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September 1, 2007 Special Dispatch No. 1692

In Wake of Massacre of Yazidis: Iraqi Kurdish Liberal Hussein Sinjari on Minorities in Iraq and Middle East

September 1, 2007
Iraq | Special Dispatch No. 1692

The August 14, 2007 terror attack on the Yazidi community in the Sinjar region of Iraqi Kurdistan has provoked a great deal of commentary in the Iraqi and Arab press, due both to the death toll, high even by Iraqi standards, and to the fact that the Yazidis are a unique religious minority. The attack was widely condemned, including in a statement by 60 Muslim clerics from various countries and of various sects, as well as in a separate statement by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.[1]

Nonetheless, the Yazidis' religious beliefs are very poorly understood, and some media reports referred to the Yazidis as Satan-worshippers,[2] a claim which Assyrian writer Bashar Andrea parried by saying that the Yazidi religion encourages love and fraternity, and that it is the murderers in Al-Qaeda who are the true Satan-worshippers.[3]

Following is an article by Hussein Sinjari, a Kurdish liberal author, president of the newly established NGO Tolerancy International, and owner of the liberal daily Al-Ahali, on the recent terror attack, followed by an earlier article by the same author on the fate of minorities in Iraq and the Middle East:

The Terrorists "Want to Buy a Ticket to Paradise with the Blood and Agony of Innocents"

"The squalid terrorism that targeted the Yazidis in the Sinjar region is an indication of the great weakness in the political will of the Kurdish leadership. Before the latest terror attack… there were many indications that the terror cells were markedly stepping up their activities in this region and were targeting the Yazidis in particular and the Kurds in general…

"In Kurdistan, and in… Kirkuk, Sinjar, and Khanaqin, the vile terrorists are trying to reserve front-row seats in Paradise, which is becoming more crowded day by day with scum, murderers, and conscienceless, malicious fanatics. This has reached the point where it will be perplexingly [difficult] for the management of Paradise, in this state of affairs, to provide the overwhelming numbers of female angels and boy-servants to these barbaric criminals who are so hungry and thirsty for sex…

"They want to buy a ticket to Paradise with the blood and agony of innocents. What teachings, of what belief system – what verses permit all of this killing, destruction, and hellfire, with all its agony? The obscurantist suicide bombers, who hate life, hope, beauty, love, happiness, construction, and development in this life, hate those 'others' who do not resemble them in their religion, habits, customs, ways of thinking, ways of worship, and in their robes and beards.

"By targeting the Yazidis, the terrorists are saying loud and clear – and this is the correct interpretation of their criminal activities in the Kurdish regions that the Saddam dictatorship tried to Arabize and Ba'thize and separate from Kurdistan – that they have come [to carry out] raids and conquests, drawing their poison-tipped swords…"

The Peshmerga Must Enforce Law and Order

"Meanwhile, the central government and its institutions are absent from the region, and their inability to enforce security and order, and the inability of the American occupation forces to do their job of protecting people, makes it incumbent on the Peshmerga and the Kurdish administration to enforce law and order, by force if necessary, even if doing so runs contrary to the central government or the occupation forces. Protecting the population takes priority over satisfying Baghdad or Washington.

"At present, the Kurdish governmental institutions in Kurdistan need to carry out the presidential orders issued by Kak Massoud Barzani, the president of the region – in deeds, and not in words… so that the Peshmerga will be able to enforce security, order, and social peace, and protect the lives, property, honor, and rights of the population – whether Kurds or others. [All this must take place] in a region where the dictatorship spread corruption – and after the dictatorship came the neighboring [countries], the militias, and the terror cells – and most recently the suicide bombers, who dream of a Paradise of sex in the afterlife.

"The Kurdish leadership should have carried out this mission immediately following the fall of the dictatorship, or a short time afterwards. Now, there is no room for hesitation. It is [the Kurdish government's] credibility that is at stake.

"Lastly, the Yazidis have stayed in their home country and kept to their religion despite all of the conquests, raids, and crimes of annihilation throughout the ages. Neither terror nor the terrorists can scare them."[4]

Minority Emigration from the Middle East – A Sign of the Rise of Religious Fanaticism in the Region

Earlier, in a July 4, 2007 article in Al-Ahali, Hussein Sinjari wrote on the fate of minorities in Iraq and in the Middle East in general:

"Religious minorities in the Middle East – Jews, Christians, and Baha'is – played a pioneering role in the blossoming of the sciences, philosophy, music, song, linguistics, lexicography, the press, and in ideological associations and parties… as well as in spreading the call for gender and ethnic equality and democracy, as well as in banking and in the economy – and I could go on. Whether in carpentry, metalwork, education, or medicine, the religious minorities made pioneering, creative contributions in all walks of life in the region.

"Today, the Christians are leaving these countries – their countries – after having lived in them generation after generation, with open minds, open hearts, and open arms. And before them, [it was] the Jews [who] left the Islamic countries.

"Following the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the Jews, Baha'is, and Christians left the country, and those who are left are still trying to get out, because of the discrimination, the racism, and the repression.

"In Turkey, following the Turkish genocide against the Armenians in 1915 and the other massacres and repression of Christians [and] Yazidis, the Assyrian and Chaldean Christians emigrated from their villages in their historic regions, just as the Yazidis emigrated, to the extent that today they no longer have any significant presence in the Turkish Republic.

"The emigration of the religious minorities is an indication of the decline of the culture of tolerance and the rise to prominence of its opposite: religious fanaticism, hatred of the other, and the spread of ideologies of obscurantist extremism.

"Religious or nationalist fanaticism is a grave epidemic that affects individuals as it affects societies. The virus causes the death of its carrier and transmitter and [anyone] who contracts it, whether an individual, a group, or a people (umma). The fanatics who claim a monopoly on the truth, on Allah, and on Paradise, are dead in their hearts, their brains, and in their humanity. Their consciences are dead.

"The fanatics spread this most dangerous of epidemics, this fatal virus, in our [Middle] East, just as they spread it all over the world.

"Whose responsibility is it to stop this madness? Al-Azhar? [The seminaries in] Najaf? Qom? The muftis? The school curricula? The political leaders? The Friday preachers and the mullahs?

"Who is responsible for the premeditated suicide of entire peoples and for deciding that they will live outside of history, outside of civilization, and outside of humanity?..."[5]

Endnotes:

[1] Alarabiya.net, August 17, 2007.

[2] For instance, Tunisian writer Zahir Al-Sharfi wrote an article in protest of a leading Tunisian newspaper's use of this characterization; www.middleeasttransparent.com, August 18, 2007.

[3] http://www.nirgalgate.com/asp/v_articles.asp?id=1105.

[4] Al-Ahali (Iraq), August 20, 2007.

[5] Al-Ahali (Iraq), July 4, 2007.

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