 Thank you all for joining us in this event. It really is an honor and a privilege to have Gerard here. His book is one of the most beautiful books I've read. And I read 20 books at a time. There's not an hate that goes by without me reading. But his book is such a beautiful and fascinating book that records a history of the Middle East that is all but forgotten. So it's such an honor to be here with Gerard. Gerard has worked for 14 years as a British and United Nations diplomat. He went to my university, Oxford. So went to Balliol College where he studied ancient languages and philosophy. And he is a fluent speaker of Arabic and Arabic. He lived in Jerusalem, Iraq, Afghanistan. And is a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School from 2010 to 2011. He's also a senior fellow with the New America Foundation. And I can talk about Russell's impressive travel and his in-depth knowledge of the Middle East. Unlike many diplomats, he didn't stay isolated from the places and people where he served but actually get to know them in depth. But I will let Russell tell us about his experience in the Middle East and his writing this book. Thank you so much, Nadia. And it's wonderful to see many friends in the audience today. And let me single out Benid Zaraka sitting here at the front because he is one of the 750 remaining Samaritans. And you have the numbers are increasing, which is a wonderful thing. Samaritans who have for over 2,000 years, for many thousands of years, kept continuously the traditions of the Pentateuch. And whose Passover sacrifice on Mount Gerizim, the holy mountain next to the city of Nablus, I was able to attend. And wonderful to see him here. Exactly. The front cover of this book is a picture of the Samaritans. I don't know whether Benny, you were in that picture, but it is the Samaritans as a group and a really wonderful experience. One of the things that introduced me to these ancient religions of the Middle East was during my time in Jerusalem going up to Nablus and discovering the Samaritans there. And let me expand a bit on that because two of the things that really drew me to this subject when I was looking at how to draw on my experiences as a diplomat to write something that I felt might be of value. There were two things that attracted me to this subject besides the intrinsic interest that I felt in the history and the wonderful philosophies and beliefs of these religions was that I felt that they helped us to understand the links that bind us to our own past as humanity but also the links that exist between all different parts of humanity. However much we may feel separated by religion, race, language, history, we will find always bridges that will link us to each other. In the case of the Samaritans actually people who carry both Palestinian and Israeli identity cards, people who form a bridge in many ways between Jews and Arabs in a troubled part of the world. I also think in the course of this study that it's possible to learn something about Islam and it's wonderful to have Professor Akbar Ahmad here with us who has written so knowledgeably on this subject as well. And it is a privilege to have you here, sir. And to learn something about the history of Islam, particularly at this moment with the Islamic State ravaging the territories of Syria and Iraq, destruction not just by them but by the government of Bashar al-Assad and others, destruction of the physical heritage of that country but also terrible damage to its human heritage because the ideas that people have are just as much a part of that human heritage as any building. And although you can get a UNESCO status for an archaeological site, the disappearance of world religions is also something that we should lament and to try to preserve them, to at least memorialize them, to keep the memory of what they believe alive is something that I was trying to do with this book. And I want to sort of begin by casting us back to the very remote past. And as I go along in the course of the next half hour or so, just to kind of try at each stage to explain how although these religions can seem so distant, so exotic, so remote, how they connect with the past of any of us because all of our customs, though they may seem as though they are isolated from the past, are often rooted in things to which these religions can point us. Even right back, if we think back to the history of Iraq, which is the most, one of the longest histories of any civilization that we know of, 4,000, over 4,000 years ago the epic of Gilgamesh told a story of a flood, told through epic poetry the life of a king, Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu, an extraordinary story, very alien in many ways. And yet sometimes familiar, even humor. Forgive me, there's a line in it, a curse against a prostitute which is in some ways humorous. You see, may wild dogs camp in your bedroom, may drunkards vomit all over you, may angry wives sue you. And it's an example of humor from 4,000 years ago, humor that if Odysseus was a real person, he would have looked at this and thought this is ancient history. Now that religion, the religion of the ancient Iraqis, as it were, is of course dead. The goddess Ishtar, the god Marduk, survive only by the way in certain Jewish first names, Esther and Mardukhai, which has become Mordukhai, two names memorialized in the book of Esther, which connect again, connect us today with that remote past. And yet also among the Mandaians of Iraq, are people who live in the southern marshes of Iraq who have increasingly now been scattered by the terrible conflict that has convulsed that country. We do find remnants of Babylonian culture. We find spells discovered by a lady called Ethel Stefanadroa, a British student of the Mandaians, who in the course of her research is in the 20th century, in the 1940s, discovered extant and spells still in use at that time, which invoked the gods Bell and Nebu, as in Nebu Khadneza, words that had literally been preserved for over 2,000 years in continuous use. And it is worth commenting, by the way, that Mandaians also preserve elements. There is a little bit of a kind of discussion around their origins. There's clearly a lot of Babylonian elements. There's probably some elements that come from Judaism as well because they revered John the Baptist as a prophet. This confused the Portuguese when the Portuguese encountered the Mandaians in the Middle Ages, and they wondered whether these people were Christians because they talked about a Saint John. But the Saint John that they revered is Saint John the Baptist. And it's conceivable that they have a connection with those refugees, those Jewish refugees who fled eastwards as the temple was destroyed in the 1st century AD, fled east into Mesopotamia, taking refuge in the marshes of southern Iraq. And one of the things that you can see in the book is a picture of those marshes, just to give you an idea of thousands of little islands protected by rivers against the outside world, in which those people could survive for so long. In the case of the Yazidis, now the Yazidis you will have heard of because of the tragic events that have affected them this past year. I was there in August to see them a really lamentable experience because I had for so long wanted to go to Sinjar to see where the heartland of the Yazidis is and to experience what could be seen there. And I couldn't get there. I had planned to go and of course by the time I wanted to actually reach Iraq and by the time I had done it, Sinjar had gone. The Yazidis had, I met them but they were refugees, crammed into a tiny collection of tents and desperately pleading to be able to leave Iraq. That people has been not in precisely their current form, but in terms of their traditions and ideas and their origins has been there for thousands of years. We can see this partly because the cult of Mithras which spread in the Roman Empire in the second century AD and which by the way is the origin of our custom of handshaking. If we think about the handshake it's so normal. It's hard, you know, for some time I couldn't quite believe that there could seriously be this origin to it. But if you think about it, people explained it to me when I was younger. They said, oh, it's because you're not holding a sword, you pick a sword aside. Not necessarily because actually, of course, it isn't necessarily the conventional form of greeting. Hugging and kissing was also much more common in certain cultures. But it was used by the Mithras worshippers as a symbol of sacred fraternity. A little bit, I mean, I'll come to the premises in a second, but they called themselves the people united by the handshake. We know almost nothing about them because they were so secretive about their own beliefs. And this touches on a really common feature of the ancient religions which still survive in the Middle East that they do not always teach to their followers the inner truths of the faith. And this seems very perplexing. And it's very perplexing researching the Yazidis trying to understand what they believe because you don't talk to them and they often don't, they say they don't know. The Druze would say they don't know. And sometimes give you different versions and it can be very confusing and odd and you think, well, how can a religion not teach people, you know, isn't that what religion is all about? But not necessarily. It was quite common in the ancient world to have a class of priests who would know the sacred truths of the faith and didn't teach them to the people. And actually, of course, you know, even looking at Christianity, even looking at Judaism, even looking at Islam, there are, in fact, in each religion, secrets. In the Quran, certain lines, certain letters which are not the meaning of which is still not understood. Sacred mystery. Jesus in the Gospel says that he's telling his apostles things that he doesn't tell to the disciples. And this tradition was kept alive by a man called Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher, a terribly important man for understanding in a way as modern Middle East as strange. But let me just tell you a little bit about Pythagoras. I just find him so fascinating. I need to avoid getting caught in these by-ways of history because they're so wonderful. Pythagoras used to, he claims to have gone to Egypt, to Judea, even to Mesopotamia and to have learned from rabbis, from temple priests, from astrologers, certain secrets which they had not told to anyone else. And he instituted a Pythagorean brother the students had to keep silence for five years in order even to see their teacher face to face. And he insisted that they should not reveal anything that they've been taught. And they didn't, pretty much. To the extent that we really don't understand to this day why Pythagoreans could not be allowed to eat beans. It was a mystery in the ancient world and it remains a mystery today, we have no clue. But it's not a million miles away from the Azidis who have a taboo on eating lettuce, which, again, we don't understand. Actually such taboos were not uncommon. And in the city of Urfa today, a Muslim city, you can see sacred fish in the pool that sits by the main mosque of the city. And when I was there I asked, why are the fish so plentiful here? And they said, well, we're not allowed to kill them because they're sacred fish. They've been sacred since a very long time ago. They have been sacred since at least the third century AD. And the original sacredness was probably connected to the cult of Ishtar, to the cult of Aphrodite, as she is called. Still there today. The Azidis likewise do not kill fish. And it is just an example of how not only does this show how ancient traditions link people of today with the past, but also how they link both Muslims and Yazidis, because that culture is shared between the two religions, different as they may seem. Pythagoras is revered by Druze and Alawites. I could never quite get to the bottom because the Druze really do still keep some things secret, whether it is clear because Pythagoras taught reincarnation. He taught the eternity of the soul. The soul lives on, the body dies. And clearly, therefore, the Druze of today believe that they have existed before, they have existed throughout time. They believe themselves, in fact, to be bound by an oath, sworn by themselves as they see it. A thousand years ago, it's a little bit hard to grasp this idea, but a thousand years ago they, in previous incarnations, swore an oath of loyalty to al-Hakim, the then ruler of Egypt. Who they believe, and I'm sorry, this is going to get even more complicated, they believe to be a manifestation of God on earth. And yet, at the same time, they believe that Pythagoras and other seers, other teachers, Plato, Aristotle, have been reincarnated. That they are, in a sense, souls that have come to earth to teach wisdom and guidance to mankind. And that they come back in different forms, as Jesus, as Simon Peter, as Muhammad, as Salman, as Pharisee. They have a belief in the eternity of the soul and also that these teachers of the past come back to teach things in the present as well. And so, as I say, Greek philosophy, oddly though it may seem, has been pivotal to shaping some aspects of the Middle East, even today. One last figure I want to kind of look back at. Mani. Just to show again, you know, the links there are between the religions of the Middle East and also between the past and the present. Mani was a son of a man probably of noble Persian descent who, one day, offering sacrifice in a temple near what's now Baghdad, had a vision, a voice, which said to him, you must never eat meat, you must never drink alcohol, you must never have sex. And a strange sympathy seemed there was a whole community of people who followed this code. It might sound as if they wouldn't have lasted for very long, but they lived in the marshes of southern Iraq, to which I've referred before. And they cultivated land, and Mani grew up there, but he actually decided in the end that the rules were not strict enough, if you believe it. He said, okay, you're not eating meat, but he says, but you're plucking fruit from the trees. And actually this is a sin, because the fig tree, in this famous saying, the fig tree weeps for the fruit that is taken from its branches. So he instituted a system which involved the atonement for even the crime of eating fruit. I mean, you might say in certain ways it predates modern environmentalism in certain ways, although not perhaps ways that we would all wish to imitate since the Manicheans, as they were called, also believed they should not wash themselves in water, but instead in their own urine. This is less common today. They did practice this. But what they instituted was a fascinating social structure in which you could dedicate yourself to the religion completely. You could live lives of exemplary austerity, deep poverty, absolute chastity. And that was sort of 10% of the Manicheans, and the 90% just needed to pay a certain amount of money to maintain the 10%. And this vision of society was actually very popular. And the strange thing about it is that looking back, just you think of it as a little byway of history, not at all. It was a world religion. It was almost able to supplant Christianity. There was a moment in history where if a man called Sebastian had become Emperor of Rome, as he wished to be, and he was a Manichean, it's conceivable that Rome would have been promoting Manichean instead of Christianity, and that we would all today be washing ourselves in our own urine. But instead, he did not succeed. However, the religion did prove immensely popular. It did, even in the Middle Ages, in Southern China, it was a major force. So much that the Chinese authorities became alarmed and issued a prohibition against what they called the vegetarian demon worshipers. And yet, in China, it's even the case today that they believe there is a Buddhist temple where the statue which looks like that of Buddha is really that of money, and that even, perhaps unknowingly, even to the 20th century, this religion did survive. Certainly, it almost converted St. Augustine, as we know it did convert St. Augustine. He just, in the end, became a Christian, but he was a Manichean for a time. It is probable just to show you the links there are to bring this into the modern day, as you like. Every time that Christianity encountered the Manicheans, there was an element of almost being intimidated by the austerity of the Manichean elite, and particularly, obviously St. Augustine, who went on to be pivotal in the creation of Western monasticism, clearly had been impressed by the lives of the Manichean elders and therefore instituted, when he did become a Christian, a way of life that was much more austere and celibate, of course. Just as many hundreds of years later, when the Cathars were holding out at a place in France called Montsegur, I remember it because, in fact, I got engaged there in August, and so I have happy memories of Montsegur, but I'm afraid the history of the Cathars was not so happy. They were living in Montsegur, it was their last stronghold, and it was destroyed by the French state at the instigation of the Christian church, the Catholic church at the time. They were destroyed, but once more we see that this movement, which was deeply influenced by the Manicheans, and again had the same structure of a little elite group who followed absolute austerity and those around them who didn't have to do much, just had to support the elders. Again, you see that the Christian church reacted by instituting things like the Dominican movement, which was, again, a movement of wandering, austere, celibate friars. Even to this day then, through Western monasticism, we actually have a legacy of a kind from the Manicheans. And what's more, among the Druze of Lebanon, you see still 15% of Druze, roughly, in Lebanon at least, are sheikhs, or sheikhs, men and women, just as in, by the way, the Manicheans were rather exemplary in the sense that they allowed women to enter this class of elders, which was at the time pretty unusual, but which fitted in with a certain Persian tradition, an older Persian tradition of giving women a much greater status in society than they had in the Roman Empire. So Herodotus actually comments 5th century BC on the presence of a female admiral called Artemisia in the Persian Navy. It was noticed by the Greeks who were much less keen to enfranchise women. So among the Druze today, 15% of people follow lives of exemplary austerity. You can find hermits living on honey and pine nuts. You can find people who pray, meditate many times a day, who live lives that the highest of them will be celibate. It's very unusual in Islam, but it does exist among the Druze. And yet 85% of the Druze don't have to do anything, except to support that 15%. And if you ask Druze about their beliefs, if you ask them about their practices, they will tell you actually they don't have to do anything, and they don't tend to know anything about the faith, except certain basic facts such as the belief in reincarnation. So what link there is precisely to the Manicheans is hard to define through history, and yet what one sees is very clearly a legacy from the past in the present day. Now, one thing I want to talk about in, I guess, what remains is something about these religions and their faith in the present day. Because, I mean, there's so many things I could talk about them all day, but there's a book, which, of course, I want you all to read, which tells you a lot more. The Mandaians in Iraq, having survived for over 1,800 years and having preserved, as I say, elements of ancient Babylon, including the language of our Americans, eventually, are today 90% of the ones who lived in Iraq are living abroad. They have scattered Sweden, Australia, Canada, the high priest of the Mandaians who came to see me in 2006 and who, at that time, I thought it was an amazing thing. It was just the most amazing discovery to come across these people. I hadn't heard of them before. And yet, he, fearing for his family, for his own safety, has fled to Australia. My friend Nadja, about whom the first chapter of the book is a description of her experiences, lives now in St. Albans near London. Great numbers of these people have left. Now, in a way, you might say, why should we care? Why does this matter more than, let's say, and I don't say it matters that the life of any one person should matter more than the life of another. I don't mean to say that because people are Mandaians or Yazidis that they matter more than Muslims or Christians, vice versa. But what do we all lose when these religions die? And actually, I think the Middle East loses more than anybody, and it's Muslim culture which is going to suffer from this because actually, in the history of Islam, it has not always been a history of bloody confrontation. It's so easy to pluck things out of the past and to think this is the pattern there's always been. Easy to look at the Islamic state who themselves are very selective in their interpretation of history who wish to claim that Islam expanded through slaughtering the infidels and expelling the Christians and the Jews, and that is the policy that they've pursued. They wish to say that is how Islam succeeded. But actually, if one looks back at history, yes, of course there was bloodshed. I mean, every government at the time, I think of human history filled with misery and confrontation and religious oppression. I don't mean to whitewash it, but look at the same time at the fact. I talked a bit about the Yazidis, I talked a bit about where they come from. There was a people in the city of Haran, who practiced a religion very similar to the Yazidis to the point where I wonder if when Haran was destroyed, if the Yazidis have not, are known even to themselves, actually, preserved that ancient religion. We noted that it existed a thousand years ago because it was written about by a wonderful writer called Biruni who was a Muslim scholar, actually. A writer of, gosh, 50, more than 50 books. An anthropologist, a scientist, a philosopher, just an amazing character. And he tells us really with absolute objectivity about the religions of his time, and he tells us about Haran and how the people there worshipped, they prayed towards the sun three times a day. They revered Pythagoras as a prophet, they believed in reincarnation. Many other things that the Yazidis have not adopted, but those three things are still true. The Yazidis do pray three times a day towards the sun. And they had a temple to the god Shamash, the sun god as well as to the god Sin, who survived, I think, among the Yazidis, disguised because the Yazidis revered two figures they call Sheikh Sin and Sheikh Shamsh, which actually could be Muslim names, and probably it was a useful way to preserve their cult from persecution for some time, but which actually also have that odd resonance to those ancient gods. Well, the Haranians actually survived for centuries under the rule of the Umayyad and Abbasid Caliphs. And indeed, the story is told of how the Caliph discovered them, wasn't very happy to find them there and wondered what their beliefs were and actually wasn't necessarily prepared to tolerate them, except that they came up with a great, in essence, a cover story. Because the Quran singles out a people called the Sabians as a special consideration, essentially, along with Christians and Jews and others, religions that were considered essentially acceptable. The Sabians were named, and yet no one quite remembered who they were. And so the Haranians, probably, to be honest, by a trick, made out that they were the Sabians and therefore gained them for themselves a certain protection. And a man called Thabit ibn Qutr, here's a thing that links, not only the religions and cultures of the Middle East, but actually our own past and theirs, the Pythagorean theorem of triangles, which we all know, I think, the sum of, let's think if I get this right, the square of the Hepatomy is equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides. I think that's right. The extension of that theorem to a whole range of equilateral triangles, am I getting this right, was done by Thabit ibn Qutr, expanding on the work of Pythagoras. And as I say, it was for him a religious thing, as well as a kind of mathematical thing. This wasn't just about mathematics. The numbers both Pythagoras believed were actually the essence of the universe. And by the way, there's a little echo of this. Wonderful echo. Johannes Kepler, who was the astronomer, believed that mathematics, in this thought, was the language in which God communicates with man, a shared language between God and mankind. Well, Pythagoras believed something very similar to this. And so his theory of triangles wasn't just about triangles. He was saying there's a message in there. There's a moral law there. So Thabit ibn Qutr, in that tradition, was conducting a religious duty. He, therefore, gives to us, not only does he give to us something that we've all learned in school. From that remote Haranian past, he also was invited by the caliph at the time to come to Baghdad and be among the scholars who, in that city, which was the greatest city in the world at the time, was a powerhouse of knowledge and creativity. And so actually, in counter to the narrative of bloodshed and confrontation, we have examples of how, in fact, the greatness of Islamic civilization at that time was fostered through the diversity of religion, which existed in their empire. And I think there is something for us all to learn here and in the Middle East and beyond about how diversity of religion strengthens and does not weaken the culture. Through the many strands of human history and thought which it can bring, who'd have thought, for example, that the cause of mathematics could be promoted by an ancient belief inherited from Pythagoras through belief in reincarnation? Who'd have thought, for that matter, that the 20th century scientist and Iraqi Abdul-Jabbar Abdullah, who was a pupil of Einstein and he was very, very interested in astronomy because his people, the Mandions, have always believed that the sun, the moon and other heavenly bodies are intermediaries between God and man. And therefore that they have a certain semi-divine status and, of course, knew that's an ancient Babylonian belief, which they preserve. And so he, in his study at the feet of Einstein, was maintaining a very, very old tradition. Now I wanted to speak about this because I think it's so important to get the narrative of history right and I think that if we're looking at how I think that the problems, dare I say the problems of the Middle East, I think I probably dare to speak of the problems of the Middle East can be solved. I don't mean to say that, you know, that they're unique to the Middle East or that there's some reason why we should regard the Middle East as excessively, you know, particular in its issues, I think that they are human problems. But I believe that the narrative of history has been distorted and abused. In chapter six of the book, which looks at the cops, it was very interesting to me to find, as I talked to people about the conflict between Christians and Muslims in Egypt, to find how often the Christians would talk about the way that history had been changed, the way that it was taught in school, had been changed in the 1970s. At a time when the West was pretty happy to see on the whole Islamic conservatism come back into power because it felt that this was a bullock against radical nationalism, socialism, communism, and things that we were more afraid of. And both there and in Pakistan, governments which used its limit conservatism to galvanize the masses were perfectly tolerable in the eyes of the United States and Britain. It was at that time that the syllabus in Egypt was changed so that pre-Islamic history was compressed to the point where most cops felt as they learned about their own past, they weren't learning about their own past, they were learning only about the history of Islam. And I don't think that was just bad for them, it didn't just make them feel unwanted, which is one of the key things that people spoke to me about if they were leaving their countries because they felt unwanted. But also meant that those around them did not understand them properly. In other words, that Muslims who were being taught in schools did not necessarily always understand the nature of the minorities in the midst because it had been taken off their own syllabus. So if there's one thing I wanted to take away from the lesson from this, it was the importance of history. The importance of learning those right lessons from history as opposed to the wrong ones. And reinstating it as something which actually we could be involved with. Because the war against Islamic State and other groups like it, it's simply one more manifestation of a long-standing trend, is really about ideas and not about, I mean, it can be about bombs. I don't mean to say that in a facade way that you can just sort of argue with people and that military force is never an option. But I mean to say that actually you've got to engage with intellectual debate, as well as more forceful methods. And if there's something else I would want, I really wanted through the book, not only to explain to people in America, Canada, Australia, where these religions now are to be found, why we should value them and care about them and understand them, but also I wanted to explain to people in the Muslim world who I believe actually will like the book, why they should value them, preserve them and seek to keep them in their own communities because it is actually in their own interests. Not just as a thing which we can all kind of tell people, beat up on people in the Middle East and say you've got to do better. You've got to explain to people why they should want it for themselves. And so with some trepidation because occasionally in the course of the book I wondered whether translating it into Arabic would be unwise because some of the things in it, possibly little communities would not want, said in the Arab world. But I really do hope and believe that through promoting awareness of the value of religious diversity we can bring something useful to the Middle East. On that note Nadia, let me hand over to you and others for questions. Thank you so much. As I mentioned, this is such a beautiful and fascinating book and I actually, I really wanted it in Arabic because you know in the Arab world I mean I'm sure a lot of you know it's 80% of the population is really young and really receptive to learning something new and I dare say they really actually are sick of what we're taught in school because it dehumanizes so many who are, it demonizes even those of us who dare to think differently. So the educational system that exists there's a repulsion among us. So there's a lot of curiosity about what is really the truth because this cannot be the truth. It is too simplistic, it is too exclusive. Everybody else, it just doesn't make sense. So what I'm seeing is the internet has become the platform where people investigate an alternative history. All the books that have been banned are now available pirated on the internet and they are bestsellers. So, and especially I have in mind that story you mentioned about somebody who converted into a zero Austrianism because he wanted to go back to his heritage so given that the internet can offer such an amazing opportunity do you think there could be a way to convince those who hold these secrets to share them in a platform that cannot be silenced? Thank you, I think the question about the internet is a great question for several reasons. So what? Yeah, there are a lot of things on the internet in a way, you know, things that used to be kept secret can't be any longer and in a way these religions are both threatened by this but could be strengthened by it. So what I was lucky in, to be honest with you, is that, you know, for Lady Droa back in Iraq in the 40s it was really hard to find these Mandaian spells. She spent years searching because the priests were not willing to share and actually at the start of every holy book of the Mandaians is a curse because many of the elders of the religion who shares the contents with outsiders it is forbidden. It remains forbidden but the truth is that under the pressure of the internet under the pressure of, frankly, the knowledge that the priorities have changed that if you're going to live in Sweden, Australia and elsewhere you're going to need to promote awareness of what you believe especially among your own people they're beginning to open up and this is part of the reason why I could write the book relatively easy compared with the experience of those 70 years ago to discover what these religions teach. Not altogether, the Alawites are absolutely closed. I did find an Alawite. Actually, I'll tell you this, sorry, it's a little distraction. Now you've got to pull me back but I mean I went and I finally found an Alawite who could tell me because you can read books, there's a great book by Jaron Friedman about the Nusairi Alawites but it's all about the medieval Alawites called Nusairis originally. You can find easily what they believed because there are texts, medieval texts that have been discovered but to the present day people believe it this is something incredibly hard to find and I found somebody who said, yes, absolutely it's exactly as described but he said, you must never ever mention that I said this to you because, you know, and this guy was, by the way an open, he's from the Middle East and a devout atheist writes all kinds of criticism of Islam but he was unwilling, absolutely unwilling to be quoted on that issue because obviously it was still something about which there's immense sensitivity and I was even warned that I might be in some physical danger where I to pursue to deeply that line of inquiry so there are still those who want to hold the secrets tight but it is harder and harder besides which the internet is important for a second reason if you're Yazidi, they have immensely complex caste rules which mean that essentially it's very, very hard to find a marriage partner I talked to a guy in Lincoln, Nebraska actually who was Yazidi and he said even in his home village in Iraq where there are 10,000 Yazidis he said I cannot marry a single one because I've got to marry somebody who's from exactly my religious caste and exactly my tribe and the cross section includes a very small number of people who will probably now live in Sweden so he benefits from the fact that the internet can link up people through internet dating which is incredibly important for Yazidis, Druze and others because scattered across so many countries they have to use those methods to link each other together I'm glad by what you say about education which again I think is immensely important I was a little nervous at times putting stuff out there the Zoroastrian, you know particularly the fact that there are Muslims who are converted to Zoroastrianism is something that I was a little worried about writing I met plenty actually particularly from Iran some in Afghanistan whose existence is an absolute secret the fact that they exist is as I discovered is on the internet already and therefore I felt okay writing it in the book but I was in general a little cautious about some of these communities which do exist which are if you like ultra secret and remain incredibly, it's very, very sensitive but in that case as I say it is a publicly known fact and hasn't yet caused what I feared which was a kind of backlash You know I have to mention that I've been really surprised recently by the number of people who are using the internet I mean we are going to see definitely more religious tolerance because people are demanding it young people are demanding it there are thousands who are posting their pictures their IDs I no longer believe in Islam this is because I want to be a more humanistic person I don't believe in Islam i.e. how we study it and in the thousands declaring it on the internet and I mean what are you going to do but I'm sure there are millions more who want to question, who want to study so I think less and less we're going to see I mean of course not in the short term but in the long term but I will open the floor to others Professor Thank you Jirad comments and questions and let me congratulate you number one Jirad you have Thank you you have through this book and through your career single-handedly kept alive the tradition in British history of the scholar diplomat writing about his peoples and tribes and postings with great sensitivity in the tradition of Robertson writing about the coffers of the Hindu kosher book you know Karo writing about the Patans Evelyn Howell writing about the Masoods and so on secondly Jirad you have dealt with these tribes and communities and societies with great sensitivity you have given them honor and dignity and unfortunately in the post-911 world these tribes very often get short shrift and they get broad brushed with the entire society and very quickly they're pigeon-holed and categorized so you have restored that humanity to them my question is considering the importance of this work and we are discussing the importance of projecting these ideas are you thinking of and if not why not of making a documentary I want to see you walking around in these mountains and looking to camera and explaining them to us so that millions of other people actually see and hear what you have to say Thank you very much professor I greatly value the compliment coming from someone as distinguished as yourself and not only as a professor but as a diplomat and as a former senior official of the government of Pakistan and I agree with you about the documentary it's not in my gift but I would love to do I would love in particular to give a voice to these communities and some of the people I found and I was lucky to find them a wonderful expressive people who have not only speak for themselves you know Nadia doesn't in the chapter 1 isn't just speaking as a Bandai and she actually wants to speak as an Iraqi that's how she sees herself and they articulate therefore not only the aspirations and beliefs of their own communities but actually of a much broader community mainly Muslim community in which they see themselves as essentially members I would love that professor and you know let the word go out that would be great here please I wonder if I can press you a bit on the I wonder if I can press you a bit on the I mean what have you learned about them that we should know in dealing with the current situation one thing is very very important which is that it's an example I'm probably overly nervous and I get a little nervous about some issues where I think gosh I wonder what this is going to spark off you see there is such a perception sometimes particularly from Sunni Muslims that Shia Islam is un-Muslim and pagan so actually by the way I don't share the view of Hezbollah as they claim today that we have shared interests with them and we should side with them against however Hezbollah, by the way I think that all these groups which desire to group people by religious identity are fundamentally a very very bad thing for us all Hezbollah is labeled by its enemies as Hezbollah Hezbollah being an ancient goddess worshipped by the Arabs before Islam and that's a kind of example of how some of this stuff can get out of hand politically speaking so this is one reason why I was a little cautious the truth is though that the Alawites are not so far from Orthodox Shia Muslims that in terms of their beliefs that they are truly two separate religions and indeed I have my own suspicions about whether the Alawites are truly Muslims at all the thing is that this is such a kind of issue to get into it's like massively dangerous for them because they obviously the history begins with in a sense with the Orthodox Shia belief in the 12 Imams except that at a certain point they hive off in a way a little bit as the Mormons did in the history of Christianity with beliefs which they super added to Shia Islam to the point where actually it took them in a totally different direction believing in reincarnation believing in a whole series of fascinating characters from history including Alexander the Great and as well as Pythagoras and Plato who they believe were manifestations of the Divine Spirit including the belief that people can be reincarnated as trees and therefore when you sometimes see the prayer services which they hold they're done in groves of trees because they are sacred trees they have a ceremony which involves wine and bread in the same way they call it the mass actually they call it Qadas which is done by Alawite men Alawite elders and which they believe to be a sacred communing with the Divine one of the just a little brief excursion one of the things that I found kind of entertaining as I suppose a wine drinker myself was just that the Zoroastrian belief that the wine wine is a means by which one can commune with God and that Herodotus had this thing which he says which always used to amuse me which was that the ancient Persians never used to take a decision unless they made it both when they were drunk and when they were sober and it sounds a little odd but actually makes sense when you realize that the wine is actually for them a means of communing with the Divine so when the Alawites practice this and they speak of wine as a divine light which is the link to ancient Persian thought so when in the 20th century there's been a greater emphasis on the Alawites as a branch of she-ism it is a political move done really at the instigation of the Assad government to pretend that there is a religious basis for the alliance which they've made with Iran when in fact there is not and when the government has done that far from being a champion of the Alawite faith they have suppressed it because it's dangerous to their political ambitions and so what you find is those who've been in Syria and talked to the Alawites report this is that many of them actually say no the government is trying to destroy our religion far from trying to protect it to me it is a reminder of something else which is the way that although it's easy to look at the Middle East and think that it is entirely about religious conflict the reality is these are political conflicts with a religious veneer and that the Druze have beliefs that are almost exactly the same as the Alawite very very similar in certain ways and yet of course are not seen in quite the same way perhaps in Syria because of the way that they've taken the side of the government but in Lebanon they aren't seen in the way that the Alawites are seen and that's basically just because of politics by the way the Alawites and the Yazidis are closely related there was a missionary in the 19th century among the Alawites Samuel Leid who writes about how there are a lot of things that I've just described which kind of bring us up to the 19th century in terms of we know that they practice those things then and as I say I found this man who could not be named who confirmed it's still true who tells us that actually one half of the Alawites come from migrated from areas of northern Iraq and were originally Yazidis they they I found also a book you know this amazing book sorry this is such a long answer to your question there's an amazing book called After the Moon I referred to it in the book Baad al Qamar and it is an incredible thing okay can I take two minutes on this the belief that the sun and the moon and the five planets which the Babylonians could see were made up not only the seven days of the week which we still have of course but also they were seven planetary spirits the seven angels or archangels which you still find in Zoroastrianism you find it among the Yazidis as well this belief is held by Alawites today to the point that when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon it did cause a crisis a theological crisis the nature of this crisis is hard for me to identify I think I've worked it out the book which was written by an Alawite sheikh as an attempt to respond to this crisis did exist I found the publisher but no copy of it can be found anywhere because I believe they got hold of all the copies and popped them but a review of it can be found and in it the sheikh talks very clearly about the worship of the stars and the planets which just gives an idea of as I say how distant they are from orthodox Islam as we would understand well it is if one were to speculate there is a weird it was said to me I think it was by near Rosen actually who talked to them in Syria that there were some Alawites who believed that Bashar was as the Druze believed Al-Hakim to be a manifestation of the divine now that's pretty useful I could not speak to that I didn't meet those people but it struck me as a possibility it's also important to know that the Alawites do I don't it's such danger of kind of prioritizing them further but they do believe that they are not a bit like I mean they don't believe that they are human in the way that the rest of us are human they believe that they are a race set apart that they are fragments of the divine that they are reincarnated and that they possess within them some spark of the divine light and therefore well it just gives you some idea of A just how afraid they have been throughout most of their history poor and afraid and oppressed right up to the 1930s and 40s and this is the narrative they will tell when I talked to them in Lebanon was how they had been the maid servants not even the peasant farmers farmhands and that for hundreds of years this is all they remember is that they were the outcasts how hard it would be then to go to Russia and persuade them to take the risk of turning on their own I think we got a sense of that it does also make me quite nervous I guess gosh I mean Syria is something we should all be afraid of because whatever people's religion they are suffering terribly there and their heritage such a beautiful beautiful country such a friendly people and yet so much suffering so thank you in the 90s the Vatican was apparently quite supportive of the Mandians in offering them financial assistance advice and also preservation of ancient documents do you know anything about that relationship now or does that endure I am not aware of that it's very interesting that you ask and I can try and find out but I wasn't aware of it, thank you let's take the three questions here the one in the back thank you just wonderful talking about all these different religions and formations I was recently reading Joseph Campbell and he talks about the religions of the Middle East as being almost like rock hard beliefs it kind of puts me in mind geological eras where new forms are cast up there are other times that things seem more molten and fluid and there were times that things move from east to west as well as west to east and some of the thought that came to me was about some of the Gnostic religions and some of that even is like when you think of Buddhism and the idea of there's this Buddha mind which exists beyond religions there's the Islamic belief that Christ wasn't crucified he somehow rose above it and all these things cross pollinate but now we're in a time where there's such a tendency to want to keep the formations very separate and the internet seems like a silk road in a way for those who want to walk it that you can go back in time you can investigate you can find some of the commonalities and where things originate and that's just some of the thinking that you generated I thought if you had a comment Thank you for a beautiful book does the theme of the chosen people is that something that carries through these various religions and so how you want to answer these two and then or shall we get all the questions out okay first off cross pollination as you've realized I'm in danger of talking talking forever I a natural well it's just that the subject is so wonderful there's so many things I haven't had the chance to say but let me really briefly touch on something that you've reminded me of yes Buddhism we know existed in the ancient Persian empire partly because we have records of rare example but the Zoroastrian priesthood did at one point instigate persecution of other religions and in a stelae left by a high priest called we have records that say that he'd crushed Buddhism Christianity etc etc therefore we know that they exist in the Persian empire and so we can take a guess but not only did money insert himself into Buddhism to the point that that Chinese temple still has a statue of him but that Buddhists have influenced Middle Eastern religions and of course you know some Druze believe themselves to be Hindus or at least they see that connection whether that's the case or not undoubtedly there has been there is a lot in the kind of Druze belief of what you have to do is to divest yourself of your ego so that you can merge with the divine and that belief which they share with some Sufi Muslims by the way is taught by a man called Mansur Ibn Mansur Hallaj in the 9th century that this is you know sounds quite Buddhist but let me go into a little excursion again because Zoroastrianism didn't just act as a conduit for Buddhism but Zoroastrian himself perhaps 3000 years ago appears to have influenced the beliefs of the Druze and the Greeks in heaven and hell there's a little controversial but let me put it forward because when you have the encounter of both the Druze through the conquest particularly of Babylon by Cyrus the Great and the Greeks because of their encounters a little later with the Persians in a slightly less friendly way you have both peoples all of a sudden you see a great increase in the talk about Satan heaven and hell both in the bible but also Plato starts talking about heaven and hell is a reward for what you do in the world but after life after death you will have some reward for what you've done and what you've done well done badly which was not necessarily the belief prior to that time and just to bring this a little bit into the more modern world one of the things that really entertained me about this was to discover that C.S. Lewis now the Narnia books which some of us have in them an army of animals that take the side of good animals that take the side of evil and are of course a battle of good against evil and there isn't although there's an omnipotent god in the background never really gets involved well C.S. Lewis was a great admirer of Zoroastrianism and it's not a coincidence that the Zoroastrians teach that animals indeed can take the side of good or evil and the Shah Nama the great epic poem of Persia begins with a great battle in which animals follow both the good and evil kings into battle they would not have chosen a lion to be the symbol of good because the lion and all cats I'm afraid in Zoroastrian belief are in fact followers of evil and it is the dog that is prized by Zoroastrians and which had they written Narnia books I think there would have been a dog when a dog dies it is viewed as a great blow for the forces of good and it is dressed as a human would be dressed and put out for the birds to eat in the way that a human is put out for the birds to eat with the same prayers rather wonderful concept in terms of the chosen people what I would say is that when you have some of these religions that have broken away from Islam or whatever the story is behind the Druze and the Alawites broke away from Islam in the 11th, 12th century and did believe for a time it seems as if it was a missionary religion converting people and that they recognize each other through secret past phrases and from this we realize that they were not simply one tribe but many people from many different countries and it does seem that they did gather part of the kind of process of coalescing of drawing that group together was teaching them that they were a sacred people and so as an instrument as it were of unifying very disparate people teaching them that they had been as I think they believe they'd been the students of Pythagoras they'd been the followers of Jesus they'd been the followers of Muhammad reincarnated and to this day are that same people I think was a very powerful way of forming what is today still one of the most integrated cohesive groups in the Middle East the Druze so those two cases the Druze and the Alawites are the ones which seem to me to have used that particular theme most powerfully. Alright we have just enough time for the remaining questions sorry so we'll take one in the front I can't promise that it will be many questions but did you notice that the only entities that you related in among the seven entities or communities that you wrote about in your book that they are the only entities that they have no relatives outside their original place they don't have we don't have Samaritans anywhere in the world only in Israel and it's so good that Nadia mentioned the influence of the internet in regard to many subject okay by most number of the people the internet is maybe a negative source or has a bad influence over people but I think that for me it is a very very positive source because I found out because of the internet and spreading the knowledge about Samaritans also by my own website made such a new phenomena in the last decade that many all over the world Christian Jews nonreligious and others that started to show interest about the Samaritans you know the Samaritans even in the among the monotheistic groups in Israel in the world Christian Muslims Jews and others they are the only entities that consecrate the five books of Moses not the whole Bible but only the five books of Moses it means that their tradition going back to the roots of the people of Israel and since I'm coming here to United States and to Europe and other parts of the world once a year for between 70 days to lecturing and telling and giving the message about the Samaritans I found out that many all over the world some of them even I myself visiting that they came to a decision because of the internet Nadia that they have to to go back to the roots and to live through the five books of Moses in the Samaritan way they asking me for our calendar and they asking me for the customs that they have to practice it's not only believe it is also a practice and they do and they reported to me that they they even feel better with their life because they found many answers to the questions that they always ask from other religions but my question to you is ok I don't want to utilize you to make a lecture by myself they did you notice that all these seven entities are persecuted entities I know that you notice that so my question is what we will do and I think that you made a great contribution with your book I hope that you will find more and more readers of this book to absorb the message of the book to find understanding between different people how we will do in order to find first to end the persecution of those that really they are keeping very ancient traditions of the world I would change the title instead of disappearing religions I would change to disappearing traditions they are keeping the most ancient let's say the foundation of of all what you call the taste of life that you find taste in life instead of being modern and internet and radio and television and sports and football ok this is all entertainment but when you return home you have to think about yourself what I am doing with myself so they can find in your book a message so my question how we end the persecution of such glorious traditions thank you let's take one question here and one in the back and we'll have to conclude you'll have to read the book I'm afraid thank you from the Foreign Service Institute thank you I'm looking forward to reading the book thank you Nadia for sponsoring this it was an amazing talk thank you and a little bit tying on to the professor's question about the Samaritans I mean the this question of persecution and linking it back to the thing that you were saying about this being it's not that this has always been the case I mean there have been periods this way and that way but it seems to me that in the era of the nation state and of nationalism which I came in late you might have already addressed this but it seems to me this is perhaps the thing that makes these groups so problematic is it I think in a sense it's about this very modern phenomenon of the nation state that makes these groups such outliers in an era in which like you mentioned the cops it seems to me it's not purely an Islamic thing as much as it is it's like well trying to figure out what is the national identity the national identity in Egypt is an Islamic identity so therefore cops are you know by definition not part of the main narrative and yet they are I mean and how to at some level is there a fix for this I mean it's a huge question you know but this is the thing that makes me that I ponder as I listen to you but thank you again we'll take the gentleman in the back hi my name is Doug Padgett I'm from the Religious Freedom Office at the State Department and this was fascinating we've been working very closely with a lot of these groups in particular these EDS over the last I mean for many years but especially over the last six months it's been a very close relationship and we've learned a lot about a lot of these groups that we sort of didn't necessarily know including many of the connections you've talked about between Yazidis and Kaka'i and Alawis and sort of the affinities and tradition between these groups and including you mentioned some of the sort of connections with Buddhism and with South Asia locally and I think globally Hindus have especially many Hindu groups have latched on to the Yazidi issue in part because of the god Skanda or Murugan who is a peacock war god in South Asia especially in Tamil Nadu and is associated in their minds and maybe with others with the Tasi Malak the peacock angel and the Yazidis which is really interesting to me and also there's the issue of sort of you have Ahura Mazda which is very closely related to Amitabha which is the Buddha of the western paradise I'm a former religious study scholar also so this is all really great but now I work in the religious freedom office and the focus for us is not so much the even so much the beauty and glory and diversity of the traditions but also the policy prescriptions of what do we need to do and what have latched on to something important I mean for us we've been viewing this as a civilian protection issue in large part in places like Iraq that national governments have duty responsibility to protect to look after their minorities and to look after their civilian populations regardless of their identity but there is a sense that national narratives intrude and that also in a sense that the lack of a national narrative is a problem. Iraq has a national narrative but if that national narrative is not inclusive in any way then it's an enormous problem. If it's a Shia narrative it's some other kind of narrative or if it's just a narrative of party then and so I know you've touched on this and as a diplomat maybe you have some thoughts on it I don't know but I would love to talk more and keep in touch. Thank you. I think there's great questions which all seem to me to bring out one theme and so let me address that in the remaining time. I guess in terms of nationalism I think I see it as sort of two-edged it's true that the kind of movement for national self-determination sparked off a great deal of angst in the Middle East even leaving aside the issue of Israel actually wasn't necessarily the one that people were always thinking about you had actually Christian demands for self-determination in northern Iraq you had also the perception of potentially of Coptic the allegation the Cops wanted to sort of found their own kingdom or country inside Egypt founded on the city of Asyut absurd really but it was spread about as a widespread fear among Egyptian Muslims in 1911 in the context of a you know modern tension between the two communities and yet to be honest with you as I look at the history of nationalism and compare it to what has come subsequently I feel that it was benevolent in its effect for the minorities because looking right back to somebody like Hadid Ismail in Egypt in the 1860s at a time when you did not have let's say members of religious minorities in Europe Jews even Catholics in England or you know Protestants in France you didn't have that in government there was a Christian Prime Minister of Egypt Nubar Pasha there were later two Coptic Prime Ministers of Egypt and Ismail was the one who famously said to one of his ministers who complained about a Coptic official a Christian official and he said we're all Egyptians and actually it was at the time I think a rather more radical remark than it sounds today because the definition of Egypt was hardly there it was part of the Ottoman Empire technically and the Ottoman Empire was unquestionably one that was the Empire of Islam and therefore you could not speak of being a citizen of the Ottoman Empire particularly not if you were not a Muslim it was not that kind of setup but you could be a citizen of Egypt and you still can be what I think is that actually over time the concept has been distorted so that both Islam has become much more the defining character when I was in Egypt in 97 there were two things people would ask when I was wandering in the suburbs I used to go to the most destitute bits of Cairo because I just found it so interesting and people would ask when I was learning Arabic so it was a little bit they'd speak very fast I learned to distinguish what they were saying and one question they'd ask is Ahli of Zemalik which is football teams Ahli and Zemalik are the two football teams Ahli by far the most popular so the right answer is Ahli the other question sometimes people would ask are you Christian or Muslim which I found very disturbing this I think has crept in mainly since the 70's I don't believe, I mean people I talked to in villages in southern Egypt said the older generation they said we go on with really well and you can go to churches in Cairo and see Muslims praying there because of an old tradition in which people would actually go to each others places of worship and they said the younger generation are terrible and those are the ones who are terrible to me that speaks about two things that I think are terribly important one is I believe that we were in grave error when allowing both said at for all that he did some good things but his Islamization of Egypt his changing of the national narrative his being the believer president his introducing of Islamists into the ministry of education where they then colonized it and changed the curriculum I think allowing that was a grave error the same happened in Pakistan with Ziyal Haq and I hope that we would learn from that a lesson which is to never regard those who pedal religious hatred as being our allies and for that reason I referred to you know the claims of Hezbollah that they are now our friends against ISIS which is our enemy well let's never fall into that foolish error that we made then again that those who wish to divide people on the basis of religion should never be our friends it is a second thing I think tremendously important I do think history is tremendously important because that is if there is a national narrative about Iraq as you mentioned sir it is the narrative of its tremendous heritage and I was very struck by talking to a lady an Iraqi refugee in England Muslim as it happens who said that she had gone to the British Museum she had seen these great statues the great remnants of Iraqi civilization and she thought gosh I had only thought about Iraq in terms of Saddam you know I figured we hated and I didn't feel I had anything that linked me to that country and now I see something that I can be proud of to me that was a really wonderful moment because it said actually play a part in the redemption of the Middle East so often it's been a cause of conflict but actually seen rightly understood rightly it can also be a way of unifying people and healing divides I think it's incredibly hard for outsiders to prevent persecution once the mood of the people is turned in that direction I think that's why it's so important for us to get in beforehand by the time that the persecution begins it's too late sometimes you can see behind the persecution in fact always you can see the hand of some government or other some group or other that sees political and financial advantage from persecution I don't believe that there's ever a purely theological persecution very rarely even let's say take the expulsion of the Jews from Iraq essentially or let's say that they were made to feel so unwelcome that they left enormous financial gains are made by some groups in that country as a result of this so one can never sort of we do need to look a little bit at who's behind it and who's encouraging it and who's gaining from it because there always is someone but by the time that there is a mood in the country which is so ready to go to conflict religious conflict we've almost lost the fight I think we've got to get there first through education and through as I say understanding who the true friends are and who the enemies are because it is by the time you have a generation that's been brought up to mistrust and hate another group a minority a majority gosh it's hard to undo that I have to share my personal perspective because I had to go to Oxford to learn my history and I felt really cheated and betrayed that I wasn't exposed to any of this having gone to Islamic schools having finished university in Jordan and it was shocking to me to learn a history I never knew existed and then I saw the same reaction with my sister's generation she was in her early 20s studying computer engineering but she was exposed to the same history that was invisible except in western libraries really inaccessible but she had access to it through the internet because piracy became absolute because of the internet and she had the same reaction of being angry like why didn't I know about this how do I trust anything that comes out of a textbook by the government when it's nonsense so education knowledge is really key and it's way underestimated and persecution is not just for minorities everybody's if he was in the Middle East fraternity exists there can be no descent of no critical thinking of any form I'd like to take the final few moments to thank you very much for producing such a masterpiece and I highly recommend that it's a beautiful read and it's really fascinating it's hard to put it down once you start thank you so much for joining us thank you