My Religion And Judaism And Zionism.

[Noah]

I just wanted to put this point across to those who support zionism.

My religion is similar to Judaism in a few ways, all religions have a few common factors we could say...

So before I begin i'd just like to say when I mention 'My religion' I don't mean this is something I follow but instead it's a hermetic, blood-line (aka you cannot convert) religion that I was born into.

My religion is called 'Mandaeanism' it's basically the only surviving gnostic religion left in the world.

It can be tracked by to 4000 years ago...We started in Eqypt around that time and then left and went all the way upto Palestine where we settled but then the Jews attacked us and so we moved down until we reach Iraq. That is our history of movements well oversimplified.

For the most part Mandaeans have been living in Iraq before the Muslim revolution along with few Jews in the era when Iraq was known as messopotamia. Then after the Muslim revolution we were being killed again and so we went to hide near the Euphrates and Tigris...

So like Jews claim, we have also suffered for many years and been kicked out of our homeland. But this doesn't give us a right to go back into Iraq and say 'this is our homeland because we were here before the Muslims or Arabs and call it 'the nation of mandaeans'

Just the point i'm trying to put across to the right-wingers...Is that you can not take a country to live in just because you are a certain religion or because you lived in it a long time ago and that is why zionism is a folly and stupid ideology.

[emma_goldman]

Could you explain further or link a good website for more info?

With the war in Iraq, interesting to note...
Iraq chaos threatens ancient faith (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4260170.stm)

[The Sloth]

hmm, what is your religion, exactly?

you imply that your religion is simply a history of physical movements.. if that's the case, i wouldn't call that a religion, but a personal piece of history.

do you have any specific metaphysical beliefs?

[Noah]

Emma Goldman that's my religion, i've read that article a while back.

Brooklyn, my religion is a gnostic belief system called Mandaeanism. It also goes by other names such as Subba. We also have other names which are misnomers like The Christians of John the Baptist which is totally wrong because we detest Jesus.

We are also a race..

I don't really have any metaphysicaly beliefs but I am proud to be born a Mandaean not in a fundamentalist way or anything but it is such a beautiful and significant belief system. Our religion is the only one that allows me to trace my ancestors back 1700 years.

We are made up of about 13 tribes I think which started around 200 years ago in Iraq because there were 13 families left after various massacres and diseases.

We have our own language it's very old. It's a form of Assyrian I think.

Anyway, here's a good link about Mandaeans.

http://www.farvardyn.com/mandaean1.php

If you have anymore questions just ask! Although I'm not religious it's quite nice for people to ask about a people so small.

[Comrade J]

How do you go on and on without any prompting about "your religion" then say you're not religious? :huh:

[Noah]

I'm not religious at all, it's the religious sect/cult I was born into (because conversion was stopped after the Muslim revolution in Messopotamia) and that's why I refer to it as 'my religion'.