We've had threads on the Yazidis (or Yezidi) before, but none on the tragic fate of the Mandeans of Iraq.
That link goes to a New York Times article detailing the Mandean community of southern Iraq. They're dying out, thanks to the war.
For 2,000 years or more, they've lived in the marshlands of southern Iraq and Iran, refusing to bear arms, revering John the Baptist and facing persecution on a scale that's slightly hard to imagine.
First, Saddam Hussein drained the marshes where they live, killing every growing thing and depriving the area of water.
Then, the coalition invaded, unleashing chaos. Because they're neither Muslim nor Christian, they have no real outside support, and nowhere to go:
When American forces invaded in 2003, there were probably 60,000 Mandeans in Iraq; today, fewer than 5,000 remain. Like millions of other Iraqis, those who managed to escape have become refugees, primarily in Syria and Jordan, with smaller numbers in Australia, Indonesia, Sweden and Yemen.
Unlike Christian and Muslim refugees, the Mandeans do not belong to a larger religious community that can provide them with protection and aid. Fundamentally alone in the world, the Mandeans are even more vulnerable and fewer than the Yazidis, another Iraqi minority that has suffered tremendously, since the latter have their own villages in the generally safer north, while the Mandeans are scattered in pockets around the south. They are the only minority group in Iraq without a safe enclave.
You can read more about their beliefs and history here, at the Encyclopaedia of the Orient:
One of the texts of the Mandeans tell about a flight of a group called 'Nasoreans', from areas that probably were in today's Jordan, to the Mesopotamian region, in the times of the Jewish wars following the destruction of Jerusalem in year 70 CE. The Mandeans appears first to have gained a strong position in Babylon, but lost this with the appearance of the Sassinids in year 226. In the time of Mani, there have been contacts between him and the Mandeans, resulting in both love and hate.
With the arrival of Islam in Iraq in 636, the Mandeans were considered as the third 'people of the book', as the mysterious Sabians of the Koran.
But the Mandeans still faced a difficult relationship with Islam, and Muhammad is in their writings called the 'demon Bizbat'.
There's more at Wikipedia and at Mandaeans.org. |
