A “growing number of Kurds…are leaving Islam to embrace the faith of their ancestors—Zoroastrianism,” reported Agence France Presse (AFP) in 2019, a development similar to that of many neighboring Iranians. These Kurds have experienced in Islam only oppression and have turned to the ancient Zoroastrian faith as a belief alternative, thereby continuing a longstanding Kurdish search for an independent cultural identity.
Zoroastrianism takes its name from the faith’s founding prophet Zarathustra, known as Zoroaster in the West, who preached sometime between 1800 and 1000 BCE. For a millennium, Zoroastrianism was the official faith of Persian emperors who ruled the Kurdish region before Arab Muslim invaders overthrew the Sassanid Empire in 641. Because Zoroastrian concepts such as god and the devil, good and evil, and a final judgment later appeared in Judaism, Christian, and Islam, some call Zoroastrianism the “mother of all revealed religions.”
Although Richard Foltz, a professor at Montreal’s Concordia University, noted in 2017 that the overwhelming majority of Kurds have been Muslims since the seventh century, the Islamic State marked a watershed in recent years. The barbarism of these jihadists, whose “caliphate” conquered wide swaths of Mesopotamia in Iraq and Syria for several years beginning in 2014, repulsed numerous Kurds. Kurdish Yezidis, whose faith is often identified with Zoroastrianism, suffered particular horrors after the jihadists occupied Yezidi regions. As University of Alabama Professor Edith Szanto in 2018 observed, some Kurds have responded by rejecting Islam in favor of other worldviews, including atheism and Zoroastrianism.
Mariwan Naqshbandi, spokeswoman for the Ministry of Endowment and Religious Affairs of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq, explained in 2015 that many Kurds “are very angry with the Islamic State group and its inhumanity.” Peerq Ashna Abdulqadr Raza, a Kurdish Zoroastrian female spiritual leader, elaborated on this reassessment of Islam in 2017. If “your house has been bombed, your daughter kidnapped or your family massacred, people don’t want to be associated with the thing that supposedly enabled that.”
Szanto has noted that the Islamic State only compounded Kurdish alienation from Islam that resulted from Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s tyranny. In the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, Hussein’s “regime increasingly employed Islamic symbolism,” such as by cursing Iranians as majūs, literally the word for Zoroastrian “Magi” that often serves in Arabic as a slur for Persian Zoroastrians. This implied “Arabs as the only true Muslims,” an impression only strengthened when Hussein named his simultaneous genocidal campaigns against secessionist Kurds after the Quran’s al-Anfal (“spoils of war”) chapter. Hussein’s repeated invocation of Islam only “strengthened Kurdish alienation from Islam and the Kurds’ identification with Zoroastrianism.”
This identification actually has a long pedigree for the Middle East’s over 25 million Kurds, who have never developed an independent state, but rather have lived since World War I as often repressed minorities in Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. As Foltz observed, Kurdish nationalists since the 1930s have claimed Zoroastrianism as the Kurds’ “original” religion. Kurdish nationalist thought drew significantly from “secular intellectuals, who sought to distance the Kurds from their Arab and Turkish overlords by emphasizing a Kurdish pre-Islamic identity.”
Szanto has similarly noted that in the 1970s and 1980s, Zoroastrianism “became a central tenet of the Kurdish nationalist movement in Turkey” and Iraq. This included the Marxist-Leninist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, or PKK), founded in 1978, which has fought for Kurdish independence from Turkey since 1984. The PKK’s longtime leader, Abdullah Öcalan, “openly taught that Zoroastrianism is morally and intellectually superior to Islam” and contrasted Zoroastrianism with Kurdish “oppression by Islamic, feudal enemies both within and without.”
Popular Middle East Kurdish culture also celebrates Zoroastrianism, Foltz has noted. An “emotional attachment to Zoroastrianism and its sacred text, the Avesta, is evident all over the Kurdish regions of Iraq and Turkey” in shop and restaurant names. Afrin, a northwest Syrian Kurdish town, even has a Zoroaster statue in a major square.
Today Iraqi Kurds “have created their own versions of Zoroastrianism, which is nationalist, postmodern, and liberal,” Szanto has analyzed. As Azad Saeed Mohammad, head of the Iraqi Kurdish Zoroastrian organization Yasna, stated in 2019, Kurds need “our ancient religion to revive our identity and build the nation.” Meanwhile, the “passport” of the internationally unrecognized KRG features the winged Zoroastrian faravahr symbol, and the KRG officially claims that “Yezidism/Zoroastrianism was the original Kurdish religion,” according to Foltz.
“Antipathy to Islam and to Arabs is fundamental” accordingly for Kurdish converts to Zoroastrianism, Szanto has stated. Like Iranian nationalists, “Kurdish converts generally begin by explaining that they have been oppressed by Arabs” and “Islam was forced upon their ancestors.” In particular, “Kurdish converts define Islam as inherently violent and oppressive of women”; they condemn polygamy and veiling, while blaming Islam for Islamic State sex slavery, which ravaged the Yezidis, and Kurdish honor killings. “As a woman, you’re treated like an animal—a donkey to be bought and owned and beaten by men as they please,” was how a KRG convert to Zoroastrianism described in 2017 her former Muslim life.
“For many more-liberal or more-nationalist Kurds, the mottos used by the Zoroastrians seem moderate and realistic,” Naqshbandi contrasted, as Kurdish Zoroastrians have interpreted their faith in a progressive manner. For them, “counteracting climate change is a priority and the overriding sentiment is that however you choose to live your life is OK—as long as you’re not hurting anybody else,” stated one decades-long student of Zoroastrianism in 2017. Awat Hussamaddin Tayib, a Yasna leader, is the only female religious representative to the KRG Ministry of Endowment and Religious Affairs, and has boasted of Zoroastrianism’s lack of “gender discrimination.”
Such worldly concerns clearly take precedence over religious tradition for Kurdish Zoroastrians. As Szanto noted, “modern Kurdish converts are generally not interested in either learning Zoroastrian texts or following historically documented Zoroastrian rituals as they are practiced in Iran and India.” Historically for Kurdish nationalists like Öcalan, Foltz concluded, “and for the PKK at large, Zoroastrianism has been more of a cultural symbol than a religious one.”
Indeed, Foltz has observed, often “advocates of ‘Zoroastrian’ identity are in fact suspicious of or even opposed to religion, and see a streamlined Zoroastrian ethic as a harmless substitute.” Correspondingly, while Kurdish “neo-Zoroastrian” leaders now claim over 100,000 followers and the KRG’s first Zoroastrian temple officially opened in 2016, Zoroastrians globally are not necessarily celebrating. Many believe that people must be born Zoroastrian, and therefore “Zoroastrianism being embraced by people not born to Zoroastrian parents is highly controversial within traditional Zoroastrian communities,” he has noted.
Kurdish Zoroastrianism’s liberal, revisionist nature owes much to Europe’s influence. As Szanto noted, Zoroastrianism has spread among Kurds in Europe since the 1990s, and Kurds from this diaspora originated Zoroastrian institutions in the KRG in 2015. Foltz likewise observed that Swedish Kurdish converts to Zoroastrianism now claim 3,000 or more followers, while a Zoroastrian fire temple opened in Stockholm on the 2012 Iranian New Year.
Turkish media reacted bitterly to the Stockholm temple opening, Foltz noted, calling its founding priest a kāfer. This incident reflects the hostility some Muslims have shown Kurdish Zoroastrians, who have accused some Muslim leaders of inciting violence against Zoroastrians. Moreover, one Muslim Kurd marketed diapers in 2015 with the name Avesta, leading Kurdish Zoroastrians to accuse him of denigrating Zoroastrianism.
Tayyib in particular, who had been living in Europe until 2013, in 2017 filed a legal complaint against a Kurdish Islamic preacher. A BBC Persian journalist had asked the preacher what he thought of hundreds of Kurdish Muslims converting to Zoroastrianism or Christianity. The preacher replied that Islam mandated the death penalty for apostates, remarks that Tayyib claimed were similar to statements he had made at his mosque and in a newspaper.
For all of the Kurds’ devotion to Zoroastrianism, Szanto has determined that they have created an “imagined ideal” and “invented tradition.” For Foltz, the “Kurdish claim to Zoroastrian heritage is extremely problematic,” and the boast that Zoroaster was a Kurd “is unfortunately baseless,” as he most likely came from the Persian Empire’s eastern territory. “Zoroastrianism certainly had a presence in Kurdistan during the pre-Islamic period,” but “it is not clear whether these traces were left by foreign elites from Iran or if they actually represent any degree of penetration among the local population.”
Foltz has other critiques of Kurdish Zoroastrian mythology, such as how Kurdish “conflation of the Yezidi religion with Zoroastrianism is not supported either by similarities in doctrine or practice nor by any historical evidence.” Indeed, “most Yezidi religious leaders today emphatically state that they are not Zoroastrians.” Contrary to Kurdish nationalist espousals of Western values, “Kurdish societies remain for the most part deeply conservative, with tribal and patriarchal values continuing to play a significant role.”
Yet many Kurds seem undeterred, a measure of their desperation for cultural self-affirmation. By contrast, Islamic culture has neither brought peace domestically, nor with the Kurds’ stronger Muslim neighbors. Visions of Zoroastrianism, however fictional, are preferable to Islam’s often undeniably harsh realities.
cornelius says
Interesting article….but no mention of actual numbers.
Kepha says
Too bad they are not turning to Jesus Christ.
Anjuli Pandavar says
This can only encourage the Zoroastrian revival in Iran; no bad thing.
Giacomo Latta says
Let them start with learning that the world isn’t flat. That may put them on the right track.
gravenimage says
Unfortunately Iran’s Zoroastrian population is just .0007%.
Chintamani says
Zoraster ( Zarathustra ) was a king. His ancestors were following the Rigvedic culture, which is one of the branches of the Sanatan ( Eternal ) Dharma ( Set of principles ) followed in Bharat ( aka India ). This culture believes that Sun is most sacred form of God because it gives us energy and also believes that Fire should be preserved because it is also a form of energy. Such a culture came to an end when the Islamic Barbarian entered Iran ( The Land of Aryans ) via Iraq. It is good to know that some of them are going back to roots.
Surender says
Zoroastrianism is an extinct religion now unfortunately but only a small minority has survived. Zoroastrian religion found its saviour in India in its West coast after the Iranians who were Zoroastrians were expelled and found shelter in India. The Indian Hindu King Jadhav Rana permitted them to practice their religion freely on West coast . These people were called Parsis because in India Iran was known as Persia. They were trickling into India from 716 AD to around 936 AD. They established their first fire temple around 721 AD on West Coast of India.
They were expelled from Iran and settled in Hormuz where they continued to be persecuted and finally left for India to escape torture and genocide They also believed in an ancient God Mithra called Mitra in India. In India his huge rock statue of Mitra can still be seen at a place called Mulbek in Laddakh, India. I have the snap of him with me. This great rock engraving came up around Ist century BC and was ordered by one of the Indian Emperors Kanishka belonging to Kushan dynasty.
They have their divinity in fire or the Sun, the progenitor of life and planets around us. Sun is also called Surya Dev, Dev meaning light in Sanskrit. Any one who and which excels in bestowing light is called Dev. Mithra was common to both Indians and Zoroastrians.
The Zoroastrian community in India is in microscopic minority of several thousands only. Their population has dwindled in India over centuries because of migration and strict code of marriage within Parsi community only. Zoroastrianism emanated from knowledge, wisdom, truth , peace and blessings.
They have done miracles for India and for them selves. A great and wonderful people who made their mark in all walks of life. One of India’s top Army Chief was made Field Marshal of India who led India in 1971 war with Pakistan and won it. His name Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw. Generally they make excellent Armed Forces officers, are ground to earth visionaries, easily accessible to all. THEY HAVE PLAYED AN ACTIVE ROLE IN INDIA’S FREEDOM STRUGGLE. They are one of the richest community in India. The richest man in India is RATAN TATA a Parsi Zoroastrian. He is a great philanthropist and industrialist. The community has given to India artists, nuclear scientists, eminent politicians, educationists and what not. I had the opportunity of serving with them. My impression about them …..a true reflection of pristine glory of God and their virtues the best. Zoroastrianism rightly deserves to be the future light of entire West Asia, particularly Iran which owes its survival and existence to Zoroaster without which it would be hard for it to carry on further now.
Incidentally, India’s woman Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was married to a Zoroastrian. It was because of Parsi or Zoroastrian atomic scientists, India has become a nuclear state as this took of under the stewardship of a scientist Dr Homi J. Bhaba who was a Zoroastrian. The community has 100 percent literacy and men and women free to participate in all walks of life.. This small community has been responsible for India’ rise. Wherever they went, they changed the scene from darkness to light. They share themselves the intellect of extinct ancient India sages dating back to 7-8 centuries BC.
The reemergence of these glorious people and their faith Zoroastrianism is going to bring back to Persia and people of Middle East their brilliant civilization, learning, prosperity and greatness back given a chance. Their empire once extended from borders of India to Europe. They have produced Emperors like Cyrus and Darius. The community is just in existence in India alone where they are permitted full freedom and opportunity. India has always allowed gentle people like Zoroastrians and like among them but has always resisted devils of history who brought violence and darkness with them and unspeakable horror.
peter says
Here! Here! I second everything you have said and more .They are really God’s chosen people for India
gravenimage says
Kurds Attempt to Return to a Zoroastrian Future
……………….
I hope so. But right now, most Kurds are Muslim.
According to Wikipedia about 500 Kurds are Zoroastrian–out of a population of about 5.1 million. That’s about .00009% of the population. Even the decimated population of Yezidis is higher.