Posted by panch from host-148-244-221-67.block.alestra.net.mx (148.244.221.67) on Saturday, September 21, 2002 at 4:38PM :
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. You make far too much of just talking...or demanding and hurling insults...while you actually do very little...and you fault the people who have plenty to do, under the most difficult of circumstances...made even more difficult by the fact that you go crawling to the West and encourage it to ravage your lands some more.
You are all of you perfectly free to do and work for and promote your Assyrian heritage in Iraq...so long as you remember that Iraq is a sovereign nation, not bound to honor your claims...any more than any other country is about to give up any of ts territories to any indigenous groups who claim to once have owned the land. That is an absurd position and I for one don't believe being absurd is a mark of the true Assyrian.
I believe this is indeed all about Christianity...about your quaint ideas that a person must be Christian in order to be Assyrian at all...and that when you talk about having a corner to call Assyria...what you really want is a Christian enclave where you can stick your cross in the eye of the religion that conquered that region ages ago. Because if it is about being Assyrian, you wouldn't work so hard to expose and magnify what you claim are Muslim crimes agaist Christians...without saying a word about the Christian crimes against Muslims AND the Assyrians living there. The Christian West, with your active participation and encouragement, is killing far more Assyrians and destroying their lives in greater number than Saddam ever did. Obviously the ony Assyrians that matter to you are the Christian ones...and even then only when killed by Muslims. Yet you refuse to even include Assyrians killed by Christians in your annual Bragfests. That seems a bit "religious", don't you think?
There are many Assyrians who don't play up their Christianity, or aren't Christian, who are concerned for the welfare of those of us left there, who don't care what relgion an Assyrian is. WE are the ones who don't care about religion, not you Christian Assyrians....and who know that we can't thrive or be safe in a devastated country where the flames of religious hatred are being fanned by all this denouncing of Muslim crimes dating back 1000 years. This is a clearly Christian inspired thing...not at all in the interest of Assyrians, both Christian and others...being directed and devised from outside of the country, from the safety of basements and back alley clubs in Chicago and Turlock. No one on the ground in Iraq wants what you people in exile want. They know better.
This is a Christian Jihad thing...something you deny when caught with your hands inside someone's cookie jar. Assyrians are in Iraq right now...and were doing just fine before this Gulf War set up. I know personally of family members who spent time in Saddam's jails because they demanded an Assyria and said they would take back "their" land. Saddam is many things, but he isn't totally stupid. He knows damn well who inspires these things and he isn't about to let his citizens rasie a rebellion...even though it is all just talk. Check behind these "nationalits" and you'll find a priest who uses love of Assyria in some weak headed young people to push his Christian rights thing.
How can you expect your national rights to be recognized or respected when you see the rights of Iraqis, innocent children too, trampled underfoot by this country you expect will help you? Are you mad? When and where has the United States or Britain ever shown a principled understanding or respect for anyone's national rights? It is only because both of these empires are Christian that you pin your hopes on them...believing STILL that they will do SOMETHING for people...poor sad and beat up people, who are also Christian. You mean the United States has NEVER stepped all over Christian people???
America would treat its Native indigenous population the same way...it did. In the 70's there was a movement by several native Americans to reclaim their land...and their claim is far more valid than ours ever will be because among other things they still have treaties barely 100 years old signed by government officials promising them this and that. Several were killed and imprisoned...and a few thousand were allowed to imprison themselves on Alcatraz Island till they won some token concessions and went back to the Reservations.
It turns out that Christian Assyrians will be the single most destructive force ever aimed at the heart of Assyria. If Christianity "saved" us...as you all claim...then it saved us for this humiliation...when we must watch for the first time in our history as Assyrians cheer for the destruction of their homelands in the odd and vain belief that the ruins will be turned over to them...FINALLY. It is fitting in a way because you Christians also believe in dying in order to be reborn. Thanks a lot.
-- panch
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