Rojava University in northern and eastern Syria in the city of Qamishlo announced the opening of the Yazidi religion department within the Faculty of Religious Sciences at the university starting from the next academic year if the curricula and the required number of students are available, and it is considered the first university to include this department in history and the world.

The head of the Yazidi department, Professor Nassim Shamo, told Ezidi 24, “It is good to find this step to take care of the Yazidis. This department was specifically opened to interest the Yazidi religion and explain its rituals, festivals, and everything that is included.”

He continued, “In the first and second year the three religions (Yazidism, Islam, Christianity) will be taught jointly, and in the third year the specialization will be, meaning the study will begin in the Yazidism. The academic staff will be academic professors, not from Rojava only, and all of them are Yazidis and the lecturing lecturers, i.e. those outside Rojava, will deliver their lectures online via the programs.”

“We created a committee consisting of people specialized in Yazidis to issue school curricula because we do not have curricula and the department is new. In the first and second year there will be a subject specialized in Yazidism, which is the “sacred religious texts,” He added.

“In the third year there is a draft of the materials that we have devoted to study by students, including (the structure of the Yazidi community, the jurisprudence of the Yazidi religion, the history of the Yazidis, the Yazidis in law, the permissible and the forbidden (Halal and Haram) in the Yazidi religion, the philosophy of the Yazidi religion, the Yazidi holidays, the role of women in the Yazidi religion, literature. And Yazidi art),” Mr. Shamo said.

He stressed that, “The aim of opening this department is to explain to the world who we are and what our religion is and what our holidays and religious texts are, and to go beyond the stereotype that many misunderstood about us. This step is considered a golden opportunity to take care and serve the Yazidis away from the parties and politics, and we need in the department researchers, sheikhs, Apyar and all of those who has something from the Yazidis, provided that he is pure, to counteract the confusion that haunts us from eternity, which has caused dozens of genocides.

He concluded by saying, “The student admission system will be for Yazidi students in general, not only in Syria, and we will allocate seats for each region and determine the rates that will be accepted in the department, and the university will cover the expenses of non-Syrian students in food and sleep.”