Saving the Yazidis
Saving the Yazidis
By Nancy Oakes
IN A LOVING GOD WE TRUST- THEREFORE WE MUST SAVE THE PEOPLE OF YAZIDIS
The word religious means of God, or divine, but nothing divine is happening to the Yazidis people at this time. Our planet is in a very dangerous circumstances, like nothing humanity has seen, at least not since the Inquisitions, or Nazi Germany. Mass weapons of destruction in the hands of unstable and powerful dictators, radical religious terrorists on the move, poverty and disease, children and young girls being sold in sex slavery and all in the name of God.
TURKEY LETS THE REFUGEES OF YAZIDIS CROSS
While checking out at the grocery store, I noticed the headlines regarding women, children, the injured and elderly migrating by foot across the Turkish border carrying on their backs their belongings. They were running from the militant group ISIS who had already taken over 40 villages. Later the national media ran footages of the forced migration and genocide. I could not get the faces out of my mind of those desperate people. At first when they got to the border they were met with barbed wire, and a Turkish army that would not let them in. Turkey has already taken over 600,000 refugees however; the Turkish army finally agreed to let them cross.
WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE AND WHY ARE THEY TARGET OF GENOCIDE?
Yazidis are a people of the Middle East, particularly living for eons in northwest Iraq, northwestern Syria and southeast Turkey. They were until the genocide, numbered between 70,000 to 500,000 people. The Yazidis are not Muslim, but their faith is derived from Christianity. It is impossible to convert to Yazidism you must be born into it. The Yazidis believe that souls pass into successive bodily forms (transmigration) and that gradual purification is possible through continual rebirth, making Hell redundant. The worst possible fate for a Yazidi is to be expelled from his community, as this means their soul can never progress. Conversion to another religion is, therefore, out of the question. A very mysterious people who have traditionally held themselves apart in small communities, thus their beliefs have been misunderstood. Feared, violated and persecuted like other minorities in this region they have become the target of genocide by the Sunni extremists militant a group called IS, or ISIS. Many are shot or beheaded, the women raped and/or given to ISIS soldiers as reward for service to the terrorists group. Their name actually means “Worshippers of God.” Until the genocide began and the forced migration into Turkey their most holiest of temples was in Lalesh, Iraq 430 kilometers from Baghdad.
