Excerpt from Nadia Murad's book
Excerpts from Nadia Murad's book "The Last Girl: The Story of My Captivity and My Battle with ISIS"
About the Yazidi People
For centuries we have been persecuted for our religious beliefs; we have been squeezed between Sunni Arabs and Sunni Kurds who wanted us to abandon our heritage and become Kurds or Arabs.
Today there are only about one million Yezidis living in the world. If I can remember myself – and as far as I know what happened before I was born – we have always defined ourselves as a single people through religion. But it also made us a target for more powerful peoples and groups, from Ottomans to Saddam's Baathists, who attacked us or forced us to switch sides. They insulted our religion, claimed that we worship the devil, called us unclean and demanded that we renounce our faith. Many generations of Yezidis experienced persecution that was supposed to destroy us, convert us to another religion, or simply drive us off the land and deprive us of our property. Until 2014, they tried to destroy us seventy-three times. We called such persecutions by the Ottoman word "firman" even before we learned the word "genocide".
For many generations in a row, we got used to pain and injustice and learned not to notice them. I think that's why we didn't react to minor insults, for example, when they didn't accept treats from us. To an outsider, it must have seemed very rude. The Yezidis got used even to the threat of another "firman", although it was unpleasant and painful to remember about it.
Religion is closely intertwined with nationality. Many Yezidis consider sharfadin to be both religious and national.
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