Thursday - August 11, 2005

Sympathy For The Devil, Baghdad Style

At this rate, we’ll never figure out the Iraqi people and how to help them. Sunnis, Shias, Kurds, all are squabbling over who gets what and who gets to do what - and that’s just the three main divisions in the Iraqi population. Yesterday’s parliamentary session was interrupted when one minister and his followers protested the somewhat negative attitude of the rest of parliament toward the devil, whom they worship as Lucifer ....

BAGHDAD (AFP) - The Devil looked in on Iraq’s parliament when an MP upbraided Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari for speaking ill of Lucifer. Kameran Khairi Said, a Kurdish MP and a member of the minority Yezidi community which worships the peacock angel, also known as Lucifer, angrily interrupted the prime minister during a parliamentary debate.

“Mr prime minister and ministers, my speaking out might seem strange to you but we feel insulted when you repeatedly use the expression in your speeches and statements ‘God protects us from the Devil’. “Each time the word is pronounced, my colleagues turn towards me as if I were a representative of the Devil,” he added amid guffaws from other MPs.

Yezidis follow a pre-Islamic religion, which some believe was founded in the 12th century by Sheikh Uday bin Masafel al-Amawi, although many scholars trace its origins to the Zoroastrian religion of ancient Persia. Sheikh Uday was born in Damascus but died in the town of Lalish, in northern Iraq, where his tomb has become the Yezidis’ holiest shrine. The community is still largely based in the foothills north of Iraq’s main northern city of Mosul and in the Sinjar mountains on the border with Syria.

But followers of the faith can be found throughout the Kurdish diaspora, in neighbouring Syria and Turkey as well as the former Soviet republics of the Caucasus, or in Germany and Britain. “There are 600,000 to 700,000 Kurdish yezidis and they feel insulted whenever you use that phrase and we call on all those in a position of authority to take account of this,” Said said. The Yezidis do not believe in heaven or hell, and do not regard Satan as evil. In fact, they worship him—but dare not say his name.

Posted by The Skipper     on 08/11/2005 at 08:43 AM   
Filed Under: • Religion •  
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It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.

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