{"id":53208,"date":"2023-08-16T22:41:16","date_gmt":"2023-08-16T22:41:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wagingnonviolence.org\/forusa\/?p=53208"},"modified":"2023-09-11T14:15:34","modified_gmt":"2023-09-11T14:15:34","slug":"overlooked-history-of-the-middle-easts-closed-religious-communities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wagingnonviolence.org\/forusa\/2023\/08\/overlooked-history-of-the-middle-easts-closed-religious-communities\/","title":{"rendered":"The overlooked history of the Middle East\u2019s closed religious communities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The armed conflicts in the Syria-Kurdistan-Iraq-Turkey area highlight the interplay among personal and group identity, national political currents, and broader world politics. Further complicating our understanding, the religious identities of some groups are little known, in part as membership is only by birth and the teachings of the faith are not to be shared with outsiders. Working for resolution of armed conflicts through negotiations in good faith in such conditions is not easy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had known some of these difficulties during the long years of the 1970s Lebanese civil war. Geneva was the only place where the different factions were willing to talk to each other. I had a former student whose family was of some influence in Lebanese politics, and he had put me in contact with some of the delegations when they came to Geneva. At the time, I was working closely with the Quaker U.N. Office in Geneva that was trying to facilitate negotiations. Kamal Jumblatt was the leader of the Druze faction. One time when he came to Geneva I had a long lunch with his two lieutenants. They explained in detail the political positions of the Druze and the difficulties of reaching a compromise.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Toward the end of the meal, I thanked them for their explanations and then said, “I am interested in religious philosophies. What do the Druze believe?” There was a moment of silence. I did not know that the Druze never explain their religious beliefs to persons outside the faith. After the silence, I knew that we had to return to discussing political options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Time goes by, but many of the same difficulties continue. I was somewhat known in the U.N. human rights milieu for my efforts on religious liberty, having played an active role in the drafting of the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, a U.N. General Assembly Declaration adopted on Nov. 25, 1981. The U.N. General Assembly Declaration had been prepared over a 10-year period in the human rights bodies, first in New York and then in Geneva. The U.N. human rights secretariat, which had been in New York, moved to Geneva in 1977, bringing with it the efforts to draft a declaration on religious liberty. Since religious liberty was a difficult concept for some governments, the declaration was put in a negative form \u2014 preventing intolerance and discrimination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In June 2003 some Iraqis in Australia, members of the Sabian Mandaeans of Australia, wrote to me to ask if I would take up the defense of the Mandaeans who were being persecuted in Iraq and needed help. The U.S. and allied forces had just overthrown Saddam Hussein and were more or less in control of the country. However there was a good deal of sectarian violence, many revenge killings, and the formation of armed factions largely based on tribal and religious identity. The Mandaeans, whose pacifist convictions prohibit them from carrying weapons even in self-defense, were the victims of kidnappings, extortion, rape and murders. I had to admit that I had never heard of the Mandaeans. I have always had a policy of wanting to know something about a group which I defend publicly at U.N. human rights meetings; the next meetings were in August-September 2003, so I needed information quickly. I was helped by a friend in the Middle East Studies department at Columbia University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A Mandaean priest initiation. (Wikimedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Mandaeans are a gnostic group largely formed at the time of Jesus. There were at that time a number of prophets who were preaching the need for repentance and the washing away of sins by bathing in the River Jordan. The only name that has come down to us is that of John the Baptist, highlighted in the New Testament Gospel of Luke. However, John the Baptist was not alone, and the people baptized were a mixed group. Some could be considered Jews, others Greeks, others of other ethnic groups of the area, as well as members of earlier gnostic schools of thought. Little by little, pushed by battles against the Romans, they migrated to what is now Iraq and Iran. Some settled as farmers in the Iraq marshes. Others became gold- and silversmiths in Iran. They formed a closed society; no converts could join, and no one outside the group could read their scriptures. There were some 70,000 Mandaeans divided between Iraq and Iran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the 1945 discovery of papyrus manuscripts at Nag Hammadi and the start of their translation, scholars contacted the Mandaeans to say that a translation of their scriptures would be of cultural interest as there was a need to know more about the first century of the common era. Knowledge of Jewish and Christian texts of the period was advancing. The Mandaean leaders were convinced. They authorized a translation into Arabic of their chief text, the Kanza Raba (The Great Treasure, popularly called the Book of John).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A copy of this first translation was given to Saddam Hussein as president of the country, in the same way that a new translation of the New Testament might be given to the U.S. president. However, in the confusion after Saddam Hussein\u2019s overthrow, the Mandaeans were accused of being among his supporters, and were attacked violently. <\/p>\n\n\n

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I raised the issue in September 2003 at the U.N. and with the U.S. authorities, but the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and Discrimination was not bedside reading for the U.S. and allied forces. Most of the Iraqi Mandaeans left for Syria, not knowing that they were jumping from the frying pan into the fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Religious and tribal identity played an important role in the Ottoman Empire areas that are Lebanon and Syria today. These identities continued to play a role during the League of Nations Mandate era in Lebanon and Syria after the end of World War I, and they continue to play a role today. If we wish to facilitate negotiations in good faith to end the armed conflicts in Syria, it is useful to understand something of these religious groups which do not share their beliefs with outsiders. I will give two examples.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Wall poster of Syrian Alawite dictator\nBashar al-Assad. (Flickr\/Michael-Ann Cerniglia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The first is the Alawite community of President Bashar al-Assad and of his father Hafez al-Assad, who was president from a 1970 coup until his death in 2000. (The grandfather of Bashar was also an Alawite leader, in the 1930s.) The Alawites represent some 12 percent of the Syrian population. They were originally from a mountainous area near the sea, with Latakia as the major city. Since the late 1940s, many have moved to the cities for economic reasons and others have joined the military. As long as the al-Assads have been in power, from 1970, the security forces and the higher administrative posts have been held by Alawites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Alawites are sometimes presented as an offshoot of Shiite Islam \u2014 a reason given for Iranian support of Bashar al-Assad. Although the Alawites as they are now structured were organized in the 9th century, they are an offshoot of a much older intellectual movement. Their core ideology goes back to the philosophical schools of Alexandria in the 4th and 5th century B.C. These schools developed the idea of the Logos, the word of God made flesh. This idea spread, became one of the elements of Jewish mystical thinking, and is incorporated in the preamble to the Gospel of John: \u201cIn the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. … In him was life and that life was the light of men.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reincarnation of all souls is part of the Alawite belief, but the Logos incarnates only to mark the start of a new era. Jesus was the Logos who started such a new era. Alawites felt that the Prophet Muhammad was also the start of a new era. However, Muhammad had stressed that he was not a son of God, since God could not take material forms. He stressed this to distance himself from the Christian doctrine concerning the nature of Jesus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus the problem for the Alawites was, who could be the incarnation of the Logos that would mark the start of this new era? They decided that it was Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad. Thus they took the name Alawites to mark the new era, but they continue to celebrate Christmas as the incarnation of the Logos in Jesus. These doctrines are far from those of Shiite Islam, which also holds a reverence for Ali.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Alevi village woman in Eastern Turkey. (Flickr\/Mu\u0308ge Yildiz)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Syrian Alawites are related to the more numerous Alevis of Turkey. However, in Turkey there was more interaction with the dervishes, teachers of Sufi-influenced Islam. Thus the Turkish Alevis have had more interaction with Islamic thought. However, the Alevis have maintained membership through initiation and an emphasis on esoteric teaching. Many of the Turkish Alevis have migrated to Germany for economic reasons, but also to escape a minority status in Turkey filled with insecurity and anxiety. There may be more possibilities to gain knowledge from Alevis in Germany, as the desire for secrecy may be less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike the Alawites, some of whom held positions of power and influence in Syria, the Yazidis of Iraq and Syria have always been marginal and looked down upon. The basic structure of the Yazidi worldview is Zoroastrian. Zoroastrianism is an ancient faith, born in Persia, which proclaims that two great cosmic forces, that of light and good and that of darkness and evil, are in constant battle; humans are called to help light overcome evil. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The strict dualistic thinking of Zoroastrianism was later modified by another Persian prophet, Mani of Ctesiphon, in the 3rd century C.E. Mani tried to create a synthesis of religious teachings that were then increasingly coming into contact through travel and trade: Buddhism and Hinduism from India, Jewish and Christian thought, and Hellenistic gnostic philosophy. He kept the Zoroastrian dualism as the most easily understood intellectual framework but gave it a somewhat more Taoist, yin-yang, flexibility (Mani having traveled in China). Unfortunately, only the dualistic Zoroastrian framework is attached to Mani’s name \u2014 Manichaeanism. This is somewhat ironic, as it was the Zoroastrian Magi who had him put to death as a dangerous rival.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Yazidis became known to the wider international public when in 2014, Yazidi villages in the Simjar mountainous area of Iraq were attacked by the forces of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. These forces followed a pattern of targeted killings, forced conversions to Islam, trafficking of women and sexual slavery. Many of the Yazidis are ethnic Kurds, and the government of Saddam Hussein was opposed to them, not so much for their religious beliefs as because some Yazidis played important roles in the Kurdish community, which was seen as largely opposed to his government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n