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