The Yazidi community in Iraq has around half a million members, but this community has been decimated by persecution in recent years. The Yazidis were particular targets of ISIS, and still face dangers in practicing their faith openly. They deserve the support of all people of faith.
Meanwhile, after years of strife, by 2014 it was reported that 90% of the Orthodox Christians of Iraq had been displaced. Most of them are still refugees and have been unable to return home. Still others who remained are leaving now.
“Islamic State’s genocide was not limited to killing and enslaving Yazidis, Christians and other communities − it also erased their heritage,” by Alda Benjamin, The Conversation, August 8, 2024:
August 2024 marks the 10-year anniversary of the Islamic State group’s genocide, in which thousands of people from Iraq’s marginalized communities, including Yazidis, Christians and Shiite Muslims, were killed in Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul, and the surrounding areas.
The Yazidis, who follow a monotheistic religion, in which the Peacock Angel is chief among seven divine beings, and have been persecuted periodically in the past, suffered gravely. From 2014 to 2017, at least 5,000 were brutally killed, while 6,000 women and children were enslaved; hundreds of thousands were displaced from Sinjar and the Nineveh Plains, near Mosul.
Iraq’s Assyrian Christians, who belong to a native Mesopotamian community consisting of early converts to a Syriac form of Eastern Christianity, also suffered under IS. In Mosul, IS marked Christian homes and forced them to either pay jizya, a tax historically levied upon non-Muslims, leave or be killed.
Even Muslims, particularly Shiites, whom IS deemed heretical for their adherence to forms of Islam beyond the narrow version of Sunni Islam the group espoused, were killed. While Shiite Muslims are a majority in Iraq, they are a minority in Mosul and the north, which is dominated by Sunni Muslims.
Iraq is the land where I was born. During a visit in the summer of 2016, I was able to see IS men from an ancient monastery atop a mountain near Mosul, which was especially troubling. Although IS was mostly defeated by Iraqi forces, in combination with a broader international coalition led by the United States, the consequences of the genocidal violence it perpetrated are ongoing.
In particular, Yazidis and Christians continue to suffer marginalization, the regions they inhabit remain unstable, and their heritage is subject to ongoing destruction. As a scholar of Iraq, I have a particular concern about the loss of intangible heritage such as prayers, songs and historic narratives – which I am now working to preserve….
