Posted by pancho (204.120.48.3) on February 05, 2002 at 14:21:57:
It strikes me now that the reason Peter gave for changing his name from Jassim to BetBasoo is a telling commentary on our status and his own politics. I was asked once not to bring the topic up as his sister has suffered enough. The name change was brought about because his sister had the nerve to marry a Muslim for a while. The shame of that drove Peter to drop his family name and adopt another...to let the world know how disgusted he was at the thought of ...well, you know. I assume he felt great relief at having distanced himself from such a disgracefull thing...never once thinking how disgraceful it was that he would choose this way to humiliate and hurt his sister even more. I too felt this was a personal issue and wrong for me to address. But as no one has spared any of my family, and as I believe this is not only a political issue, but one which reflects the anti Muslim bias which Peter and others use as the hallmark of their "Assyrianism"...it is fair game. I will of course not mention her name but I want to say to her that I at least think it was a personal matter, her own business and I certainly wouldn't fault her for marrying anyone she felt like marrying at the time...or for getting out when she felt like it. I find Peter's behavior reprehensible however and it is that i want to focus on. In the first place he only increased her misery by making such a public display of his disgust...but his concern wasn't for her at all...just his own standing as an Assyrian whose sister "betrayed" his cause...that of Assyrians as bigoted, racist and sexist males and the women too afraid to oppose them.
In the best tradition of our cowardly males, he added to his sister's misery and pain at a time when a little compassion would have been called for. But there is this Muslim "thing" these people all have. It would be as if a member of the KKK found out his siter had married a Black man...that's how primitive these "Patrots" of ours are. That he can proudly hold his head up, just because he changed his name from that of his sister's...without wondering once what this says about his loyalties...a poet no less....is reflected in his attitude towards Iraq and Muslims in general...this "idea" of his allows and accepts the murder of innocent Assyrians who happen to be Muslim, as well as those who are not. Is it any wonder that he didn't allow the topic of Muslim Assyrians to be discussed on aina? They make the personal VERY political. One wonders what Peter would have done with a child born of that union...a child who would have been that dreaded thing of all things...a Muslim Assyrian. Would he have accepted it...bought it presents for Ramadan OR Christmas? I think not. He would have taken out his hate and sense of wounded purity, like any racist red neck, against his own nephew or neice...not for its religion...Peter is a known atheist...but for its association WITH a religion...the religion of the people he hates..as whites hate skin color, even though the Black or Brown or Assyrian man or woman or child may be a Christian as well.
In his treatment of his sister, his changing what one presumes he would be and should be proud of...the family name...you can see what he would do, and does, to us Assyrians who ask for tolerance and forgiveness and understanding so that all of us who occupy this planet and that small corner of it, can stop killing each other's innocent children, or bring grief and shame to our sisters and brothers. This is not the way Assyrians ever behaved.