The smallest religion?
3 Comments Published by Tom Gara on Saturday, October 8 at Saturday, October 08, 2005.
I have been spending a lot of time talking to a really cool girl here who is from Iraq, and who's family went through seven degrees of hell before eventually getting the fuck out of the place and making it to Norway. I was chatting with her about the role of religion and morality in the Middle East, when I realised that it was Ramadan, and she wasnt fasting. So I wanted to work out her religion. The process of elimination began....
"Are you Sunni?" - No
"Shia" - No
"Christian" - No. I am.....I am from a smaller religion that you probably havent heard of....
That was like music to my ears. I relish this kind of stuff, and my determination to solve the puzzle took over...
"Zoroastrian?" - No
"Baha'i?" - No
"Jew?" - No
"Parsi?" - No
She had me defeated. I was clueless. I had to give up. I caved in, and asked her to tell me from what incredibly obscure religion she came from....
"I am a Mandean. There is only about 30,000 of us, and most have left Iraq. Saddam did not like Mandeans very much...."
Mandean hey? My good friend the Oracle can help me with this one......
"Are you Sunni?" - No
"Shia" - No
"Christian" - No. I am.....I am from a smaller religion that you probably havent heard of....
That was like music to my ears. I relish this kind of stuff, and my determination to solve the puzzle took over...
"Zoroastrian?" - No
"Baha'i?" - No
"Jew?" - No
"Parsi?" - No
She had me defeated. I was clueless. I had to give up. I caved in, and asked her to tell me from what incredibly obscure religion she came from....
"I am a Mandean. There is only about 30,000 of us, and most have left Iraq. Saddam did not like Mandeans very much...."
Mandean hey? My good friend the Oracle can help me with this one......
"Mandaeanism is a religion which has been classified by scholars as Gnostic (a blanket term for various mostly mystical religions and sects, in the first century AD).You learn something new every day......Since the 1st century AD the Mandaeans (Mandai) have mainly lived in the borderland areas of Iraq and Iran. Many have fled the region since the 1990s due to the unstable political climate and have migrated worldwide. This problem has worsened considerably since the US invasion of Iraq; over half of the community have emigrated and there is now considerable concern about the community's long-term viability. There is no official census of the Mandaeans; conservative guesses at current population size have been made in the range of 50,000 to 70,000."
Among the smallest... easily! I thought at little over a 100,000 the Parsis would be gone sooner than any other community... there's still hope for half my family!!
Just wanted to say thank you for chairing our NTMS this weekend, Tom. You did a fantastic job :)
All the luck for the future.
Regards, Håkon from LC BI and all the other eb members from AIESEC Norway
I believe the SHAKERs are the smallest only 4 of them