Yezidism between Scholarly Literature and Actual Practice: From ‘Heterodox’ Islam and ‘Syncretism’ to the Formation of a Transnational Yezidi ‘Orthodoxy’

Abstract

This paper examines the question of heterodoxy and orthodoxy from the point of view of the Yezidis, attempting to consider their place vis-a-vis Islam and at the same time make a valid general characterisation of their form of social life. It is particularly interested in the transition from the rural background to urban European cities by the Yezidi community, and concludes that there is a strong chance that the need to interact with European society will force a codification of doctrine upon the Yezidis, with effects which are not yet clear.

The Islamic State’s destruction of Yezidi heritage: Responses, resilience and reconstruction after genocide

“…Yezidism is a religion of orthopraxy rather than orthodoxy (Langer, 2010). This means that Yezidism places less emphasis on conforming to specific beliefs and more on participation in certain intangible religious rituals and adherence to specific behaviours (Kreyenbroek, 1995: 18).…”

Towards a Multi-Religious Topology of Islam: The Global Circulation of a Mutable Mobile

“…Other religious minorities, formerly classified by Muslim heresiographers as "heretics" or "extremist Shīʿīs" (ghulāt) and by Western scholars as "heterodoxies," have also started to transform their oralbased traditions and practices in similar ways into more standardised modern canons(Kreyenbroek 2005). A peculiar case in point is Yezidism, which can historically be regarded as an offshoot of a Ṣūfī movement in the twelfth century, though it soon developed into a religion in its own right, especially in the eyes of modern Yezidis(Kreyenbroek 1995;Langer 2010). The dispersal of Yezidis across several nation states in the twentieth century created the need to define Yezidism for different state administrations in order to gain recognition, thus resulting in a kind of a "transnational orthodoxy"(Langer 2010).…”

“…A peculiar case in point is Yezidism, which can historically be regarded as an offshoot of a Ṣūfī movement in the twelfth century, though it soon developed into a religion in its own right, especially in the eyes of modern Yezidis(Kreyenbroek 1995;Langer 2010). The dispersal of Yezidis across several nation states in the twentieth century created the need to define Yezidism for different state administrations in order to gain recognition, thus resulting in a kind of a "transnational orthodoxy"(Langer 2010). In other words, what others had called an Islamic heterodoxy finally ended up creating its own non-Muslim orthodoxy, and thus a case of internal Muslim diversity transformed into external diversity.The second example of non-diversity is the Muslim attempt to mark a space that is explicitly not multi-religious, the ḥaram districts in the Ḥijāz, which non-Muslims are forbidden to enter and to reside in.22 The ruling is derived from a saying by Muḥammad and from accounts of early Muslim scholars that in the time of the second caliph ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb (d. 644), the Ḥijāz, or the whole Arabian Peninsula, was freed from the presence of non-Muslims through expulsion(Munt 2015, 250).…”