CENTRE for RELIGIOUS PLURALISM in the MIDDLE EAST

Yazda is a US-based, 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization, established to support the Yazidi ethno-religious minority group in the United States and the Yazidi homeland in northern Iraq and northeastern Syria. Yazda’s mission is to support the Yazidi community in the aftermath of the August 2014 genocide, committed by the so-called “Islamic State”, that resulted in the death of three to five thousand civilians; abduction of five to seven thousand, mostly woman and children; and the

Many Iraqi Christian refugees have given up on the Middle East and refuse to ever go back to Iraq, even if the Islamic State is completely annihilated.

IS militants have razed the oldest Christian monastery in Iraq, St Elijah's Monastery of Mosul, satellite photos show.

This briefing presents Iraq's ethnic and religious diversity, as Iraqi minorities (Turkmens, Yazidis, Christians and other smaller communities)have long been discriminated against in Iraq.

Abstract

The clash of visions over the Iraqi state’s identity, legitimacy, and ownership, long predating the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2003, has been the root cause of political violence in postwar Arab Iraq.

Unlike other religious minorities in Iraq, Sabian Mandaeans meet their election quota by selecting members within their community for parliament and provincial councils.

Sitting in a U.N. refugee tent in a camp filled with 18,000 refugees, my stomach turns and my eyes are wet, listening to yet one more horrific, unimaginable crime committed against Yazidi children, girls and women. It is Christmas Eve 2015 and this author is outside Dohuk, Iraq, in the Sharya Refugee camp where Yazidis have lived since August 2014, when they fled the ISIS invasion of Sinjar Province.

Mosul’s massive, stone-walled monastery of St. Elijah, dating from the sixth century and distinguished by an entryway etched by Christian monks with Chi Rho, the first Greek letters of the word Kristos, “Christ,” has been obliterated. From satellite photos of the isolated hill where it had stood, it was confirmed today that the monastery was pulverized into a field of grey dust by ISIS fanatics, evidently using some determined application of sledgehammers,

Iraqi forces have found more than 40 bodies, including those of women and children, in a mass grave in the city of Ramadi west of Baghdad, which they recently retook from Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants, officials said.

Abstract

Is it accurate and/or expedient to use the word “genocide” to describe the persecution of religious minorities by the terrorist group known as Islamic State, Daesh or a variant of that name? Hypothetical as it might seem, that question is a real dilemma for people in high places in western Europe and America.

Over the past three months, Yazda has been conducting a genocide documentation project to gather evidence and survivor testimonies regarding the crimes of genocide committed against the Yazidis. A significant part of our focus has turned to the mass graves which are now accessible for documentation and analysis.

The alliance of Iraq’s minorities is a step to prevent Iraq from being totally stripped of its minorities.

The international community is struggling to come up with a strategy to defeat the Islamic State (IS) -- but on the ground in northern Iraq, a Roman Catholic priest has found his own way to fight the jihadists.

Some 5,000 Yazidis were captured and enslaved as ‘war loot’ by Isis in 2014. Two escapees tell their extraordinary stories.

Iraq’s Chaldean Catholic patriarch said increasing incidents of discrimination against Christians in Iraqi society were inciting fear and causing an exodus of Christians from their homeland.

Masarat for Cultural and Media Development (MCMD), an NGO based in Baghdad, called for the involvement of minorities in any peace negotiations over the future of the disputed areas in a Saturday report.

Nineveh – A source in Nineveh Province announced on Monday, that ten houses belonging to Christian people were completely destroyed by the so called the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) north of Mosul (405 km north of Baghdad).

The Iraqi National Accord party confirmed on Saturday its refusal to divide Iraq, arguing that the voices talking about the division of Iraq to confederations on doctrinal and sectarian lines are aberrant, while warned that these projects will enter Iraq in a “long conflict,” calling the political forces to declare its position on this project.

When the Islamic State stormed the city of al-Mayadeen in the eastern countryside of Deir ez-Zour along the Euphrates River, they struck with particular vengeance at the homes of Syrian Sufis.

Old men push wives in wheelchairs. Mothers manoeuvre overloaded baby buggies. The Iraqis among them mainly come on foot, in long columns beside the main highway, southwards from Baghdad, and westwards from the string of Shia towns that stretches from Basra to Karbala.

There is a rising tide of religious persecution emerging worldwide and it disproportionately threatens religious minority groups.

The Commander of Anbar Operations Ismail Mahalawi revealed on Sunday, that ISIS executed a number of civilians including women and children east of Ramadi.

Incorporating Iraqi Sunnis in the hard-hitting mainly Shiite Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) fighting ISIS militants is still falling short of what the minority sect is striving for, a parliamentarian has said.

With the Jewish community of Iraq's al-Qosh long gone, it has fallen to local Christian families to care for the dilapidated synagogue.

The Yazidi minority in Iraq must deal with religious persecution, poverty, a lack of services and a rash of suicides and immigration among their young people. Yet they still support local Iraqi Kurdish politicians. The head of Iraq’s religious Yazidi minority, Tahseen Saeed Bek, spoke to NIQASH about why his people will continue to support the government in the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan.

After Yazidi women survived the horrors at the hands of the Islamic State group in Iraq, many fled to the autonomous Kurdish area - into which IS has yet to make inroads.

A young Yazidi survivor of slavery will urge British lawmakers today to help free the thousands of women and girls that remain captive at the hands of Islamic State militants in northern Iraq.

As Iraqi and Kurdish forces increase their fight against Islamic State (IS) fighters near Mosul, a military unit of Iraqi Christians has joined them.