Posted by pancho from host-148-244-221-38.block.alestra.net.mx (148.244.221.38) on Wednesday, September 25, 2002 at 6:24PM :
Let's see if I can figure this out...I must be Muslim...why? Because I try to be fair (that's a hell of a compliment to Islam)...because I refuse to buy into any of the three soccer club religions that have been fighting a blood feud for 1500 years and continue to this day to churn up young peple's minds first, then their bodies...because I see good in all of them...and much that is not good...that is not a part of the best in them but a part of the baggage we humans carry around with us, baggage we know stinks so we try to cover its rotten smell with religion. The good and the bad in religion comes from us...we created god in our own image, obviously, not the other way around.
Muslims are accused of the most absurd crimes...presented to us by our "scholars" and hysterians as the most bloodthirsty, treacherous villians ever...people whose own holy book insists they be that way. Fortunately, even from this tragedy that struck America...Americans are more curious about Islam than ever before...while we, kissing ass as ever, can't get the time of day. Universities have created chairs in departments for Islamic studies...radio and TV programs for the first time have been devoted to exploring the history of Islam...it's ideas and proponents.
You'd think no Christian ever killed another Christian, or anyone else, the way our Christians present the case. Just because they see themselves as a "special" branch of the relgion...most noted because they actually took pride and satisfaction in those famous parents who allowed their children to be slaughtered "for Christ", rather then lift a finger to defend their own...just as their god "of love" did nothing but insist his own child must be killed. But the ugly truth is that while we blather on about how WE never killed anyone...we have to run to these other kinds of Christians...these murdering Christians who are even now killing us and played to our ignorance before...and seek THEIR protection and help...and urge them on, and pay them to go do our killing for us...and we WANT those Muslims killed!
And you wonder why Christianity isn't "popular" over there.
Christian Assyrians do enough killing...they just kill their own. It was an Assyrian Christian who murdered, NOT martyred, MarShimun while he was bathing his child. Assyrian Christians attack each other and stab each other regularly enough. Christian Catholics and Christian Protestants made a killing ground of Europe for centuries, committing the most greusome acts of violence against each other...all the while claiming they were receiving direct orders from "Him"...you know...the bloodiest butcher the world has ever seen...or rather the manifestation of the need for land, power, money and blood of the bloodiest savages ever, attributing their crimes to a higher being. And they dare call our glorious ancestors "savage".
If the Africans can forgive these same bloody Europeans...and the Jews could forgive these same bloody Christians, who only recently murdered and cooked millions of them...and the Muslims can forgive the bloody Westerners even now for starving their children to death...why can't Assyrian Christians ever "forgive" the Muslims? It isn't as if we are the only ones who ever suffered. No nation has avoided death and destruction. Why do we go on and on about it? How can you build when you are consumed in tears...how can you stand tall when at the same time you are whimpering at the seat of some president, begging for an apology or for recognition?
How can you come demanding anything on the basis of the achievments of your great ancestors...when all the while you neglect to mention that you spurned the religion and customs of those great people FIRST, and without anyone forcing you to do it...just because you saw better "goodies"...that you adopted a religion which PROMISED you a good thrasing and an early death, JUST as it delivered one to "your Lord"...and which he said would be your "salvation" as well? You sure you understood what you were buying into? If so, go get saved alright already...why do you now come ALSO wanting armies and parliaments and borders and trade shows and national television, using the name of the God you turned your backs on?
If you did get an Assyria, what would be the state religion? Would YOU allow mosques and mullahs and Muslims free reign...as you now demand they allow you Christians? What would you do if an Ashurism movement started...would you suppress any belief in a religion of Ashur, as opposed to a religion of the Jewish Messiah? Would the kinds of "Assyrians" I've seen here allow temples to be built to Ashur...right next to, "Our Holy Mother Of Reformed Judaism"? Wouldn't THAT be a kick in the ass...to have Ashurism banned in Assyria...wasn't it...didn't you do it once already?
By the time the Muslims came to Iraq, and found you Christians at each other's throats...there WERE no believers in Ashur left, or very few. The vast majority of you had gone over to reformed Judaism, what you call Christianity...a belief in the Jewish Messiah and his father Yahweh. So how is it that Muslims took "Assyria"? Even now you insist that if we have to admit there are Muslim Assyrians...then let them shout and proclaim their Assyrianism. Well what is left of Assyrianism? Don't you really mean Christianity? Do YOU know what Assyrianism is? Does it include destroying what you can't bring over to reformed Judaism?
Why when the Muslims came, didn't the Christians in Iraq proclaim their ASSYRIANISM?...which at that time would have meant their belief in Ashur and NOT their belief in Christ? They died for or got killed for their belief in CHRISTIANITY. THAT is what they proclaimed and shouted about, not Assyrianism. So why don't you DEMAND the return of Assyria based on a belief in the religion of Ashur...NOT based on your belief in Christ? You ask for it back because it was taken from you when you were all gleefully CHRISTIAN!
Zak says that not until the Muslim Assyrians of today declare themselves as Assyrians, have we Christian Assyrians anything to say to them...well, why when the Muslims conquered Iraq didn't the Assyrians stand up and PROCLAIM their Assyrianism...why do you say that they would have been killed if they had...why do you say becomming Christian "saved" us, when if we were saved at all it was only because WE renounced Ashur...and NOW you DEMAND Muslims proclaim their Assyrianism? It turns out that MUSLIMS saved us...think about it...it was THEIR religion that demanded they treat, "People Of The Book, with respect and spare them their lives. So...we saw what was what and given the choice between dying as believers in Ashur, we decided to live and be "saved" by proclaiming our Christianity instead. If the Muslims had required us to stand on our heads and fart champagne in order to be "saved", I suppose we would have done it, and you'd all be standing on your heads in church today saying THIS is what saved you!
Well, that is really what this is all about, though you hide behind the name of Ashur and Assyria. There was no Assyrian consciousness back then...there couldn't have been, not without a strong belief in what made people Assyrian to begin with, their god Ashur and all that belief in a diety entails. (At a recent gathering a priest was called on to give an inspirational talk and DAMN me if he didn't bring up Zacharia and his son Isidore and all that Jewish stuff...no mention of Ashur except to say we gave him up for something "better") There was only a defenseless land already wracked with Christian strife...thanks to the "heretics the Byzantines kicked out of their own territories. You were all pleased as hell back then to be Christian...yet you now come claiming that land because you are "Assyrian" and therefore believe you have some national ethnic claims. When it serves your purposes and there is something of a NATIONAL nature to be gained, you are "Assyrian"...when frightened you become Christian REAL FAST! Your identity then was Christian...and you now use this being Assyrian business as a clever ploy, you think, to get the land of "Ashur" back. It isn't a "National Question" at all...it is a "Christian Question". Go get Israel back, secure Israel instead...as your dollars are helping to do...for that is the land of the lord you left Ashur for.
People say "keep religion out of it". I would LOVE to. But it can't be done for religious infighting between the three sisters from hell, is at the center and core of this whole thing. The Christians raise their pious eyes heavenward, while they and their priests diddle us all. If you catch them at it, they say..."leave religion out of it", so we'll look the other way and let them do it to us AGAIN. And the idiot Mullahs and Rabbis on the other teams do the same thing. Religion stopped being religion a long time ago. It has been for a long time a way for a political agenda to weasle its way in among us...to get out of churches, mosques and synagogues and come into parliaments and our bedrooms. These are busy bodies who use this sanctimonius dodge whenever they can't get their way by fair means. It is not "Assyrians" demanding Assyria be given back to them...for there WAS no Assyria as such when the Muslims came. These are Christians who will now use "pride" in being Assyrian, to get back their once and long ago CHRISTIAN villages and towns...it was never a unified anything under the Christians.
What you want is indeed religiously based, only it is an extension of Judaism not our own Ashurism. You are using the name of the god you abandoned to legitimize another land grab. You have no more right to "Assyria" than you do to Jerusalem or Bethlehem...and indeed all your interest and joy comes from those lands...as they get your protection and tears while BetNahrain gets the bombs you help pay for and your everlasting hatred because another version of Judaism, Islam, took it away from an earlier version of Judaism :Christianity,...and you want it back, FOR YOUR TRUER RELGION! Meanwhile Assyrians are getting killed on all sides and the land of Ashur is going to hell and Exxon.
note: Dear Argon...sorry to catch you again when you are undoubtedly too busy to be bothered...but say something...for form's sake. It is expected of someone to say SOMETHING...and no better indication could we have of how low we've sunk than that "something is better than nothing". Sometimes, and very often with us, our "something" amounts to nothing.
-- pancho
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