Years ago, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the Netherlands very proudly showed me one of the changes he had made during his term: the application form for a visa for the small Gulf state no longer asked to state your religion.
I hardly realised then how extra-ordinary his move was, as I was so used to our European passports not disclosing a person’s believes, as a result of the separation between state and religion.
Since then, I have filled in many application forms for visa in the Middle East that did ask for that information. And when I went to live in the Kurdistan Region, it also was a question I got asked by officials filling in my registration papers that led to my residency permit.
In a predominantly Muslim country it’s not an option to say you do not have a religion. If you are not Muslim, then you must by Christian, is the automatic assumption for a Westerner.
Because anything is better than being an unbeliever, which would otherwise be considered the case.
With the Islamic terror group ISIS taking over parts of Iraq, engaging the Kurdish Peshmerga troops in a bloody battle and committing bomb attacks that target mainly civilians (many of them Muslims), next to the arrival of many thousands of non-Muslim refugees, in the Kurdistan Region a development got started to look at Islam in a different way.
Not only did civilians avoid the mosque and keep their children away from its potential danger of recruitment into radical Islam, the authorities also were made aware of the fact that the community was changing.
For that reason, religious groups like Christians, Shabak, Yezidi, Zoroaster and even Jews now all have their own department inside the Kurdish Ministry of Religion.
And the Kurdistan Region promotes itself to the outside world as a place where different ethnic and religious groups live together in peace – in stark contrast with the Caliphate of ISIS next door where anyone who does not agree to its radical brand of Islam is branded an unbeliever.
So all this change should also have an effect on the way different people are registered. And that leaves two choices: you can either put all those different religions on the identity cards and passports, or you follow the example of the Kuwait ambassador and just completely remove the tag.
The first option means that you allow, next to Muslim and Christian, also Shabak, Yezidi and other religions to be written in the attributed space on the document.
Although it would seem like a long overdue official acceptance of these religions as part of the region’s diversity, at the same time it is not without danger.
You only have to consider the fights between different groups that have been fought in the past in this region o know that mentioning one’s belief in his or her papers could also cause a lot of problems.
Like in the civil war in Baghdad in 2005-2007 mentioning one’s Shiite or Sunni belief at a checkpoint often meant death.
And would someone who is registered as a Jew in his passport be able to travel in the Middle East where most countries still cling to their animosity towards Jews and Israel?
So it might be much safer to remove the religion tag completely from the ID-documents. That would also bring the Kurdistan Region up to date with a large part of the world.
Of course, there still is another problem to tackle, as Kurdistan does not have its own ID’s or passports, as it still is a region inside Iraq.
Chances that Iraq will make this change are very small as the Shiite majority in charge in Baghdad is hardly open to it.
Will Kurdistan then have to wait until it becomes independent state? Or could Kurdistan decide to make the change regardless of what Baghdad thinks?
I would propose the latter, as it is important enough an issue. And it can be done in a very simple way. Where the document, ID or passport has a space to add the religion of the bearer, just leave a blank.
This way no new documents have to be made, no Kurdish laws are needed that are in conflict with the Iraq, no official split between religion and state has to be declared and the measure can be processed almost immediately.
And most important of all, for the Kurds in Iraq: it is a measure that shows their unique identity within Iraq, which could be one of those steps on the road to independence.
A new nation in the making that accepts the different religions as equal could take religion off its official documents, IDs and passports.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
I hardly realised then how extra-ordinary his move was, as I was so used to our European passports not disclosing a person’s believes, as a result of the separation between state and religion.
Since then, I have filled in many application forms for visa in the Middle East that did ask for that information. And when I went to live in the Kurdistan Region, it also was a question I got asked by officials filling in my registration papers that led to my residency permit.
In a predominantly Muslim country it’s not an option to say you do not have a religion. If you are not Muslim, then you must by Christian, is the automatic assumption for a Westerner.
Because anything is better than being an unbeliever, which would otherwise be considered the case.
With the Islamic terror group ISIS taking over parts of Iraq, engaging the Kurdish Peshmerga troops in a bloody battle and committing bomb attacks that target mainly civilians (many of them Muslims), next to the arrival of many thousands of non-Muslim refugees, in the Kurdistan Region a development got started to look at Islam in a different way.
Not only did civilians avoid the mosque and keep their children away from its potential danger of recruitment into radical Islam, the authorities also were made aware of the fact that the community was changing.
For that reason, religious groups like Christians, Shabak, Yezidi, Zoroaster and even Jews now all have their own department inside the Kurdish Ministry of Religion.
And the Kurdistan Region promotes itself to the outside world as a place where different ethnic and religious groups live together in peace – in stark contrast with the Caliphate of ISIS next door where anyone who does not agree to its radical brand of Islam is branded an unbeliever.
So all this change should also have an effect on the way different people are registered. And that leaves two choices: you can either put all those different religions on the identity cards and passports, or you follow the example of the Kuwait ambassador and just completely remove the tag.
The first option means that you allow, next to Muslim and Christian, also Shabak, Yezidi and other religions to be written in the attributed space on the document.
Although it would seem like a long overdue official acceptance of these religions as part of the region’s diversity, at the same time it is not without danger.
You only have to consider the fights between different groups that have been fought in the past in this region o know that mentioning one’s belief in his or her papers could also cause a lot of problems.
Like in the civil war in Baghdad in 2005-2007 mentioning one’s Shiite or Sunni belief at a checkpoint often meant death.
And would someone who is registered as a Jew in his passport be able to travel in the Middle East where most countries still cling to their animosity towards Jews and Israel?
So it might be much safer to remove the religion tag completely from the ID-documents. That would also bring the Kurdistan Region up to date with a large part of the world.
Of course, there still is another problem to tackle, as Kurdistan does not have its own ID’s or passports, as it still is a region inside Iraq.
Chances that Iraq will make this change are very small as the Shiite majority in charge in Baghdad is hardly open to it.
Will Kurdistan then have to wait until it becomes independent state? Or could Kurdistan decide to make the change regardless of what Baghdad thinks?
I would propose the latter, as it is important enough an issue. And it can be done in a very simple way. Where the document, ID or passport has a space to add the religion of the bearer, just leave a blank.
This way no new documents have to be made, no Kurdish laws are needed that are in conflict with the Iraq, no official split between religion and state has to be declared and the measure can be processed almost immediately.
And most important of all, for the Kurds in Iraq: it is a measure that shows their unique identity within Iraq, which could be one of those steps on the road to independence.
A new nation in the making that accepts the different religions as equal could take religion off its official documents, IDs and passports.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
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