Events
YEZIDIS NEW YEAR 6756
by Edward C. Corrigan, April 7, 2006 London Ontario
It is indeed an honour to be invited to celebrate the Yezidis New Year with you. This is year 6756 in the Yezidis calender. The Yezidis are an ancient and proud people from the heart of Mesopotamia, the birth place of civilization and the birth place
of many of the world's religions. For comparative purposes the Yezidis calendar is 4,750 years older than the Christian or Western calender. Their calendar is 990 years older than the Jewish religious calender. The Yezidis is 5329 years older than the Muslim Calender, currently the year 1427.
There are about 10 Yezidis families in London, Ontario. They are a most interesting minority community. I thank Mirza Ismail for the invitation to this celebration. I have had the privilege of representing Yezidis refugees in the past.
Yezidis are largely based in Iraq but are also found in Syria, Turkey and Iran. There are Yezidis also in Armenia and many have been forced to flee their homeland and many now reside in Germany.
The Yezidi religion is the third largest religion in Iraq after Islam and Christianity. The Yezidis religion was pioneered in Mesopotamia during the Sumerian period four thousand years before BC. It must be regarded as one of the oldest religions in the world, and consequently has greatly influenced mankind's history. The Yezidis is the historical fore bearer of Judaism and Christianity and Islam. It is contemporaneous to Zoroastrianism and Mithraism.
The Yezidi's ancient language is close to the Assyrian and Aramaic languages. But, afterwards and due to the Islamic expansion the Yezidis were exposed to the Arabic influences. Throughout history the Yezidis have been subjected too much destruction and oppression. Their holy books "Jalwa and Musaf Rash" were stolen. Their Holy Places destroyed.
Because, the Yezidis were different in religion, and had their own separate unique culture, language and political structures they become as victims of various forces that transverse the Middle East over the past 6,000 years. Yet they survive to this day.
The Yezidis were exposed to a policy of expulsion and Assimilation and that is why they fled to the mountains and then many migrated to the European countries especially, Germany in the last century from Turkey. They were then followed by Yezidis from Syria and finally from Iraq. As a result of the Iraqi Ba'ath government policy which aimed to replace Yezidis with Muslims of Arabic nationality on Yezidis agriculture lands and driving the Yezidis from their own lands with the aid of an embargo. This campaign severely affected the Yezidi social and economic situation. Their plight has unfortunately been largely ignored by mankind and in particular by the West in recent years.
In the recent years, the Kurdish Question has over shadowed the Yezidis issue. It appears that the Kurds were trying to assimilate the Yezidis and trying to obscure the Yezidi identity as a separate culture.
History shows that the Yezidis religion was pioneered and developed in Mesopotamia, and we knew also that many other religions were born in same area, like for example, Mithraism and Zoroastrianism. That means, when those religions first came into existence, there were no nations only religious social and political structures that made up the ancient societies that existed in the birth place of human civilization. All Middle Eastern societies and Western civilization owe a profound debt to the religions that sprang from the fertile soils of Mesopotamia.
In terms of human history the concept of nationality is only recent innovation of the last few hundred years. It followed the religious political and social organization that governed most of human kind. Yezidis are from that socio-religious tradition.
It is said t hat Yezidis religion may be the original Kurdish religion. However, today the Kurds which comprise a nationality are not the same as the Yezidis, although they speak the same language. Yezidis believe in one God without any companion, and the seven Angels. Most of Kurds have become Moslems and were deprived from their Yezidi religion, many by force.
The Yezidis have preserved their religion in spite of the horror of massacres, expulsions and assimilation and forced conversion. That means not all Yezidis are Kurds, but that the Kurds were at one time Yezidis. This point is important in that the Yezidis today are an independent people, religion and culture. They should be recognized as such and protected. They are an important part of our past.
Yezidis were there at the very beginning of human civilization. Above all they are survivors. There are according to some authorities 650,000 to a million Yezidis today. Let us hope that the Yezidis continue to thrive and prosper in the 21st Century as they are an important part of our history and of humanity. To lose the Yezidis is to lose part of our own human heritage.