Is ISIS driving people to Zoroastrianism?

There was a report last week by Alaa Latif from the Iraq-focused news site NIQASH to the effect that some Kurds in Iraq, confronted by Islamic extremism in the form of ISIS and experiencing a resurgence of Kurdish nationalism, may be converting to Zoroastrianism. The numbers are unknown and probably not huge, but this is in the context of a religion that has, in the absolute most optimistic estimates, maybe about 2.6 million adherents around the world (most other estimates put the number closer to about 200,000), so every conversion is potentially meaningful. Here’s Latif’s opening paragraphs:

One of the smallest and oldest religions in the world is experiencing a revival in the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan. The religion has deep Kurdish roots – it was founded by Zoroaster, also known as Zarathustra, who was born in the Kurdish part of Iran and the religion’s sacred book, the Avesta, was written in an ancient language from which the Kurdish language derives. However this century it is estimated that there are only around 190,000 believers in the world – as Islam became the dominant religion in the region during the 7th century, Zoroastrianism more or less disappeared.

Until – quite possibly – now. For the first time in over a thousand years, locals in a rural part of Sulaymaniyah province conducted an ancient ceremony on May 1, whereby followers put on a special belt that signifies they are ready to serve the religion and observe its tenets. It would be akin to a baptism in the Christian faith.

There are a few things wrong here as far as I know, and admittedly I’m not a Zoroastrian expert so bear with me. The big problem is declaring that Zoroaster “was born in the Kurdish part of Iran,” when the fact is that nobody really knows much of anything about Zoroaster for sure, especially not from the early part of his life. This is, after all, a guy who probably lived in the 6th century BCE (but maybe even earlier than that) and whose religion didn’t really catch on until after he died. It’s possible that he and/or his father may have come from a region south of the Caspian Sea that is now in “Iranian Kurdistan,” but there’s also a strong case to be made from studying the Avesta that Zoroaster never left the eastern part of Iran. The second problem is the argument that Kurdish derives from the Avestan Language; my understanding is that Avestan was/is an Eastern Iranian language, while the Kurdish dialects are all Western Iranian languages, so while they hypothetically shared a common, proto-Iranic ancestor, they aren’t directly related.

Still, the Kurds are an Iranian people, and Zoroastrianism is the ancient Iranian religion, so it makes sense that amidst a revival of Kurdish nationalism, and threatened by an extremist variant of Iran’s adopted Islamic faith, some Kurds might very well turn (back?) to Zoroastrianism as an alternative:

In fact, Zoroastrians believe that the forces of good and evil are continually struggling in the world – this is why many locals also suspect that this religious revival has more to do with the security crisis caused by the extremist group known as the Islamic State, as well as deepening sectarian and ethnic divides in Iraq, than any needs expressed by locals for something to believe in.

“The people of Kurdistan no longer know which Islamic movement, which doctrine or which fatwa, they should be believing in,” Mariwan Naqshbandi, the spokesperson for Iraqi Kurdistan’s Ministry of Religious Affairs, told NIQASH. He says that the interest in Zoroastrianism is a symptom of the disagreements within Islam and religious instability in the Iraqi Kurdish region, as well as in the country as a whole.

“For many more liberal or more nationalist Kurds, the mottos used by the Zoroastrians seem moderate and realistic,” Naqshbandi explains. “There are many people here who are very angry with the Islamic State group and its inhumanity.”

These “converts,” if they really are converts, risk being labeled apostates and putting themselves in hot water with Islamic authorities, but it sounds like the Iraqi Kurdish community is supportive of whatever is going on and, frankly, at this point Iraqi leaders can’t afford to do anything that might alienate the Kurds. Zoroastrianism is an ancient faith whose influences are still heavily felt today (take the parts of modern Judaism or Christianity you know best and there’s a good chance that many of them — judgment after death, depictions of Satan as God’s enemy, eternal reward/punishment, arguably even monotheism itself — can be traced back to Zoroastrianism’s influence on the “Second Temple” Judaism that emerged out of the Babylonian Captivity), and it’s interesting to see it making a comeback, even if only a small one.