ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Many Shiite residents of Shingal displaced during the ISIS invasion of four years ago have now returned home and rebuilt some of their religious shrines.
"We have been living side by side with Yezidis and Sunnis in Shingal for 800 years and never had a problem with them," Saeed Mahmood Raza, a prominent Shiite cleric in Shingal, told Rudaw. "Religious and ethnic co-existence in Shingal was destroyed after the ISIS attack on the city in August 2014."
Mahmood says so far 500 Shiite residents have returned to Shingal and started rebuilding their shrines.
"We have been rebuilding our shrines on our own. The first shrine we started to repair was the Sayda Zainab Shrine. It is a sacred place where our ceremonies are held at. In addition to that, we are renovating two more shrines," he explained.
"We have been living side by side with Yezidis and Sunnis in Shingal for 800 years and never had a problem with them," Saeed Mahmood Raza, a prominent Shiite cleric in Shingal, told Rudaw. "Religious and ethnic co-existence in Shingal was destroyed after the ISIS attack on the city in August 2014."
Mahmood says so far 500 Shiite residents have returned to Shingal and started rebuilding their shrines.
"We have been rebuilding our shrines on our own. The first shrine we started to repair was the Sayda Zainab Shrine. It is a sacred place where our ceremonies are held at. In addition to that, we are renovating two more shrines," he explained.
When they took control of Mosul in the summer of 2014 ISIS militants killed many Shiite muslims and demolished their shrines.
ISIS brutally took over Shingal, it kidnapped 6,000 Yezidi women, girls and children and killed a large number of their men. The group also destroyed 27 Yezidi and eight Shiites shrines.
Since October 16, 2017 Shingal has been under Iraqi control.
Yezidis make up 70 percent of the Shingal population.
Shingal Mayor Mahma Khalil, a Yezidi Kurd, says "It is true that the majority of Shingal residents are Yezidis, but the city is a multi-colored city where Muslims, Arabs, Christians also live for hundreds of years."
About the return of Shiites to the war ravaged city, Khalil said, "Whoever is indigenous to the city and not involved with ISIS, has every right to return. It does not matter from what ethnicity or religion they are."
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