using the yazidi calendar as a reference in print is no less absurd than claiming that the world is 6000 years old, or whatever is, by calculating dates in the bible. if you would consider it irresponsible journalism to calculate the age of the earth in the bible, you should consider it just irresponsible to cite yazidi religious texts (which are actually mostly oral) in describing their origins.

the key is consistency. you should reject all religious references, not just the christian ones. you are not respecting a foreign culture, you are just engaging in irresponsible journalistic practices.

i'm not going to react to the decision to take a few thousand yazidis in. they're in perpetual threat, there. they don't have the numbers or the resources to stand their ground. so, this is an exception to my general rule of preferring to fund revolutionaries than accepting refugees.

but, can we be scientific in describing them rather than deferring to their superstitions, please?

their ethnogenesis, like that of other kurds, likely dates to the islamic invasion c. 650. the kurds are essentially iranian refugees of the islamic conquest. there were no "kurds" or "yazidis" a thousand years ago, there were just iranian refugees. those iranian refugees had a complex history of cultural syncretism from indigenous and introduced sources. the genetics suggest a strong indigenous matrilineal component, with large amounts of introduced variation (from iranians, greeks, turks, arabs) in the y-dna.

and, if you can't work that out, you shouldn't be given the responsibility of writing and publishing articles.