War and Religion - Minority Religions in Iraq and Iran (America, prophet)

[ParkTwain]

Given that the U.S. is presently at war (with someone, I don't know whom) in Iraq, and might perpetrate an act of war against Iran before the end of the Dubya Administration, I thought I would post to the board some links about the minority religions found in Iraq and Iran. All of these are of great interest to those who are curious about the world and human history.

Iraq

Islam - 95% of Iraqis. Of these, 55% Arab Shia, 23% Arab Sunni, 22% Kurdish (90% Sunni, 10% Shia Faili); key cities for Shiites are Najaf and Karbala

Minority religions:

Alevi
Alevi - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Baha'i
Bahá'Ã* Faith - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Christianity - Armenian Orthodox, Assyrian Orthodox (Nestorian) and Assyrian Catholic (Chaldean), Syrian Orthodox and Syrian Catholic, Armenian Orthodox and Armenian Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Protestant denominations
Christianity in Iraq: A Small But Respected and Multi-Faceted Population (http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0399/9903081.html - broken link)
Names of Syriac Christians - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Judaism

Kakaism
RFE/RL iraq Report
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Kakaism stems from the word for "brotherhood." As a belief, it is a combination of Zoroastrianism and Shi'ism, similar to Yezidiism. It arose as the result of a conflict between the Umayyad rulers of Islam and the Zoroastrianism priesthood, and gained momentum on the plain of Sharazur, near the city of Sin (present-day Halabche). A millennium ago, Kurdish Zoroastrian clergymen called Ali (the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad and then the supreme leader of Shi'ism). Because Kakais are forbidden from cursing Satan on religious grounds, many Muslims refer to them as devil-worshippers, hence the Muslim antagonism toward their beliefs resulting in the repression of the Kakais for more than a millennium.
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Mandaeism
Mandaeism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yarsani
Yarsan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yazdanism
Yazdânism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Zoroastrianism


Iran

Islam - 95% of Iranians. Of these, 85% Shia, 10% Sunni, 3% Yarsani (Ahl-e Haqq)

Minority religions:

Baha'i (not recognized, so persecuted by the state)

Christianity - Armenian Orthodox, Armenian Catholic, Assyrian Orthodox (Nestorian), Assyrian Catholic (Chaldean), Roman Catholic

Hinduism

Mandaeism

Sikhism
Sikhism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Zoroastrianism (the historic pre-Islam national religion of Persia)

[GCSTroop]

Well what a lot of people don't understand about the war in Iraq right now is that for so long the Shia people were persecuted by the Saddam run Sunni's. After Saddam left, it wasn't that there was a large influx of terrorists from other countries (although there are quite a few) but it was also that the Shia's and Sunni's lived in the same neighborhoods. The Shia's exacted their revenge by killing a few Sunni's, the Sunni's got back and did the same, and then the Shia's did it to them, and so on and so forth. So, not only is there this terrorist element that is there to attack Americans but we are also caught up in a battle between two religious groups that seems as if it will never slow down. The two (Shia's and Sunni's) have formed their own militias, and it has been a goal of the Americans to bring these militias onto "our" side. When you read about IED's in Iraq you are reading about the terrorism side. When you read about a car pulling into a market filled with Shia's, blowing up, and killing 130 civilians, that's that little civil war thing that we're not calling a civil war. We're actually fighting a two-pronged battle (perhaps three if the Turks start picking on the Kurds). The problem is, it is hard to pick out who is a terrorist, who is a Sunni, who is a Shia, and who is on our side and who isn't.