Fate: Centuries of persecution by Muslim rulers who labeled them devil-worshippers. Massacred repeatedly — Ottoman sources record 72 distinct massacres between the 16th and 20th centuries. Most recently: ISIS declared them mushrikeen (polytheists) and conducted a genocide against the Sinjar Yazidis in 2014, killing thousands of men and enslaving thousands of women and girls. An estimated 5,000–10,000 were killed; ~7,000 women and children enslaved. The Yazidi community, numbering perhaps 500,000 before 2014, was severely reduced.

The Yazidis are not devil-worshippers — this is a profound misreading. Their theology is a syncretic system combining elements of ancient Mesopotamian religion, Zoroastrianism, pre-Islamic Kurdish religion, Sufi Islam, and Christianity. The central figure, Melek Taus (the Peacock Angel), is identified by outsiders with Iblis (Satan) because he refused to bow to Adam — but in Yazidi theology this refusal was an act of loyalty to God (he would bow only to the divine), not rebellion. Yazidis are strict endogamists with a caste system; they do not proselytize and do not accept converts. Their sacred text the Kitab al-Jilwa and the Mishefa Resh are largely oral traditions. The academic consensus is that Yazidism is a pre-Islamic indigenous religion of the Kurdish highlands that absorbed Islamic and Christian elements, not an Islamic sect at all — but their geographic position within the Muslim world and their theology’s surface resemblance to Satanism (to Muslim eyes) made them perpetual targets.