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F. Parhad, D. Chibo, and I. Kakovitch: W
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F. Parhad, D. Chibo, and I. Kakovitch: Why Live an iIlusion?

Posted By: Fred Aprim (59.san-jose-16rh15-16rt.ca.dial-access.att.net)
Date: Monday, 26 January 2004, at 11:04 p.m.

Fred Parhad, David Chibo, and Ivan Kakovitch: Why Live an iIlusion?

I have listened to the few "nationalists" like you for some time now. They continue to bring up over and again this specific issue of so-called Moslem Assyrians and that Assyrian nationalism should get beyond Christianity.

Stop and think about the consequences of what you guys are saying. Not every nationalistic thought or ideology is necessarily applicable on the ground, no matter how perfect that thought or ideology is. You guys claim that it does not matter whether Assyrians are Christians, Moslems, etc. etc. Well, I am not an expert on religions, therefore, I am not here to analyze what is Christianity and what is Islam; I am not here to make comparisons or explain what each religion stands for; or the rules and expectations they impose on people in general and on their believers in specific. However, I have a scenario, which I need to present to you, and then I am going to ask you a question or two and expect from you to give the reader a precise answer (not a politician's answer).

What if we agreed with you that there was no difference for the Assyrian national movement or Assyrians as a race for that matter whether the people were Christians or Moslems (since you claim that religion does not matter in nationalism after all, and which is true to some degree but not in all cases).

Now, hypothetically, suppose that tomorrow all Iraqi Sunni and Shi'aa Arabs suddenly decided to rediscover their true heritage and decided, hypothetically that is, to accept that they were ethnically Assyrians, but wanted to remain on their religion (i.e. Islam). So far, this should not raise any issues with you according to your ultra liberal modern nationalistic thoughts.

Now, what we will have in front of us will be an Iraq with a minority Christian Assyrians and a majority Moslem Assyrians.

What happens in the Iraq of your vision next as the Moslem Assyrians want to practice the true teachings of Islam in dealing with Christian Assyrians, just as they do already? What kind of a law would you be able to pass in order to protect the Christian Assyrians against Moslem Assyrians?

Where would you stand if Christian Assyrians were treated differently (i.e. second-class citizens) in that society?
Where would you stand if a Moslem Assyrian woman was killed for marrying a Christian Assyrian?
Where would you stand if the testimony of a Christian Assyrian in the court of law was not valued as equal to that of the Moslem Assyrian?
Where would you stand if a Christian Assyrian were not giving the chance to rule over the country, since a Christian cannot rule over a Moslem?

How do you envision that SPECIFIC society (and I stress the above specific hypothetical scenario) from the point of view of nationalists like you, who believe that religion should not make a difference and who claim it so very casually and irresponsibly? Could you compare that to the situation in the Arabian Peninsula before Islam? A good number of the population was Arab in their race; of course, there were Jews and other groups. Now, what happened after Islam? What happened to the Arab Christians in the Arabian Peninsula who spoke Syriac (Aramaic)? Why is it that they disappeared? What was wrong with having Christian Arabs and Moselm Arabs in the Peninsula? I will answer that for you later on.

Today, a Moslem Arab woman could not marry a Christian Assyrian man; she will be killed; however, the marriage of Christian woman to Muslim man is blessed. If we apply your thoughts, we will have a more open society that blesses, further and stronger, the latter situation; however, the prior situation will remain without a solution, lets face it. What is more important is that in your society intermarriage practices will continue stronger since then Christians and Moslems are all the same (according to your logic; they are all Assyrian brothers and sisters).

Now, since Arabic is the ONLY permitted language for the Koran and the translation of it is prohibited, and since reading the Koran is a must for a Moslem, these Assyrian women must read the Koran in Arabic and with time be Arabized. This is what happened earlier and this is what will happen in your society. The difference between now and then will be that then it will be "acceptable" when today it is, at least, "protested."

Islam and Arabism are synonym; you might not agree with this point for good reasons (since there are Moslem countries that have their own languages), but allow me to elaborate. It took only few hundred years for Arabic to rule over the Arabian Peninsula when Syriac for example was dominant language. It took few hundred years more for Arabic to have great impact over the people of Indonesia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and many African nations. Persians, even today, do not know how to deal with this issue; their language is basically Arabized. One thing that saved these people from totally becoming Arabs was their luck for having their domain (countries) at a distance, thus harder to directly control them, which was due to the geographical nature of their regions. Do you know what will happen to the Syriac speaking Assyrian Christians in Iraq few hundred years down the road if your outrageous thoughts were implemented in these particular conditions? It took 1,300 years to get us in the pathetic situation where we are, with your thoughts; we will completely disappear within two centuries.

Many argue that Islam is not about race and ethnicity; it is about an ideology called Shari'aa (the Islamic Law). How are you going to safe-guard the Christian Assyrians against the Moslem Assyrians, who have to follow the Koran and the Shari'aa? If we have survived as Assyrian Christians, it was only because we remained different; we were Christians and they were Moslems; we spoke Syriac and they spoke Arabic; we tried and tried very hard to be who we are, meanwhile those who were Islamized became Arabs. Those Islamized Mesopotamians mixed with other Arabs since they began to share a new religion (Islam) and with time any blood relation between the Islamized population and the remaining Assyrians disappeared. Meaning, our differences isolated us and saved us. Today, the Islamized Mesopotamians are completely different people and you will not be able to even ask them to think about the thought because if you were in Iraq, they will teach you a lesson or two in Arab nationalism. Do you know what happened to the Assyrian Christians who created Arab nationalism?

Therefore, before you continue in this crusade of yours, you should make sure that the Iraqi Moslems are accepting this "illusive and hallucinating new and improved national thought of yours". This is not like bringing Catholic and Orthodox Assyrians together; a people that have so much in common. If a small group in one or two Turkish and Iraqi villages still remember their roots because their parents and grandparents still talk about their "fresh" conversion that happened one or two centuries ago, the majority of the Iraqi Moslems have been Moslems and most importantly and in line with our discussion have been Arabs, for over a millennia. Do not take the expression of those few hundreds and try to insinuate that you can impose it under any logic on the completely different 16 or 17 million Moslem Arabs of Iraq.

Finally, when one wants to go back to his/her roots, he/she should do it right at least. Why aren't you asking the Moslem Mesopotamians to go back and worship Shamash, Nimrod, Ishtar, Ashur, and the rest of Mesopotamian gods? Why is it that you are so macho in expressing and imposing your "new and improved" national thoughts on the oldest people of Mesopotamia, the Assyrian Christians, yet shy away from doing the same with the Arab Moslem groups? Does your twisted logic fair well only with the weak Assyrian Christians?

I respect the specifics and uniqueness of the Arabs and we must stop trying to dig out water from a well that has long dried out. You are wasting your time and the time of the readers of this forum with a situation that will never happen and we all know it, so why complicate the Assyrian situation further? Does it need more complications? Oh, I take that back, I should not have stated it will never happen, because it does happen indeed in the minds of ultra idealists and illusionists like yourselves.

Fred Aprim
January 26, 2004



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