The Forbidden Gospels Blog: Mandaean Emergency Campaign

The Forbidden Gospels Blog: Mandaean Emergency Campaign

The Houston Chronicle published a syndicated AP article on Saturday, February 10, 2007, that reported some startling statistics I hope to bring to your immediate attention. In the early 1990s, there were 60,000 Mandaeans in Iraq. Today, the estimates range from 5,000 to 7,000. This special religious population is facing extermination.

Who are the Mandaeans? They are a persecuted religious minority whose homelands are Iraq and Iran. The Mandaeans are the only surviving Gnostic religion from antiquity. Mandaeans esteem John the Baptist as one of their greatest teachers. They practice multiple baptisms in rivers in order to journey to the world of light which they consider to be a better place than earth. Their books are very old, written in Mandaic, a Semitic dialect.

Many Mandaeans are trying to flee Iraq as they are a targeted by Islamic extremists. They are being killed, raped, and forced to convert to Islam. Their properties are being confiscated by these extremists, according to a report released last week by the Mandaean Society of America in Trenton, New Jersey. Many Mandaeans are convinced that very soon there will be no Mandaeans alive in Iraq if we do not help them immediately.

There is a lobby working in Washington, D.C. to get the Mandaeans out of Iraq, as well as Jordan and Syria where many have fled, but still suffer abuse. They have no easy way to escape to countries like the US where they would be safe. On January 17, 2007 congressional testimony by Assistant Secretary Ellen Sauerbrey said that the department has been expanding the ability of the US to bring in more Iraqi refugees, including the special populations of religious minorities. Dr. Suhaib Nashi, the leader of the Mandaean Society of America, will be sending a letter to Capital Hill in the next few days, with details about the crisis that his community faces.

I would like to draw your attention to the genocide that is occurring among this special population, and ask you to do whatever is in your power to help bring into the US these refugees. There are already established Mandaean communities in cities like Houston and Detroit. The Mandaeans who live in the US and are established in professions and businesses, are willing to assist fleeing families from abroad, if only we can get those families here.

For further information, you may contact:

• Professor Jorunn Buckley, Bowdoin College, 7300 College Station, Brunswick, ME 04011; jbuckley@bowdoin.edu; 207-725-3687.
• Professor Charles Häberl, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, 54 Joyce Kilmer Avenue, Piscataway, New Jersey 08854; mustashriq@gmail.com; 732- 445-8444 Ext. 17.
• Professor April DeConick, Rice University, MS 15, Houston, Texas 77251; adeconick@rice.edu; 713-348-4995.

This is an extremely urgent matter, and I ask that you give it your immediate attention.

Mandaeans ponder their survival | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Mandaeans ponder their survival | Chron.com - Houston Chronicle

Among the casualties of the Iraq war is a little-known religious faith called Mandaeanism that has survived roughly two millennia and whose adherents believe that John the Baptist was their great teacher.

While there were more than 60,000 Mandaeans in Iraq in the early 1990s, only about 5,000 to 7,000 remain. Many have fled amid targeted killings, rapes, forced conversions and property confiscation by Islamic extremists, according to a report released last week by the New Jersey-based Mandaean Society of America.

Among the roughly 1,500 U.S. Mandaeans, there have been continual phone calls with endangered friends and relatives, collections of money and unsuccessful lobbying efforts in Washington to get Mandaeans out of Iraq, as well as neighboring Jordan and Syria.

"Unfortunately, we're not big in numbers, and numbers talk," said Suhaib Nashi, a 53-year-old pediatrician who helps run the Mandaean Society of America out of his Morristown home.

Mandaean leaders say tens of thousands of their brethren are now scattered around the world, including a U.S. community centered around New York and Detroit.

With the dispersion comes concern that the faith is withering, especially as more Mandaeans marry non-Mandaeans, with no mechanism to bring their children into the fold.

"There's not much hope for us to survive to two or three generations," Nashi said.

Scholars who study the Mandaean religion and culture say its extinction would be a great loss, the end of an ancient religious movement.

Dating to the time of the Roman Empire, it survived primarily in what is today Iraq and Iran, a branch of the Gnostic movement that borrowed elements of Christianity.

Mandaeans view John the Baptist as a great teacher, and engage in baptisms to come in closer contact with a "world of light" that is better than the material world on Earth.

"It represents a slice of the culture of the Middle East before the rise of Islam. It's a view to a former world. And frankly, we don't know very much about it," said Charles G. Haberl, an instructor in Middle Eastern studies at Rutgers University.

Haberl, who says he's trying to arrange a reprint of one of the Mandaeans' main holy books for the first time in about 150 years, laments that an "enormous literary tradition" may soon entirely disappear. "It would be as if a museum or library were put to the torch," Haberl said.

Driven from both Iraq and Iran, many Mandaeans have adapted to their new homes, enjoying financial success as medical doctors, civil engineers and jewelers, Nashi said.

But being scattered means that many in the younger generation have found spouses outside the community. And since a Mandaean has to be born a Mandaean, the children of such marriages have a questionable status in the religion.

Mamoon Aldulaimi, 60, of Lake Grove, N.Y., is a civil engineer who's a leader in the Mandaean community. Aldulaimi's son, 20-year-old Hani Aldulaimi, married an American raised as a Baptist.

At the wedding last May in the Phoenix area, where the newlyweds live, Mamoon Aldulaimi's daughter-in-law prominently displayed a darfash, a cross with cloth hanging off of it that's a symbol of Mandaeanism.

"She took that initiative as a matter of respect for us," Aldulaimi said.

But with the religion's few dozen priests reluctant to agree on a mechanism to bring in the children of mixed marriages, Aldulaimi and others wonder how long Mandaeanism will survive.

[The article continues further]

Saving a treasured trove, ever so slowly - Los Angeles Times - calendarlive.com

Saving a treasured trove, ever so slowly - Los Angeles Times - calendarlive.com