Sanctuary, Hospitality, and Environmental Renewal in the Wake of Êzidi Genocide

Since the 1980s, the German sanctuary movement has offered protection to persons threatened with deportation, sheltering certain individuals and families in churches and monasteries beyond the reach of law enforcement. As displaced Êzidis arrived to Germany in larger numbers in the wake of the 2014 ISIS-perpetrated genocide in Shinghal (Northern Iraq), one monastery became known for opening its doors to members of the community whose asylum claims had been rejected, rendering them vulnerable to deportation. Sister Makrina Finlay, a Benedictine nun originally hailing from California, will join us to reflect on how sanctuary practices at her monastery came to form the backbone of transnational projects of hospitality between Germany and Shinghal. Given the vast environmental destruction to which Shinghal had been subjected amid the violence of genocide, Sister Makrina will elaborate on how solidarity with the Êzidi community blossomed into shared projects of ecological, religious, and social renewal in Shinghal, and how the Êzidi community likewise contributed to the flourishing of the monastery through everyday acts of labor, mutual idioms of hospitality, and acts of xêr.
 

About the Speakers

Sr. Dr. Makrina Finlay is a Benedictine nun in Germany. She holds a PhD in History from Oxford University and is the Director of Regenerate Shinghal e.V, a nonprofit committed to regenerating Êzidi life in Shingal through cultural, ecological, and social restoration. 

Noor Amr, a doctoral candidate in Anthropology at Stanford, will join Sister Makrina in conversation. Her dissertation on the German sanctuary movement draws upon the ethnographic research she conducted alongside the Benedictine sisters among Êzidi and Kurdish asylum-seekers dwelling in sanctuary. She is a Next Generation Scholar at the Stanford Humanities Center for 2026–27.