Yazidis risk persecution, attacks to follow religion

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Travel anywhere in northern Iraq, and you will see them: small, white, conical shrines that sit alone in the fields, along with the sheep. Inside, the floors are greasy, covered with drippings from oil lamps. There are low-lying altars for the occasional animal sacrifice. The doorways are low, making one bow toward the altar upon entering.

These are the khalwas — temples for the Yazidi, an ethnic-Kurdish group that practices a religion that is a mixture of Islam, Zoroastrianism, gnosticism, Judaism, Sufism and shamanism.

Their highly syncretistic beliefs — including a veneration of Lucifer as a redeemed archangel — have earned them the reputation as devil worshippers, a concept loathed by the Muslim populace.

The Muslim suicide bombers who killed at least 400 Yazidis Aug. 14 were acting on a centuries-old mutual loathing.

The Yazidi faith predates Islam, but it derives its name from Yezid or Yazid, a seventh-century Umayyad caliph, or spiritual leader. The faith is based at Lalish, a town 15 miles north of Mosul, the site of a tomb of a 12th-century Yazidi mystic, Sheik Adi. All Yazidis are encouraged to make pilgrimages there every fall.

The religion retains some of the fire rituals and prayers toward the sun derived from the fire-worshipping Zoroastrians. Yazidis believe that Lucifer, after he fell, repented and was restored by God to his previous position as chief of all the angels. They now liken him to a peacock and call him Melek Taus, the peacock angel. Yazidis also venerate depictions of serpents.

Melek Taus, in Yazidi cosmology, is somewhat like the Christians' Archangel Michael, ruling over other angels. Yazidis believe Melek Taus and six other angelic beings rule the universe for God, who they say has no direct hand in the running of the affairs of the planets and the stars. They do not believe in sin or hell, nor in the devil, making Muslims' depiction of them as devil worshippers doubly ironic.

The sect avoids any contact with the color blue, which is apparently specific to the peacock angel. There are food taboos: Lettuce is especially forbidden, as Yazidis believe evil can be found in it. Some also forbid fish, squash, okra, beans and cabbage.

Their theology says all Yazidis are descendants of Adam, but not Eve. Both Adam and Eve, they say, were given seed with which to have children, but only Adam's produced a child. That boy married a houri — one of the beautiful virgins of the Koranic paradise — and so began the Yazidi race. They also believe in reincarnation, and they have a caste system within their own ranks. Their children are baptized at birth, and the boys are circumcised.

Most Yazidis are shepherds and very poor, living in isolated villages on the Nineveh plain. Two such villages, Bozan and Kendala, visited by this reporter in 2004, were located on arid, rocky terrain. They only had ruined shells for schools, and village leaders begged for American help in rebuilding them.