Shafaq News – Baghdad

The proposed amendment to Iraq’s religious endowments law—reclassifying Christian, Yazidi, and Mandaean communities from recognized religions to “sects”—would erode the legal status of religious minorities, Yazidi MP Vian Dakhil warned on Monday.

Yazidis, a Kurdish ethnoreligious group, primarily reside in Nineveh and the Kurdistan Region, while Mandaeans—followers of one of the oldest monotheistic faiths—live mainly in southern Iraq along the Tigris and Euphrates.

In a statement, Dakhil, a lawmaker of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) led by Masoud Barzani, pledged to block the amendment, accusing several church leaders of violating constitutional protections by backing the proposal.

Faulting President Abdul Latif Rashid for “failing” to intervene, she argued, “The Yazidi population exceeds the Christian community, yet the draft advanced unchallenged.”

Dakhil criticized the reference to a “Jewish sect” as misleading, pointing out that Iraq’s Jewish community is virtually nonexistent while Yazidis and Mandaeans remain in the hundreds of thousands.

The amendment could enable the Council of Ministers to dissolve legally recognized religious groups through administrative orders, she cautioned, calling it a dangerous threat to Iraq’s delicate religious framework.