THE PEOPLE ON THE MOUNTAIN

The Yezidis are an ancient Kurdish/Arab people with a religion that combines elements of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Zoroastrianism and ancient pre monotheistic  devotion to the sun, the moon, water, fire, earth and air.  There were approximately 70,000 Yezidis in  Iraq, mostly in Nineveh Province near Mosul in the town of Sinjar until they were forced to flee from the violence of the Islamic State or ISIS.

Now 40,000 to 50,000 of them have fled to Mount Sinjar, a holy place to them since they believe that this is where Noah's Ark came to rest after the great flood.  The mountain has always been their home in Iraq with the remaining 180,000 Yezidis in the world living in Syria, Turkey, Iran, Armenia and Georgia.

So the question remains as to why the ISIS wants so desperately to commit genocide on a peaceful people with no homeland , who bother no one and who have lived peacefully amongst both Christians  and Muslims for centuries. 

The simple answer is that the Caliphate that Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi is creating in the 21st century belongs in the 7th century.  The IS will tolerate  no one who does not subscribe to their fundamental and violent version of Islam for very long even if they pay the Jizya tax and assume the mantle of second class Dhimmitude.  They also practice "Takfir" which is determining that those thought formerly to be pious Muslims are in fact not  because they do not believe in the Caliph's version of Islam.  This then make them Kaffirs and subject to death as apostates.

The more complicated answer is that the Yezidis have been looked upon by many Muslims and Christians alike to be devil worshipers and thus beyond the pale.  The central figure in their belief system is Malek Taus, the Peacock Angel who is the greatest of seven angels left by God after the creation to look after the world.  The alternate name of Malek Taus is "Shaitan" which is the Arabic name for Satan.

The story of their faith is further complicated by the fact that the rise to preeminence with God of Malek Taus  mirrors that of the Jinn Iblis in Islam.  Iblis refused to submit to Adam which Muslims believe caused him to fall out of favor with Allah.  The Yezidis believe just the opposite.  Thus Iblis aka Shaitan aka Malek Taus to them is good and not evil.

The story of their persecution is therefore almost a template for modern middle east politics which for far too many Muslims cannot be separated from their religious beliefs and hatreds.

There are Christians on the mountain also.  Mosul was for a very long time a vibrant Christian community with numerous churches and monasteries all of which are now occupied by the IS who already have blown up the tomb of Yunus  or Jonah.  In this act of violent desecration which mimicked what the Taliban did to the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afganistan, the IS attacked not just a figure of Christian or Jewish importance but also a Muslim one.  Sura 10 of the Quran is named Yoonus or Jonah.   

But this was but a mild prelude to the slaughter that came next to both Christians and Yezidis.  The ISIS spared no one.  Catholic Online reported  "There is a park in Mosul," Mark Arabo told CNN during a Skype interview from San Diego, "where they actually beheaded children and put their heads on a stick and have them in the park." 

Other children were gunned down with their bodies left to rot in the sun.  Men were crucified and beheaded, at least one woman was stripped naked , turned upside down, had her throat slit and her blood filled up a bowl beneath her  as if she were slaughtered in an abattoir  under religious law.  We know this because of photos which the ISIS post as well as others to terrorize the population.  Christian and Yezidi wives are also separated from their husbands, raped and forced to be wives to ISIS fighters all consistent with the rules of war established by Muhammed in the 7th century.  On the mountain parents are reportedly throwing their children to their death rather than let them fall into the clutches of ISIS.  

300,000 Chaldean Christians also have fled to Kurdistan or to Mount Sinjar where they beg for rescue.  As late as 2003 there were over one and a half million Christians living in a multi-sectarian secular but murderous Iraq under Saddam Hussein.  Now that number has dwindled to between 350,000 to 450,000 all of whom are  refugees on the run if in the north.

Those who sought sanctuary in Kurdistan under the protection of the Peshmerga are now once again being threatened  by The ISIS forces advancing on Erbil the Kurdish capital with state of the art U.S. made weapons captured from Iraqi soldiers who fled when attacked by the smaller forces of ISIS.  The Kurds are running out of ammunition and need to be re-supplied with every thing up to date that the U.S. has just as Nixon did for Israel during the Yom Kippur War.  The U.S. also has to use overwhelming air power to obliterate this Da'esh army while it is still in the high desert in open convoys.  ISIS and much of the world  believe Obama won't do anything.  They must be proven wrong.

Meanwhile the people on the mountain wait for food and water to survive knowing that if they come down that mountain they will be butchered.  Obama has promised them that help is on the way.  He has inferred that he will use air power if U.S. interests are threatened.  He has promised to avert a humanitarian genocide.  It is right and fitting that he should do all of this.  It was after all, his misguided policies in leaving Iraq that has caused this debacle to occur.  

We all need to pray for the people on the mountain.  Guns and food are essential but only prayer can connect them to us in deeply human ways.  The blood of the innocents and the martyrs  flows like a waterfall in Iraq and Syria today.  ISIS is doing to the infidels what Hamas wants to do to Jews.  Only a Judaic-Christian civilized people with the will to acknowledge evil and then fight it to the death can stop this genocide.  If war is politics by other means then destroying the real devils of ISIS is an exorcism by other means.  Meanwhile the people on the mountain wait to see if they are alone.

ERLANDSSON