Why the Ezidis are an ethnic group

In the field of ethnology, scholars originally spoke mainly of “peoples”. This changed as a result of the work of the influential ethnologist Shirokogoroff: from the 1920s onwards, the term “ethnos” (a synonym for “people”) came into use. In the German-speaking world, the term “ethnic group” has replaced words such as “people” since the 1950s (Beer, 2019). An “ethnic group” can be defined as a predominantly endogamous community spanning many families, whose members – in distinguishing themselves from other people – share a common descent, a common history and usually a common set of values and norms. Endogamy (marriage within the group) means that marriage partners are mainly sought within this community (Beer, 2019). What should be emphasised in this definition is that, in endogamy, marriage partners are mainly chosen within one’s own ethnic group. This apparently applies to all ethnic groups worldwide – except the Ezidis, where the aspect of “marriage within the group” is presented under the guise of religion (keyword: “strict religious marriage rules among the Ezidis”). Whether this is legitimate and what the actual reasons for it are will be explained later.

Alenfelder (2019) states that the term “ethnic group” refers to a group of people bound together by common characteristics such as language, culture and customs. According to Schmitt (2019), an ethnic group has a common history, a common culture and a connection to a particular territory. He further lists a sense of community, or “a feeling of solidarity and togetherness for an identifiable population of people”, which includes a common language (Schmitt, 2019). Summarising the core statements of the definitions presented so far, an ethnic group can broadly be described as a group with a common language, culture and customs, history and common origin. Alenfelder (2019) also mentions the feeling of solidarity or community. In view of social diversity and people’s individual social backgrounds and ways of life – for example ideological and political attitudes – this aspect is left aside in the following explanation: if it were taken into account, any attempt to examine an ethnic group as a collective would fail, at least when the question is one of ethnic categorisation. From the definitions presented, individual terms that should be of great importance for an ethnic categorisation are listed and explained below.

Finding: The definitions of an ethnic group show no association with religion – because religion is a domain of its own.

In the following, the terms identified above are discussed one by one in relation to ethnicity and explained using the example of the Ezidis.

Culture

Fundamentally, culture refers to how people shape their life together (Pawlak, 2019) – how Ezidis live among themselves and how they encounter non-Ezidis. To examine the term more closely, it first seems necessary to fill it with concrete points in order to determine whether the “way of life” is shaped by Ezidi or by “non-Ezidi (and thus Kurdish)” practices. Take marriage and wedding customs: in Germany, nobody would ever think – so the argument goes – that the stag or hen party, the flower children at the wedding, “carrying the bride over the threshold” or “throwing rice” (one of the oldest German wedding customs) have religious connections. When it comes to the Ezidis, things become interesting. In literature, under the name “Ezidis”, all of the following wedding customs are presented under the guise of religion (keyword: “religious marriage rules among the Ezidis”). In the past, predominantly negative associations were often mentioned in this context, as terms such as “honour killings” show – and these were frequently traced back to the religion of a community. If one asks those concerned in which orally transmitted religious passage this (the legitimisation of killing in religion) is mentioned, there will be no adequate answer. If such an act is justified by religion because the perpetrator was supposedly very religious, then one should in the same breath ask about the creed – which, as a rule, cannot be stated, owing to a lack of knowledge about the religion. Faced with such critical questions, the perpetrator’s attempt to justify his behaviour by a religion that supposedly calls for death would fail. Unfortunately, in the past this did not usually happen (not even among outsiders). It would have been necessary to get to the bottom of myths instead of continuing to reproduce them. Attributing the behaviour of individuals – regardless of their social background (such as race, class, body and gender) – to their religion or ethnicity is stigmatising and discriminatory. In this section, we therefore make an objective attempt to examine the concept of culture in the context of wedding customs. As already mentioned, there are German customs that are practised at German weddings quite apart from religion. Among Ezidis, the following examples can be named:

• “The husband fetching his wife from her parents’ home”;
• after a “getting-to-know-each-other phase” with his future wife, the man has the option of visiting the home of his future wife’s parents together with his own parents and witnesses, in order to ask for the daughter’s hand in marriage;
• OR the option of “eloping” with his wife. It should be noted here that the option of “eloping” with one’s beloved, without taking the parents’ views and attitudes into account, has been used comparatively more often than one might expect – including in the Ezidis’ homeland, which is currently under foreign occupation.

On the wedding day there is often a tree decorated with sweets, among other things (“dara mraza”), which is meant to symbolise happiness for the bridal couple. In the Ezidis’ homelands this tradition was lived more intensively, while today, especially in the West, it is handled in different ways. In the post-Soviet region, for example in Armenia or Georgia, this wedding ritual is practised comparatively intensively among Ezidis.

When the “wedding car” arrives at the wedding hall, the husband traditionally opens the car door for his wife so that she can step out. On the way to the entrance of the hall, the wife throws an oval ball – often made of clay and filled with money and sweets – onto the ground; if it breaks apart, this promises happiness for the marriage. Naturally, during or after the wedding a person (usually a married couple) talks with the bridal couple, advising them on the challenges of married life and preparing them for it.

At an Ezidi funeral, the deceased is wrapped in a white shroud (“kefen”), laid in the sack and buried. Before and after the burial, mourning usually takes place together over a total of three or seven days, often in a rented hall. Food and drink are offered throughout. Reducing a traditional and very time-consuming Ezidi funeral to religion would describe a constructed situation that does not exist in reality: during the funeral, religious prayers (dua) and hymns (qawl) are usually recited for a few minutes at most. Objectively, the share of cultural practices at a three- or seven-day Ezidi funeral (serving food and drink as an expression of basic hospitality) is far greater than the religious part actually practised. That part is usually performed by one person, while the others do not repeat it, but partly listen and partly continue to look after the many guests. To give an example relating to our basic question (ethnic group versus religious group), let us briefly look at religious practices at Muslim or Christian funerals. There, without doubt, those present partly repeat and/or imitate the religious practices during the address of an imam or priest – a difference like “night and day” compared with the Ezidi community described above. To give the concept of culture more substance, let us look at New Year, which is celebrated worldwide at the end of the last day of December – and which, of course, Ezidis celebrate too. Nobody would ever attempt to interpret New Year’s Eve as a religious occasion. Why should this be any different for the Ezidis, who celebrate their own New Year in April? Ezidis are – partly through their own fault – said to have a religiously motivated New Year’s festival, which is far removed from everyday Ezidi reality. The Ezidi New Year certainly contains a comparatively small religious element, but, as for the population at large, it should be categorised as a “cultural” festival. It is interesting at this point to look back to the time of the Sumerians, who also celebrated New Year in April and are not understood as a religious group.