Ethnically Kurdish, the Yazidi faith has some aspects of ancient Zoroastrianism.

It is astonishing to witness that the Iranians, onto whom the Arabs imposed Islam through military defeat, have become its most zealous followers to the point of oppressing those of Zoroastrianism, though it is the religion of their own fathers. A kind of Stockholm syndrome on the national scale.

Discrimination against women is part of a broader pattern of official bias in Iran, especially against those who are neither Muslim nor members of one of the three minority religions Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Christianity recognized in the Iranian Constitution.