Mandaeism: what Wikipedia removed

Mandaeans are an Iraqi ethnoreligious minority who follow Mandaeism. In 2010 the opening said many Mandaean Iraqis had fled their country because of the turmoil of the war and terrorism. Today the opening describes their religious beliefs and history with no mention of the displacement, and terrorism is nowhere in the article. A reader today learns what Mandaeans believe, and not that terrorism was cited as a cause of their flight from Iraq.

The word “terror” appeared 1 times in this article’s opening at its peak, in 2010. Today it appears nowhere in the article at all, references included. Checked against the full current article on 2026-08-01.

Where this comes from

We saved this article’s opening paragraph at 5 moments between 2010 and 2025. Everything below is Wikipedia’s own text, quoted from those saved copies. The interactive version, with every snapshot side by side and each removal marked in place, is at ilroot.com/case/mandaeism.

The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot

word	2010	2015	2020	6 October 2023	2025
terror	1	0	0	0	0
occupation	0	1	1	1	1

Counts are of the opening paragraph only, the part most readers, search engines and AI training sets ever quote.

What was taken out

• The opening sentence naming and defining Mandaeism, reworded in today’s version.
• The sentence identifying Mandaeans as also known as Sabians in Arabic, dropped from today’s opening.
• The passage on where Mandaeism has historically been practiced, reworded in today’s opening.
• The clause naming terrorism, alongside war, as a cause of Mandaean Iraqis fleeing the country, dropped from the opening.
• The sentence on where most Mandaean Iraqi refugees sought shelter, dropped from today’s opening.

How it opened then, and now

2010 (revision 370968230):

Mandaeism or Mandaeanism ( Mandaic : Mandaiuta , Template:Lang-ar Mandā’iyya , Template:Lang-fa ) is a monotheistic religion with a strongly dualistic worldview. Its adherents, the Mandaeans (also sometimes referred to as Sabians in Arabic), revere Adam , Abel , Seth , Enosh , Noah , Shem , Aram and especially John the Baptist . Mandaeism has historically been practised primarily around the lower Euphrates and Tigris and the rivers that surround the Shatt-al-Arab waterway, part of southern Iraq and Khuzestan Province in Iran . There are thought to be between 60,000 and 70,000 Mandaeans worldwide, and until the 2003 Iraq war , almost all of them lived in Iraq. Many Mandaean Iraqis have since …

2025 (revision 1298140653):

Gnostic religion Not to be confused with Mazdaism or Manichaeism . You may need rendering support to display the uncommon Unicode characters in this article correctly. Mandaic incantation bowl from Southern Mesopotamia c. 200–600 CE – Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada Mandaeism ( Classical Mandaic : ࡌࡀࡍࡃࡀࡉࡅࡕࡀ ‎ mandaiuta ), sometimes also known as Nasoraeanism or Sabianism , is a Gnostic , monotheistic and ethnic religion with Greek , Iranian , and Jewish influences. Its adherents, the Mandaeans , revere Adam , Abel , Seth , Enos , Noah , Shem , Aram , and especially John the Baptist . Mandaeans consider Adam, Seth, Noah, Shem, and John the Baptist prophets, with Adam being the founder o…

Related

• The drift report: what changed across all 61,944 watched articles
• The case file for this article, with every snapshot and every marked removal
• Who made the cuts: removals grouped by the account that made them
• The live article on Wikipedia

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