A Documented History of Libel, Not a Description Yazidis Hold

The false identification of Melek Taus with Satan or the devil is one of the most consequential and well documented cases of religious defamation in the modern Middle East, originating substantially from outside observers, including neighbouring Muslim communities and later European travellers and scholars, who noted superficial narrative similarities between the Yazidi account of Melek Taus's testing and Islamic and Christian accounts of Iblis or Satan's fall, and mistranslated or willfully mischaracterised the figure accordingly despite Yazidis themselves explicitly rejecting any connection to an evil being; Yazidis traditionally avoid even uttering words that sound similar to "Satan" specifically because of this externally imposed and unwanted association. This mislabelling has had severe, documented real-world consequences, most catastrophically in the genocidal campaign waged against the Yazidi community by the Islamic State beginning in 2014, which explicitly invoked the false "devil worshipper" characterisation as part of its justification for mass killing, sexual enslavement and displacement targeting Yazidis specifically because of their religion, a campaign recognised by United Nations investigators as genocide. This atlas records the libel's history as an attested fact about how Yazidis have been mistreated, while stating plainly that Melek Taus is not, and has never been, understood by Yazidis themselves as an evil or devilish figure.