Yezidis in ancient India, or Indians in ancient Mesopotamia?: Re-imagining Ancient Yezidi Origins

2020/01/46546-1579766426.jpg
Read: 2546     16:00     23 ЯНВАРЬ 2020    

Mija  Sanders

University of Arizona, Tucson, USA


Part 4

Debating Yezidi Identity

It was exactly this kind of encounter which I witnessed repeatedly between the RSS and the Yezidi diaspora in Arizona. Eventually, the erasure became apparent to others in the community. The wife of the Mir said one day after her husband and I attended a meeting with the local HSS leaders, “I don’t know if Yezidis came from India, or if the Hindu came from Kurdistan. We have common symbols like the Peacock. I do know that they want to make the Yezidi Hindu. I am Yezidi, not Hindu.” Yezidis in Phoenix were eager to preserve their cultural heritage as Yezidis, especially linguistically. Because the community was small, many of the young children were forgetting Kurdish though the English education system and chose to use English at home instead of Kurdish, much to their grandparent’s dismay. The Phoenix community was a kind of sister community to the much larger Yezidi diaspora located in Nebraska. This is perhaps one reason why the Mir sought advocates and alliances amongst other diaspora groups. Phoenix, Arizona is the second largest Yezidi resettlement city in the U.S. after Lincoln, Nebraska which has around 1,000 Yezidis (Smith, 2015), but it also poses challenges to Yezidis who wish to find marriage partners. Many of the families whom I interviewed had family members who found husbands and wives in Canada, Germany, and Iraq, with few marrying Yezidis locally. Only those who were U.S. citizens had the ability to bring their partners to the U.S.

This was something particularly stressful in the community. This is because Yezidis can only marry within a narrow caste system of Murids, Pirs, and Sheikhs. The Sheikh family is particularly restricted with additional castes within the group. Therefore, the U.S. posed a unique challenge in terms of geography and low numbers of asylum and migration. One of the reforms the Mir wants to make for the Yezidis in his community is to change the caste system so the young people can more easily choose marriage partners. In terms of comparing the Yezidi caste system with the Hindu one, Yezidis symbolically understood their caste system to be specific to their religion, as part of the 12th century religious reform by Sheikh Adi. They did not conflate their caste system with a Hindu one. It was considered something very Yezidi. Of course, compared to the critical vulnerabilities of Yezidi girls being held captive by ISIS in Iraq, and the ethnic genocide of Yezidi men, these issues of identity are less urgent. Based on interviews with Yezidi families, however, the forms of belonging which are central to identity such as marriage practices, language use, and ability to enjoy a social world free of Muslims, were considered very important. A majority of Yezidis in Arizona felt that their own sense of identity was threatened by their new circumstances. When I asked what it meant to be Yezidi, the foremost answer had to do with being different from Muslims. It was apparent that a lot of Yezidis weren’t well informed about the nuances of Yezidi religious practice, and identified with the Yezidi identity as an ethnicity. The foremost identity issue which was discussed in the field was their difference from Muslims.  With the ways by which Muslim and Arab have become hegemonic identifiers in West Asia/Middle East, there is a need to interject difference and deconstruct these terms at the moment of articulating Yezidi identity.





Tags: #yazidisinfo   #yezidi   #ezidi   #history   #aboutyezidi  



Yezidis in ancient India, or Indians in ancient Mesopotamia?: Re-imagining Ancient Yezidi Origins

2020/01/46546-1579766426.jpg
Read: 2547     16:00     23 ЯНВАРЬ 2020    

Mija  Sanders

University of Arizona, Tucson, USA


Part 4

Debating Yezidi Identity

It was exactly this kind of encounter which I witnessed repeatedly between the RSS and the Yezidi diaspora in Arizona. Eventually, the erasure became apparent to others in the community. The wife of the Mir said one day after her husband and I attended a meeting with the local HSS leaders, “I don’t know if Yezidis came from India, or if the Hindu came from Kurdistan. We have common symbols like the Peacock. I do know that they want to make the Yezidi Hindu. I am Yezidi, not Hindu.” Yezidis in Phoenix were eager to preserve their cultural heritage as Yezidis, especially linguistically. Because the community was small, many of the young children were forgetting Kurdish though the English education system and chose to use English at home instead of Kurdish, much to their grandparent’s dismay. The Phoenix community was a kind of sister community to the much larger Yezidi diaspora located in Nebraska. This is perhaps one reason why the Mir sought advocates and alliances amongst other diaspora groups. Phoenix, Arizona is the second largest Yezidi resettlement city in the U.S. after Lincoln, Nebraska which has around 1,000 Yezidis (Smith, 2015), but it also poses challenges to Yezidis who wish to find marriage partners. Many of the families whom I interviewed had family members who found husbands and wives in Canada, Germany, and Iraq, with few marrying Yezidis locally. Only those who were U.S. citizens had the ability to bring their partners to the U.S.

This was something particularly stressful in the community. This is because Yezidis can only marry within a narrow caste system of Murids, Pirs, and Sheikhs. The Sheikh family is particularly restricted with additional castes within the group. Therefore, the U.S. posed a unique challenge in terms of geography and low numbers of asylum and migration. One of the reforms the Mir wants to make for the Yezidis in his community is to change the caste system so the young people can more easily choose marriage partners. In terms of comparing the Yezidi caste system with the Hindu one, Yezidis symbolically understood their caste system to be specific to their religion, as part of the 12th century religious reform by Sheikh Adi. They did not conflate their caste system with a Hindu one. It was considered something very Yezidi. Of course, compared to the critical vulnerabilities of Yezidi girls being held captive by ISIS in Iraq, and the ethnic genocide of Yezidi men, these issues of identity are less urgent. Based on interviews with Yezidi families, however, the forms of belonging which are central to identity such as marriage practices, language use, and ability to enjoy a social world free of Muslims, were considered very important. A majority of Yezidis in Arizona felt that their own sense of identity was threatened by their new circumstances. When I asked what it meant to be Yezidi, the foremost answer had to do with being different from Muslims. It was apparent that a lot of Yezidis weren’t well informed about the nuances of Yezidi religious practice, and identified with the Yezidi identity as an ethnicity. The foremost identity issue which was discussed in the field was their difference from Muslims.  With the ways by which Muslim and Arab have become hegemonic identifiers in West Asia/Middle East, there is a need to interject difference and deconstruct these terms at the moment of articulating Yezidi identity.





Tags: #yazidisinfo   #yezidi   #ezidi   #history   #aboutyezidi