Iranian clampdown on "devil worshippers" - religious persecution disguised?

international | history and heritage | other press Monday May 25, 2009 20:22 by erudite type

Reuters and other newswires are carrying an Iranian story in the last hour that the revolutionary guard have arrested 114 "devil worshippers" and seized drugs and alcohol during a party in a southern city.
"Cutting (their own) skin and sucking up the blood was among the indecent behavior of the group," Mehr News Agency quoted Colonel Abbas Hamedi of Iran's Revolutionary Guards in the city of Shiraz as saying. He said a Guards intelligence unit launched an investigation into the all-male group about one year ago, leading to their arrest Sunday evening. "The group's aim was to promote irreligious behavior," Hamedi, adding they had posted footage of their parties on the Internet. The Islamic Republic, which bans alcohol and narcotics, last year said it would launch a crackdown on "indecent Western-inspired movements" such as rappers and satanists.

Which all sounds dandy to the general public who probably don't know about the Melak Taus

It seems highly improbably that alcohol-drinking-blood-fetishist-all-male hedonistic drugged-up party goers would agree to meet up in Iran and much less publicise their gig on Facebook or some other internet site afterwards.

& so sniffing the odour of an odd story I remembered the followers of the white peacock & their rituals & pilgrimages & wondered if indeed Iranian religious plod is right - who might have hooked up with them to what ends..,

let me explain :-

Melak Taus or in Kurdish "Tawuse Melek" which translates to English as "The Peacock Angel" is the central figure of a faith system of the Yazidi. Though predominantly found in northern Iraq there are significant communities in western and southern Iran. Their angel is one of the "fallen" of the Abrahamic folkore of Judaism, Islam and Christianity. But after that particular fisticuffs he (& it is a "he") recanted and then became the creator of the cosmos.

To many others, Christian and Muslim alike their Angel is none other than Satan (and / or) Lucifer. They have suffered a lot of persecution, pogroms and not all in the dark days before telly and internet when in the west they mostly got sideline oblique mentions in the fiction of Sax Rohmer & HP Lovecraft & then much more specific plotlines from Idries Shah & Anton La Vey. The most savage series of suicide bombings was aimed at their community on August 14, 2007 Yazidis were targeted, a series of bombings that became the deadliest suicide attack since the Iraq War. began. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Qahtaniya_bombings

The news story :-

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE54O3RK2...90525
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090525/wl_nm/us_iran_arres...devil
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2009/05/25/world/interna....html