When I was a young girl growing up in the latter stages of the Second World War, I was haunted by the images of the Nazi Concentration Camps.
I was the daughter, granddaughter and great granddaughter of politicians. So naturally our small house was often full of men – because in those days it was almost entirely a male profession – debating the war. I listened in horror as they talked about the camps.
I remember thinking very hard and wondering why the grown-ups didn’t do anything about the dreadful slaughter of Europe’s Jews. Grown-ups were powerful. They knew everything, they had the authority on everything, so why didn’t they do something to stop what was going on?
Why didn’t all the good, decent people of the Globe make this their top priority? I concluded that somehow people reacted too slowly to these crimes. They refused to recognise it in time to do something about it.
So, I vowed that even if I couldn’t do anything to prevent such horrors when I grew up, I would at least talk about it. I would make sure that others knew about it.
That’s why, last weekend, I found myself in a small, unprepossessing lecture theatre hidden away amongst the grander buildings of Christ Church College in Oxford.
Together with some senior members of our AMAR International Charitable Foundation team, we gathered alongside some extremely bright and eloquent academics, faith leaders and politicians to discuss religious persecution in the world today. Looking at diagnoses, prognoses, treatments and cures.
It was organised jointly by AMAR, the International Center for Law and Religious Studies at the Brigham Young University in Utah and LDS Charities.
AMAR has been deeply involved in combatting religious discrimination for many years. So when the monsters of ISIS began committing vile atrocities against the Yazidi people in 2014 we were determined to act. To me what happened to them was like 1946 all over again.
Three years ago, we decided to really try and analyse why they had come under such attack. Persecution doesn’t happen out of nothing. If you look at the Genocide Convention, there are three or four specific things that will lead to that genocide. To fit the Convention, it has to be a very specific set of circumstances and I am sad to say that the Yazidis fitted those set of circumstances immediately.
Quite obviously therefore, that convention is not being implemented, despite the fact that a number of different organisations around the world, including the UN, have declared the attacks as such.
I see religion, faith, as inherent in the identity of a human being. To understand why the Yazidis are being persecuted, we looked deeply into the religion.
We knew there was huge intolerance, mistrust of Yazidis. Many claimed – quite wrongly – that they were devil worshippers. It meant in the eyes of those haters that they could be killed, not just without compunction, but they could be killed as a step to heaven.
We had to debunk this myth as a matter of urgency. Together with senior religious leaders, and some fantastic academics, we committed AMAR to bringing universal acceptance and recognition to this ancient and noble way of worship.
We signed an agreement with the Yazidi Spiritual Council. They trusted us and we trusted them.
We asked an AMAR Board member – Canon Edmund Newell, who is the head of Cumberland Lodge – to look deeply into the Yazidi faith. He gathered together a small panel of important thinkers from different backgrounds and faiths, including the Yazidis, the Shia, the Sunni, the Catholic, Christians, Anglicans, LDS.
Together they produced an amazing document, which for the first ever time - and I can say that without any of the usual political exaggeration - identified the Yazidi faith directly.
Remember this is a faith that has never been written down. Nor been recorded. A fact which therefore gave those that didn’t like them many opportunities to make up stories about them. This was the first ever accurate, correct analysis. I can say this with impunity because it was then agreed and signed by the spiritual leader of the Yazidis, the late Prince Tahseen.
So, we now understood why it was that they were – and still are - being persecuted. We understood exactly how to rebut that persecution.
Armed with this document, we brought together faith leaders, top academics and politicians, in the belief that we could begin a movement which would bring recognition of the Yazidi faith and finally end the genocidal attacks on them which have gone on for centuries.
I am delighted to report that we made have made great progress over the last three years, and recently took this Windsor movement to Baghdad, where some very senior Muslim leaders joined colleagues from every other faith to condemn the persecution of the Yazidis.
But there is so much more to be done. The whole world needs to sit up and take notice. This is why it was so crucial to speak at event such as that in Oxford. Fine minds from across the Globe all in agreement and ready to work for a common goal.
From my perspective, looking at the law is also crucial. In Oxford we presented our research matching up historical genocidal attacks over the centuries on the Jews, the Huguenots and - comparatively more recently - the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints with the Yazidis against existing human rights statutes.
Of course, the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention and the Statute of Rome, did not exist when the first atrocities against these faith groups were first committed, but it is fascinating nonetheless to make these comparisons.
AMAR’s research showed the enormity of what’s happened to all these faiths, and the huge blocks and difficulties they faced in obtaining their freedoms. It also showed what they had to do to survive and ultimately flourish. Many are things that would be extremely difficult for the Yazidis to do.
The analysis showed, for example, that the Huguenots had to leave France permanently and begin lives elsewhere, ultimately blending into the host communities wherever that might have been. Sadly, this is not an option for the Yazidis because of an inter-marrying system that is very complex.
The different castes marry only people on the same level, so it’s almost impossible for them to leave Iraq and remain Yazidis.
I would suggest therefore that they are on the brink of extinction unless they relax the rules. As we pointed out in Oxford, once Judaism began to relax its marriage laws, which was very recent, they were seen as an in-group, which could burst out against the major group.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints – Mormons – are another example of a religiously persecuted group that have ultimately succeeded. In fact, they have been hugely successful.
But back in the early 19th century their future looked bleak when they were forced to flee the Eastern USA in huge numbers. Many were killed by their fellow Americans – the excuse used by their tormentors once again being that their religion had no place.
They relocated to the far West of the USA, but again they made concessions, changes which helped them eventually to blend in seamlessly with the rest of the population.
One of the most important was halting the practice of plural marriage – which was a founding principal of the LDS faith. This was a massive change, an enormous step forward.
So the Yazidis must see how they can help themselves, and we must continued to investigate how we can help them.
The Windsor movement, conferences such as the one in Oxford, will continue and we believe our voices will grow ever louder to help these poor, beleaguered people.
We will battle to recognise genocide, persecution and its impact on forced migration everywhere. That must be the goal that we set ourselves.
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