Yazidis oppose Islamic State

Kurdish armed forces have launched an operation to clean the town of Sinjar in northern Iraq of militants of the terrorist group Islamic State. The town is known not only for the fact that it is crossed by one of the key supply lines of ISIS, but also as a center densely populated by Yazidi Kurds.

At a press conference in Moscow the head of the Department for the Ministry of the Yazidi religion in the government of Kurdistan, Khairy Elias Ali, found it necessary to focus on what constitutes the religion of his co-religionists. 

Yazidism is a monotheistic religion, which has features of Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

"It does not belong to any other religion, it is an independent religion. And through its roots it goes back to Mithraism. It appeared for the first time on the territory of modern India, then it spread to other areas, reaching Europe. And this Mithraism is a very ancient religion, its age is over 4 thousand years. It appeared even before Christianity. Yazidism exists along with Zoroastrianism, which is the second religion, which goes back to the same roots, " Khairy Elias Ali said.

''Many of our customs, many of our rituals, they go back to ancient times, and we can read about them in books devoted to Mithraism and the ancient religions of the peoples who lived in this area. There is probably 80% in common between Mithraism and Yazidism. Those who belong to this religion, they have a very long history. They had various names, different titles. And now, this is the name that was fixed – Yazidis. The word Yazidi is an ancient Kurdish word. It has Indo-Persian roots. Yazidi is a god, Yazidis are those who worship this god

We believe in one God, the day of judgment, in angels, hell. We have many rituals. We have holidays. Four of our holidays are official. One of these holidays is the common holiday for all the Kurds, it is the celebration of Charshama Sor, new year. And this day is a holiday in Kurdistan",  the head of the Department of the Ministry of the Yezidi religion Kurdistan said.

According to him, "in northern Iraq, the number of followers of this religion amounts to about 550 thousand people. Many Yazidis also live in Turkey. There are a lot of them in Russia. They exist in Europe, particularly in Germany, Sweden and other countries. Yazidism is a religion that does not seek to propagate and preach its beliefs among other nations. We've had a lot of travellers, who have come to our region and described our religion, our customs, our traditions. And we certainly do not blame those who critically described our society. Our society has been quite closed, but many researchers, journalists, nevertheless, came to us, plunged into our culture quite deeply, got to know it. "