UNHCR's ELIGIBILITY GUIDELINES FOR ASSESSING THE ...
UNHCR's ELIGIBILITY GUIDELINES FOR ASSESSING THE ...
UNHCR's ELIGIBILITY GUIDELINES FOR ASSESSING THE ...
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econstruction funds allocated for Yazidi areas in Jebel Sinjar to a Kurdish village and<br />
marginalizing them politically. 393<br />
Yazidis may be discriminated against by segments of the Muslim population based on the<br />
widespread perception that Yazidis are “unclean” or “non-believers”. 394 Additionally, and<br />
as outlined above, Yazidis may face severe treatment at the hands of the family or<br />
community. On 22 April 2007, a group of 23 Yazidi workers heading home from a Mosul<br />
textile factory were shot dead. Witnesses claimed that Christians and Muslims who were<br />
travelling on the same bus were not harmed. 395<br />
d) Baha’i<br />
The Baha’i faith 396 was founded in the 19 th century by Baha’u’llah, a Persian nobleman,<br />
who proclaimed himself the most recent prophetic messenger following Mohammed, Jesus,<br />
Buddha, Krishna, Abraham and others. Baha’is number around six million in more than<br />
200 countries around the world, although the Baha’i do not make up a majority in any<br />
country. There are no figures as to their numbers in Iraq. The faith has a unique system of<br />
global administration, with freely elected governing councils in nearly 10,000 localities.<br />
The Universal House of Justice, 397 first elected in 1963, is the highest governing body,<br />
directing the spiritual and administrative affairs of the Baha’i faith and has its seat in Haifa,<br />
Israel. 398<br />
The Baha’i belief has often been considered heretical by Islam. For example, the Baha’is<br />
belief that there is only one religion and all the messengers of God have progressively<br />
revealed its nature, contradicts the Muslim belief that Prophet Mohammed was God’s last<br />
messenger. 399 A series of fatwas from Al-Azhar, Egypt’s highest religious authority with<br />
influence in the wider Islamic world, have condemned the Baha’i faith as a form of Islamic<br />
393 Christian Peacemaker Teams, Iraq: Dashed Yezidi dreams, 30 September 2005,<br />
http://www.cpt.org/archives/2005/sep05/0053.html; ibidem, Iraq’s Yezidis, A Religious and Ethnic Minority<br />
Group Faces Repression and Assimilation, 25 September 2005, http://www.aina.org/reports/yezidiscpt.pdf.<br />
394 Dulz, Hajo and Savelsberg, p. 9, see above footnote 359. See also: Jesse Nunes, Iraq’s sectarian strife<br />
engulfs minority Yazidis, Christian Science Monitor, 24 April 2007, http://www.csmonitor.com/<br />
2007/0424/p99s01-duts.html; the article refers to a report from the Turkish Daily News that 215 Yazidis have<br />
been killed since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, and most of the killings “were perpetuated on religious<br />
grounds as fundamental and Islamist groups see Yazidis as infidels who either have to convert or be killed”.<br />
395 Karin Brulliard, An Iraqi Massacre Rooted in Interfaith Love, The Washington Post, 23 April 2007,<br />
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/22/AR2007042200110.html. It is reported<br />
that the massacre was triggered by a Muslim woman marrying a Yazidi man.<br />
396 For more on the Baha’i faith, see, for example, The Baha’is, What is the Bahá”í Faith? http://bahai.org/<br />
faq/facts/bahai_faith. See also: BBC, Religions & Ethics – Baha’i, http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/<br />
bahai/.<br />
397 For more information on the Universal House of Justice, see, for example, Baha’i Topics, The Universal<br />
House of Justice, http://info.bahai.org/universal-house-of-justice.html.<br />
398 This has led to Baha’is in Iran being accused of Zionist activities, an accusation that might likely be<br />
raised against Baha’is in Iraq as well; see Juan Cole, The Baha’is of Iran, History Today, 1990, Vol. 40 Issue<br />
3, p. 24, http://www.sullivan-county.com/id3/bahai_iran.htm.<br />
399 On the relationship between Islam and the Baha’i faith, see Cole, ibid.<br />
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