An interesting report from Chris Newmarker of the Associated Press about a little known middle eastern community about whom I knew nothing. (Photo shows a Mandaean at worship)
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.
Thousands of Mandaeans have taken refuge in Jordan and Syria but are still suffering abuses, with no easy way to escape to countries such as the United States, where they would be safe. Meanwhile, the few thousand Mandaeans still living in Iraq are finding their lives increasingly in danger, targeted by extremists of every political stripe and religious faith. "Where there are areas where the Shia are the majority, they'll kill the Mandaeans and the Christians along with the Sunnis. Where there are areas where the Sunni are the majority, they'll kill the Mandaeans and the Christians along with the Shia," Nashi said.
When contacted about the issue, a U.S. State Department spokesman cited Jan. 17 congressional testimony by Assistant Secretary Ellen Sauerbrey, who said the department has been expanding the ability of the U.S. to bring in more Iraqi refugees, including the "special populations" of religious minorities.
More on Mandaeism and Mandaeans here.
Fascinating, how even some of the more obscure religions bear so much connection with others of the region, and even further afield.
Witness this statement by E.S.Drower in one of the linked articles from the wikilink.
"The word manda occurs in several Iranian dialects, or languages in which Iranian words occur; for instance, in northern India the word mandi means a 'covered-in market' or 'bazaar'. In Gujarati there is the word mandap or mandava, meaning a 'shed' or 'temple', derived from the Sanskrit mandapa with the same meaning. The Todas of the Nilgiris in southern India, who have a tradition of migration from the Caspian, call their village, or group of thatched huts with a dairy for the sacred buffaloes, a mand. Ma-da occurs in Sumerian as meaning 'land, or settlement' (philologists arc undecided as to whether Semitic matu is related to it or not. Does Mada lead us back to the Medes?)"
Another snippet mentions how the Mandaeans assert that Adam (one of their sacred figures) hails from Serandib (Ceylon in ancient times).
Truly a treasure trove of reading for a winter blizzard day (which we are having right now, if I can manage to get any reading done during the day, because my kids' school is closed!)
Posted by: Sujatha | February 13, 2007 at 06:45 AM
The manda - mandap (which is not just Gujarati but a common word in all north Indian languages) link is entirely plausible, both serving the same purpose. Thanks for shedding linguistic light on this one - always a fascinating subject.
Razib alerted me that the Mandaeans also could be the Sabians - mentioned in the Quran as "people of the Book." But the Wiki entry on Sabians seems to suggest that the Mandaean claim of being Sabians was more of a subterfuge to escape the wrath of the Muslim majority. After all, they consider Abraham, Jesus and Mohammed as "false" prophets - a pretty serious crime in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic scheme of belief. From the little that I gathered, Mandaeism is a mish-mash of Biblical lore (Adam, Noah, John the Baptist) and Zoroastrianism (Dualism).
The fates of small and relatively obscure religious sects, threatened with extinction, always go back to their exclusivity and lack of proselytization - identity defined by birth rather than belief. Parsis in India and elsewhere are grappling with a similar dilemma. I think the Jewish community did too at one time. The Hindus who too consider Hinduism more or less a product of birth (although things are a bit more lenient now), are not similarly threatened only because of their sheer numbers. On the other hand, the Mormons, a marginalized faith in the US, are flourishing and multiplying in their numbers because of their aggressive and methodical proselytization world wide.
As for Serandip or Sarandib (literally, "the golden island" or the current day Sri Lanka), being Adam's original abode, don't you think the paradisical Garden of Eden was more likely to have been located in that lush tropical jewel of an island (complete with big, bad serpents) than in the arid landscape of the middle east?
Posted by: Ruchira Paul | February 13, 2007 at 11:05 AM
I mentioned the Adam/Serandib connection, but forgot to mention why it rang a bell for me: Here's the Wiki linkto 'SriPada', also thought by at least some Christians to be Adam's footprint- though the same formation has been interpreted as being Buddha's or Shiva's footprint as well.
Posted by: Sujatha | February 13, 2007 at 02:00 PM
Ruchira,
Now that you mention it, Sri Lanka's lush tropical forests and wildlife do seem to resemble more closely the 18th depictionsof the garden of Eden in art than the native flora and fauna of the M.E.!
Posted by: Sujatha | February 13, 2007 at 03:14 PM