Kurdistan RegionKurdistan Region (هەرێمی کوردستان, Herêma Kurdistan; إقليم كردستان), abbr. KRI, is an autonomous region in Iraq comprising the four Kurdish-majority governorates of Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, Duhok, and Halabja, and bordering Iran, Syria, and Turkey. The Kurdistan Region encompasses most of Iraqi Kurdistan but excludes the disputed territories of Northern Iraq, contested between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the central Iraqi government in Baghdad since 1992 when autonomy was realized.
Rite of passageA rite of passage is a ceremony or ritual of the passage which occurs when an individual leaves one group to enter another. It involves a significant change of status in society. In cultural anthropology the term is the Anglicisation of rite de passage, a French term innovated by the ethnographer Arnold van Gennep in his work Les rites de passage, The Rites of Passage. The term is now fully adopted into anthropology as well as into the literature and popular cultures of many modern languages.
YazdânismYazdânism, or the Cult of Angels, is a pseudohistoric pre-Islamic religion with claimed ties relating to a Mithraic religion of the Kurds. The term was introduced and proposed by Kurdish and Belgian scholar Mehrdad Izady to represent what he considers the "original" religion of the Kurds. According to Izady, Yazdânism is now continued in the denominations of Yazidism, Yarsanism, and Kurdish Alevism. The concept of Yazdânism has found a wide perception both within and beyond Kurdish nationalist discourses, but has been disputed by other recognized scholars of Iranian religions.
Islamic StateThe Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL; ˈaɪsᵻl), Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS; ˈaɪsᵻs), and by its Arabic acronym Da'ish or Daesh (داعش, Dāʿish, ˈdaːʕɪʃ), is a transnational militant Islamist terrorist group and former unrecognized quasi-state that follows the Salafi jihadist branch of Sunni Islam. It was founded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 1999 and gained global prominence in 2014, when it captured a large amount of Iraqi territory, and took advantage of the civil war in Syria to take control of chunks of territory in Eastern Syria.
DuaIn Islam, DIN (دعاء duˈʕæːʔ, plural: DIN أدعية ʔædˈʕijæ) is a prayer of invocation, supplication or request, even asking help or assistance from God. Muslims regard this as a profound act of worship. Muhammad is reported to have said, "Dua is itself a worship." There is a special emphasis on du'a in Muslim spirituality and early Muslims took great care to record the supplications of Muhammad and his family and transmit them to subsequent generations.
SethSeth, in the Abrahamic religions, was the third son of Adam and Eve. According to the Hebrew Bible, he had two brothers: Cain and Abel. According to , Seth was born after Abel's murder by Cain, and Eve believed that God had appointed him as a replacement for Abel. He is the only other child of Adam and Eve named in the Bible. According to the Book of Genesis, Seth was born when Adam was 130 years old (according to the Masoretic Text), or 230 years old (according to the Septuagint), "a son in his likeness and image".
AzraelAzrael (æzri'əl; עֲזַרְאֵל, 'God has helped'; عزرائيل) is the angel of death in some Abrahamic religions, namely Islam and Christian popular culture. Relative to similar concepts of such beings, Azrael holds a benevolent role as God's angel of death; he acts as a psychopomp, responsible for transporting the souls of the deceased after their death. In Islam, he is said to hold a scroll concerning the fate of mortals, recording and erasing their names at their birth and death, similar to the role of the Malakh ha-Maveth (Angel of Death) in Judaism.
IsrafilIsrafil (, ʾIsrāfīl; or Israfel) is the angel who blows the trumpet to signal Qiyamah (the Day of Judgment) in Islam. Though unnamed in the Quran, he is one of the four archangels in Islamic tradition, along with Mīkāʾīl, Jibrāʾīl, and ʿAzrāʾīl. The "Book of Dead" described Israfil as the oldest of all archangels. It is believed that Israfil will blow the trumpet from a holy rock in Jerusalem to announce the Day of Resurrection. He is commonly thought of as the counterpart of the Judeo-Christian archangel Raphael.
