Posted by panch from customer-148-233-78-77.uninet.net.mx (148.233.78.77) on Friday, September 20, 2002 at 1:28PM :
On the argument that what we are all talking abut is Assyrian national rights and not Christianity, let me say that it's odd you would divorce from your ethnic identity the one thing you at other times claim makes us distinctive and truly Assyrian, as opposed to all the others who may be ethnically Assyrian but no longer count because they switched religions...an argument you wont accept when I point out that if you used the same criteria...of switching religions as denying legitimate ethnic status...then you all have no right to call yourselves Assyrian when you switched from the Assyrian religion, which was decidedly NOT Cristianity.
We still persist in this dismal bit of silliness today when we turn our backs on anyone who marries a Moslem...or worse yet...becomes Moslem. Obviously being Christian is at the very center and core of what the Christians among us define as Assyrian. Therefore what we are really talking about when we demand a return of Assyrians to Iraq, or some enclave or guarantees...or lay claim to some rights...is a right to be a recognized Christian sect with a Christian run country...in the midst of millions of Muslims who have every good reason in the world to distrust and despise this "religion of peace".
As Assyrians turned Christian, so do did many turn Muslim. At the time of Assyria, there were no Christians...just Assyrians...believers in Ashur. By the time of the Muslim conquest there were those who'd turned Christian and those who hadn't yet. Our rights to that land were tenuous and certainly weren't god given...not unless you mean given by the god Ashur...on whom we'd already turned our backs. The land, and the people in it aparently, were up for grabs...open to domination by any foreign religion...or by any foreign occupying force.
We have another bizarre notion that to be an Assyrian and be a Muslim you have to TALK a lot about being Assyrian. That if you don't call yourself an Assyrian, you can't be one. Since you Chrisian Assyrians have insisted that one must be Christian to be a legitimate Assyrian...this means that any Muslim who is Assyrian would have to adopt Christianity. Not everyone in the world is as peculiar as you Christian Assyrians are...would you switch religions in order to become true Assyrians...wait...you did once already. Anyway...no Muslim Assyrian is going to accept your criteria for being Assyrian. I'm not Muslim or Christian and I sure as hell don't accept your standards. People who have nothing tangible to do, or show...do a lot of talking and insisting...they have the spare time. When you are showing your love, actively...you don't have the time or need to talk about how loving you are and how much love means to you. It shows in your actions.
Besides which...you people only talk about being Assyrian...you do precious little about it. You seem content to live in the West, to conform and fit in...to say nothing to your neighbors about your heritage... to change your names and adopt better sounding ones for your children...to write no letters of protest to the British Museum which still and for years has been telling visitors that there are no Assyrians left in the world, that they were all wiped out centuries ago... to refuse to challege a professor who slams your ASSYRIAN roots while praising you all for becoming Christian and renouncing your "bloody" past when you were worse than a Hitler...neither do you help Assyrian causes in America...nor do you seem able to inspire pride in your children. The question can be fairly asked as to how much pride and importance you really place in being Assyrian, when in the one place on earth where your identity could flourish, safe and sound, you do absolutely nothing...while talking and talking about how important it is to be Assyrian...focusing your thoughts and words on the one most hostile place on earth to you, by your own account, as Assyrians.
But even that isn't the whole of it. In Iraq there are several Assyrians who work with the government, who work in the departments of Archaeology and Antiquities and Health and Education...who see themselves as Assyrian in heritage but Iraqi in nationality...just as you all see yourselves as American in nationality and Assyrian by hertage. The people in Iraq are now the guardians of the entire history of that land, its resources and treasures as well as the welfare of all their people...and they seem to be taking excellent care of all of it...when the United States isn't bombing and starving them or their allied Turks cutting off their water supply.
-- panch
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