The Yazidi account of Melek Taus is the single most consequential fact about how this community has been treated. He refused to bow to Adam — and in Yazidi understanding, refused out of devotion to God alone, since bowing to anything else would violate that devotion, and was rewarded rather than punished. Because the same narrative element appears in Islamic tradition attached to Iblis, outsiders have for a millennium accused Yazidis of devil worship. That accusation has been the justification for repeated massacres, most recently the ISIS genocide of 2014.