Posted by farid from customer-148-233-93-195.uninet.net.mx (148.233.93.195) on Friday, August 15, 2003 at 1:04PM :
If I were the Supreme Leader of Assyrians...I'd be shot before my inauguration speech. Not just me, any one in that position would. As much as these various factions cry for unity...it's the last thing they want, unless of course it means what they each mean when they say it...that everyone should drop their own personal or regional or tribal or national or "historic" principles...each of which they would die for, if it didn't hurt... and come join under this one person's wing...give up something of theirs...so this one leader can have everything he wants with the rest of us "unified"... backing him up...always a "him"....even Jackie's a "him"...with more balls on her wall than any of our men have between their ears.
But if it was me...specifically me, I'd announce to the world and to Assyrian Christians that the world didn't owe us anything...that if anyone wanted to make reparations for damage done and harm incurred...we would be willing to stand in line, but other than that, there was no special horror that was done to us and us alone requiring the world to take immediate steps to redress...and we were going to from now on concentrate on our future and not make an extension of the past out of it. That would get me skinned alive for sure. And yet, without that...without facing such a simple reality, we're nothing more than a laughing stock...to anyone who knows of us and our "claims".
I'm not even at all certain that any of the discrimination, the confiscations, the imprisonment and what not suffered by Assyrian Christians in Iraq, Turkey, Syria...anywhere in the Mideast, has anything to do with our Assyrian ancestry...and not even with the Christian religion. I suspect that if we investigated these claims of abuse that aina is famous for braying about...we'd find they occur for the most part in the countryside where Christian villages might be...or among the illiterate rabble where religious jealousy and back-biting is just one of many a prejudice...like ignorant people everywhere have. I doubt you'd find these cases among the more cosmopolitan and busier population of larger cities. When a Christian Assyrian claims to have been discriminated against...the least likely cause has to be his claim to being desecended from Ashurbanipal...especially with most of these guys who, in making such an absurd claim, open themselves up to ridicule not discrimination.
The recent case of the Muslim woman in America who had to sue the Department of Motor Vehicles of some state because they wouldn't allow her to be photographed wearing her chadoor, for her license...could be seen as discrimination against the people of whatever ancestry she hails from...say Egyptian. But it hardly makes sense that the state of Alabama, or Maryland, or Rhode Island...in their hatred of Pharoah Seti I, an "ancestor" of this modern Egyptian woman...denies a descendant of that old fellow this common courtesy as well as legal right.
A little closer scrutiny will reveal that Seti I and this woman have very little in common...that she isn't even of the same religion he was, or ethnicity. A bit more scrutiny will reveal the fact that chadoors are a purely Islamic invention and a relatively recent one at that...women being quite liberated in the Prophet's time...all things considered. What other prophet of any other major religion, or any religion...worked for his wife...his older wife? And, of course, we all know there has been a concerted effort to slander Islam and link it with Terrorism, devil worship and a demand for a fair price for their oil...three addmitedly very evil things.
Only a few questions asked...a little time and trouble...and some thought, will reveal that this woman is being discriminated against, not for Seti, or because she is Egyptian...not even for Islam...but because some Muslim Fanatics...at least so the story goes...attacked the United States and killed, in a few hours, what we've been killing each month for 13 years in their countries.
Using the same approach to the claims of Christian Assyrian discrimination and worse...we'd find that they didn't suffer because of Ashurbanipal...or because they are Iraqi...or Turkish...or Syrian, or even Assyrians...and not even because they are Christians...but because of what they have DONE as Christians and FOR Christianity that made them as suspect and unwelcome in those countries as Muslims have just become in America and parts of Europe.
Islam is the fastest growing religion in the United States. Let's face it, Islam is regarded by White people as a Black person's religion...largely because their only experience with it has been through its American, Black Muslim, strain...as first preached by Malcolm X, who scared the shit out of Whitey. And if not a purely Black religion, then one exclusive to the other category of humans white people despise...Wogs, or "natives"...people who speak Arabic, basically...the "niggers" of the Europeans. The idea that this religion...of all religions, could possibly become a force in mainstrean America...especially as it spills over the color line...keeps these white people of a god they somehow bleached too...frantic to do anything they can to marginalize it...make it abhorrent in the eyes of the "good people"...white people. If a few million children have to be "sacrificed" in the process...well, wasn't HE sacrificed? And if it was good enough for HIM...what are Iraqi mothers and fathers crying about?
-- farid
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