Just another casualty, ...

...just another footnote.

I've said it before, sometimes it's the little things - or at least the by comparison little things - that get me. From the BBC for March 4:

The Sabian Mandaeans - one of the oldest religious groups in the world - are facing extinction, according to its leaders.

They claim that Islamic extremists in Iraq are trying to wipe them out through forced conversions, rape and murder.

The Mandaeans are pacifists, followers of Adam, Noah and John the Baptist.

They have lived in what is now Iraq since before Islam and Christianity.

More than 80% have been forced to flee the country and now live as refugees in Syria and Jordan. ...

Mandaean elders use words like annihilation and genocide - they believe Islamic militants, both Sunni and Shia, offer them two choices - convert or die.

"Some will not consider us people of the book... they see us as unbelievers, as a result our killing is allowed," says Kanzfra Sattar, one of only five Mandaean bishops left worldwide.

The article says that there are fewer than 70,000 Sabian Mandaeans worldwide and only 5,000 left in Iraq. They fear for their safety in Muslim countries but the West won't take them in. In that, however, they are not alone: Of the total of roughly 2 million Iraqi refugees living in Syria and Jordan, the US has offered places to just 7,000 and the UK says it will decide "case by case."

I am no expert on religion and I admit I had never heard of the Sabian Mandaeans until I read this article. In trying to learn about them online I learned mostly that there are a number of sects and there is even dispute about the source of the name, making it hard to find a source that could be trusted to give a reasonably unbiased overview. So beyond certain basics - they practice baptism by immersion, they do predate Christianity, and they for the most part reject Jesus as having distorted John's teachings - I can't tell you much about them.

But what does it matter if they face extinction as a religion, as a group? They are, after all, just another casualty, just another footnote.