri Salafi-jihadi terrorists. Bin Unaisa was said to be a follower of the earliest Kharijites.

These were the first Kharijites. Early split-offs from Ali's army, they took part in the Battle of Nahrawan against Ali's forces outside Madaen in what is now the Triangle of Death in Iraq. In 661, the Kharijites assassinated Ali, one of the penultimate moments in the Sunni-Shia split.

At some point, bin Unaisa split from the Kharijites, except for one of their early followers who were following a sect Al-Abaḍia, founded by ‘Abd-Allah Ibn Ibad. He said that any Muslim who committed a great sin was an infidel. Considering his fundamentalist past, he developed some very unorthodox views for a Muslim.

He said that God would send a new prophet to Persia (one more Iranian connection with the Yezidis), that God would send down a message to be written by this prophet in a book, and that this prophet would leave Islam and follow the religion of the Sabeans or Mandeans. Nevertheless, he continued to hold some Kharijite beliefs, including that God alone should be worshiped and that all sins were forms of idolatry.

In line with this analysis, the first Yezidis were a Kharijite subsect. The fact that bin Unaisa said that the new prophet would follow Sabeanism implies that he himself either followed this religion at one time or had a high opinion of it.

Muslim historians mention three main Sabean sects. They seemed to have derived in part from the ancient pagan religion of Mesopotamia. They were polytheists who worshiped the stars. After the Islamic conquest, they referred to themselves as Sabeans in order to receive protection as one of the People of the Book (the Quran mentions Jews, Christians and Sabeans and People of the Book).

One of the Sabean sects was called Al-Ḫarbâniyah. They believed that God dwelt within things that were good and rational. He had one essence but many appearances, in other words. God was pure good, and could not make anything evil. Evil was either accidental or necessary for life, or caused by an evil force. They also believed in the transmigration of souls (reincarnation).

It is interesting that the beliefs of this sect of Sabeans resemble the views of modern Yezidis. So Yezîd bn Unaisa believed in God and the Resurrection Day, he probably respected angels and the stars, yet he was neither polytheistic nor a true follower of Mohammad.

At the same time, he lined himself up with those People of the Book who said that Mohammad was a prophet, yet did not follow him (in this respect, he was similar to Western non-Muslims who acknowledge Mohammad as the prophet of the Arabs).

Although most orthodox histories of the Yezidis leave it out, it seems clear at this point that Yezîd bn Unaisa was the founder of the Yezidi religion in its modern form and that the Yezidis got their name from Yezîd bn Unaisa. This much may have been lost to time, for the Yezidis themselves say that Yezidi comes from the Kurdish word Yezdan or Êzid meaning God.

After naming their movement after Yezîd bn Unaisa, the Yezidis learned of Šeiḫ ‘Adî's reputation, and become his followers, along with many Muslims, Christians and Iranians.

Like their founder, the Yezidis believe in God and the Resurrection, expect a prophet from Iran, revere angels and stars, regard every sin as idolatry, respect Mohammad as a prophet yet do not follow him and at the same time pay no attention to Ali (recall that the early Kharijites assassinated Ali). Being opposed to both Mohammad and Ali, bn Unaisa is logically despised by both the Sunni and the Shia.

The fact that the Yezidis renounced the prophet of the Arabs (Mohammad) while expecting a new one from Iran logically appealed to a lot of Persians at the time. Hence, many former Zoroastrians, or fire-worshipers, from Iran joined the new religion, surely injecting their strains into this most syncretistic of religions.

There is good evidence that many Yezidis are former Christians. The Yezidis around Mosul go by the surname of Daseni, of Dawasen in the plural. It so happens that there was a Nestorian diocese in Mosul called Daseni, or Dasaniyat. It disappeared around the time of Šeiḫ ’Adî. The implication is that so many of its members became Yezidis that the Diocese folded.

Furthermore, many names of Yezidi villages are actually names in the Syriac (Christian) language, more evidence that many Yezidis are former Christians.

Adding even more weight to this theory, the Yezidis retain two Christian customs - the baptism and the Eucharist.

The Yezidis must baptize their children at the earliest possible age and the priest puts his hand on the child's head as her performs the rite. Both customs mirror the Christian baptism precisely.

When a Yezidi couple marries, they go to a local Nestorian Church to partake of the Eucharist. The cup of wine they drink is called the cup of Isa (Jesus). The Yezidi have great respect for Christian saints and houses of worship, and kiss the doors and walls of churches when they enter them.

When a Yezidi woman goes to the home of her bridegroom on wedding day, she is supposed to visit every every religious temple along the way, even the churches. On the other hand, Yezidis never enter a mosque. Sadly, the Yezidi reverence for Christianity is not returned by the Eastern Christians, who despise the Yezidis as devil-worshipers.

They revere both Jesus and Mohammad as religious teachers, not as prophets. They have also survived via a hefty dose of taqqiya, or dissimulation, in this case pretending outwardly to be some species of Shia Muslims.

This is common for minority faiths around the region, including the Alawi and Druze, who have both proclaimed at the top of their lungs that they are Muslims and have hidden to the aspects of their religion which would cause the Muslims to disown them at best or kill them at worst. The primary Islamic influence on the Yezidis is actually Sufism, not Shiism per se.

There are traces of other religions - Hinduism may possibly be seen in the five Yezidi castes, from top to bottom - Pir, Shaikh, Kawal, Murabby, and Mureed (followers). Mureeds are about on a par with Dalits or Untouchables in Hinduism. Marriage across castes is strictly forbidden, as it has been disapproved in India.

On the other hand, pre-Islamic Iran also had a caste system, and the base of the Yezidi religion seems to be derived from Persian Zoroastrianism. The Yezidi, like the Druze and the Zoroastrians, do not accept converts, and like the Druze, think that they will be reincarnated as their own kind (Druze think they will be reincarnated as Druze; Yezidis think they will be reincarnated as Yezidis).

The Yezidis can be considered fire-worshipers in a sense; they obviously got this from the Zoroastrians. The Yezidis say, "Without fire, there would be no life." This is true even in our modern era, if we substitute "electrical power" for fire, our lives would surely diminish. Even today, when Kurdish Muslims swear on an oath, they say, "I swear by this fire..."

Many say there is a resemblance between Malak Taus and the Assyrian God Tammuz, though whether the name Malak Taus is actually derived from Tammuz is much more problematic. Tammuz was married to the Assyrian moon goddess, Ishtar. But this connection is not born out by serious inquiry.

Ishtar the Goddess of the Moon, here represented as a bird goddess. Worship of birds is one of the oldest forms of pagan idolatry known to man. What is it about birds that made them worthy of worship by the ancients? The miracle of flight?

Where do the Yezidis come from? The Yezidis themselves say that they came from the area around Basra and the lower Euphrates, then migrated to Syria and then to Sinjar, Mosul and Kurdistan.

In addition to worshiping a bird-god, there are other traces of the pre-Islamic pagan religions of the Arabs in Yezidism.

They hold the number 7 sacred, a concept that traces back to the ancient Mesopotamians. The Yezidis have seven sanjaks and each one has seven burners of the flame, their God created seven angels and the sculpture carved on the temple of Šeiḫ ’Adî has seven branches.

The Sabeans, another ancient religion of Mesopotamia who are now called star-worshipers by their detractors, also worshiped seven angels who guided the courses of seven planets - it is from this formulation that our seven days of the week are derived. In the ancient religion of Assyria, Ishtar descended through seven gates to the land of no return. The ancient Hebrews likewise utilized the number seven in their religion.

An ancient seven-armed candelabra, a symbol nowadays used in the Jewish religion, with demonic sea monsters drawn on the base.

The Yezidis worship the sun and moon at their rising and setting, following the ancient Ḥarranians, a people who lived long ago somewhere in northern Iraq. Sun-worship and moon-worship are some of the oldest religious practices of Man. The ancient pagans of Canaan worshiped the Sun.

At the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, the religion practiced there had little in common with Talmudic Judaism of today. For instance, the horses of the Sun were worshiped at that temple (see II Kings 25: 5, 11). The ancient Judeans, who the modern-day Jews claim spiritual connection with, actually worshiped the "host of heaven" - the Sun, the Moon and the Planets. So much for "the original monotheists, eh?

In Babylonia, there were two temples to the Sun-God Shamas.

Another pre-Islamic Arab pagan belief is the belief in sacred wells and sanctuaries that contain them. The springs contain water that has curative powers. The holy water found at the Zamzam Well in Mecca is an example; even to this day, Muslims bottle the water and carry it off for this purpose. Often sacred clothes are used to make these pilgrimages, because ordinary clothes are thought to contaminate the holy site.

In pre-Islamic days, when the pagans circled the rock at the Kaaba, they were completely naked. In Islam, men and women are supposed to remove their clothing and wear a special garb as they circulate around the rock. In Mandeanism, both men and women go to the Mishkana, or tabernacle, take off their clothes, and bathe in the circular pool. Emerging, they put on the rasta, a ceremonial white garment.

At the temple of Šeiḫ ‘Adî, there is a sacred pool. The Yezidis throw coins, jewelry and other things into this pool as offerings. They think that Šeiḫ ‘Adî takes these things from time to time. And they must remove their clothes, bathe and wear a special garment when they visit the holy valley where this temple resides.

The ancient Arabs also worshiped trees. There were sacred trees at Nejran, Hadaibiya and Mecca. The pagans hung women's ornaments, fine clothes, ostrich eggs, weapons and other items.

Similarly, the Yezidis also worship trees. They have their favorite trees, and sick people go to these trees and hang pieces of cloth on them, hoping to get well, and believe that whoever takes one of these down will get sick with whatever disease the person who hung the cloth had.

An inscription of a sacred tree from Ancient Babylonian civilization. Trees were worshiped not just in ancient Arabia; they were also worshiped in Mesopotamia.


The Christian Trinity combined with the pagan Tree of Life, in an interesting ancient Chaldean inscription that combines pagan and Christian influences. The Tree of Life was also utilized in Kabbalism, Jewish mysticism from the Middle Ages. Nowadays the symbol is used by practitioners of both White and Black Magic. Radical Islam is committing genocide once again on the Christians of Iraq, including the Chaldeans.


Yet another Tree of Life, this time from ancient Assyria, an ancient civilization in Mesopotamia. The concept of a tree of life is a pagan concept of ancient pedigree.

The ancient Meccans used to worship stones. At one point the population became so large that they had to move out of the valley where the Kaaba resided, so when they formed their new settlements, they took rocks from the holy place and piled them outside their settlements and made a sort of shrine out of these things, parading around the rock pile as they moved around the Kaaba.

In Palestine, there were sacred wells at Beersheba and Kadesh, a sacred tree at Shekem and a sacred rock at Bethel. As in animism, it was believed that divine powers or spirits inhabited these rocks, trees and springs. This tradition survives to this day in the folk religion of the Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese.

The Yezidis also have certain stones that they worship. They kiss these stones in reverence.

When the Yezidis reach the goal of their pilgrimage or hajj, they become very excited and start shouting. After fasting all day, they have a big celebration in the evenings, with singing and dancing and gorging on fine dishes.

This hajj, where they worship a spring under Šeiḫ ‘Adî's tomb called Zamzam and then climb a mountain and shoot off guns, is obviously taken from the Muslim hajj. Mecca has a Zamzam Spring, and pilgrims climb Mount 'Arafat on hajj.

The shouting, feasting, singing, dancing and general excitement is typical of a pagan festival. The non-Yezidi neighbors of the Yezidis claim that Yezidis engage in immoral behavior on this hajj. No one knows if this is true or not, but if they do, it may be similar to the festivals of the Kadeshes discussed in the Old Testament, where people engaged in licentious behavior in their temples.

Although the Yezidis have a strict moral code, observers say that they allow adultery if both parties are willing. That's pretty open-minded for that part of the world.

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