BAGHDAD, Iraq - Members of the Sabeans, also known as the Sabean-Mandaeans, submerged themselves in the Tigris River in Baghdad on Wednesday to wash away their sins and pray for a safe life during the dwindling group's holy Golden Baptism ritual.
Sabeans are followers of a monotheistic religion that predates Christianity and Islam and have struggled since 2003 to cling to their faith amid sectarian tensions experienced in the country during the following years.
During the Holy festival, they dress in white and pray before being baptized in the waters of the Tigris river. Food, washed in the same water, is traditionally served during the feast after the baptism is concluded.
Dalal Ghanim, a Sabean-Mandaean community member, told Rudaw’s Halkawt Aziz on Wednesday that many followers of his religion do not have a job.“We are calling for peace and security. We want peace,” she said. “Many families among us migrated abroad due to insecurity."
According to data from the Sabean-Mandaeans Affairs Council, until 2003, nearly 100,000 Sabeans lived in Iraq before the country was plunged into bloody sectarian and religious conflict, of which minority groups bore the brunt of the crisis.
Sheikh Aanmar Uda, secretary-general of the Spiritual Council of Iraq, told Rudaw that before 2003, the Sabeans started to disperse across Iraq, living in provinces including Maysan, Basra, Nasiriyah, Baghdad, Erbil, and Kirkuk.
“In the wake of the events of 2003, they started to migrate in large numbers, many of them abroad,” he said. “Today, the Sabean-Mandaeans have come to take part in this ritual from everywhere."
In the 1970s and 1980s, as Iraq experienced a profound economic boom despite its bloody wars, the Sabaeans, like most other minority groups, were a relatively integrated community with nearly 10,000 families, the majority of whom lived in Baghdad, the Nineveh Plains, and Kirkuk.
The overthrow of Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003, whose brutal reign often resulted in systematic suppression of the Kurds and the Shiites, was detrimental to the survival of religious minority groups such as the Sabaeans, as well as the Shabaks, and the Yazidis.
Decades later, these groups have seen their number decline dramatically and their communities increasingly dissolved and fragmented.
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