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=> John Joseph Interview - Question 1 (Draft)

John Joseph Interview - Question 1 (Draft)
Posted by Tiglath (Guest) - Monday, December 6 2004, 3:59:18 (CET)
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Question 1 : In Nations and Nationalism, Ernerst Gellner argues that nationalism occurs in the modern period because industrial societies, unlike agrarian ones, need homogenous languages and cultures in order to work efficiently. Thus, states and intellectuals mobilize campaigns of assimilation through public education and the culture industries.
What exactly is Nationalism and have our people grasped this concept yet?

Joseph: The first part of your question clearly does not apply to the various "millets" of the Muslim Middle East, where there has not been a separation of religion and state. Until the birth of the modern nation state in the early twentieth century, the strongest tie among people was a shared religious membership and a common language. I have referred to Gellner in my book, but the ingredients that he speaks of in your citation above, are missing. As for your second part, nationalism is a Western ideology. The "good" nationalism, whose concepts go back to the Age of Enlightenment and the French Revolution, emphasizes those concepts--equality of all citizens and the separation of Church and State being among the most important. In the case of France, all citizens who lived within the geographical boundaries of France were, according the new order, equal before the law regardless of their religion or ethnic background. In more recent times we see the birth of an unenlightened nationalism, associated with Nazism and Fascism, with emphasis on an exclusivist ideology and the supremacy of an "uber" race or nation.

As for our own people and their "nationalism," this has a great deal to do with the history of the countries where they lived--with the political, cultural and social developments that eventually transformed beyond recognition the world that they had known for centuries. Their national self-consciousness gradually developed as a result of the missionary focus on them and the interference of the expanding Western powers on their behalf from the nineteenth century on. It all came to a head during World War I and the years immediately after it. The "Peace" that followed that war saw the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, the last great Islamic empire. The various peoples of that multi-ethnic empire were left adrift. The Muslim majorities, faced with the imperialist takeover of the nation states that were created on the ruins of the Ottoman state, resisted. In the Arab world, from Morocco to Iraq, nationalists-turned-historians began to rediscover their past and to restore it.

Like the other "millets" of the Ottoman Empire, the "Nestorians" were allured by the ideas of autonomy and national unity. Around the middle of the nineteenth century they were associated with the ancient Assyrians whose remains were literally dug out of the ground and exhibited to the dazzling eyes of the world. Christians surrounding the excavation sites in and around ancient Nineveh, were proclaimed by Austin Henry Layard to be the only human remains of the once-mighty Assyrians; ironically, he continued to call these Christians 'Chaldeans.'

Nationalistic feelings during and after World War I were, of course, intensified by the latent sense of insecurity that these minorities suffered. They were a people uprooted from their home grounds of centuries, traumatized by the terrible times that they had endured. They were understandably susceptible to movements that promised cohesion and backing. Romanticism and the appeal to past glory filled the gaping void in their national life. During the First World War, as the "Smallest Ally" of Great Britain, they were encouraged to make nationalistic demands. The elation of their nationalists and poets is well illustrated by the following verse, composed in 1915:

Forth we go to battle, raging o'er the mountains
Hearts all yearning forth to Mosul's fertile plain.
Nineveh's fair city summons back her children
Forth we go to battle in they name O Mar Shimon.

The British historian Arnold J. Toynbee aptly referred to the nationalism of these small minorities as "a will-o'-the-wisp enticing them to destruction."

While it is difficult to ascertain whether these few members of the Church of the East had the desire to coalesce into a national state, it is certain that through the centuries they had developed an intense devotion to their old home grounds in both Hakkari and Urmiyah. A deputation of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions found the Christians of Persia with an intense longing to return to their ancestral homes, "as those Jewish exiles of old in the land of their exile longed for hills and valleys' of Palestine." This longing of the Christians of Persia for their native land in Urmiyah was well expressed by the representatives of the community itself in a petition addressed to the deputation of the Presbyterian Board: "The greatest part of our men and women are real lovers of their tongue and nation, and are ready to put down their lives in its behalf...we believe that the existence of this ancient nation and tongue depends on the opening of our beloved native place, which we hope will be the nucleus to gather all our people around it in the future..." Realizing that their last hope to achieve their goal lay in the efforts of the Persian government to open Urmiyah for them, the representatives asked the Board to exert its influence "to secure the opening of our land, and the altars of our [nationality]." They seem to have been unwilling to identify their future with that of their brethren from Turkey. They wanted nothing more than to regain the cultural autonomy and economic prosperity which were their lot during the years preceding World War I. "Strange is their love of home and their willingness to start over again if they can only be promised protection."

The Nestorians of Turkey likewise wanted to return to their ancestral villages in Kurdistan but on the condition that their security would be guaranteed by the British. The wishes of this group were addressed early in 1919 by the Patriarch of the Church of the East himself. In his letter to the British Acting Civil Commissioner, Mar Shamun requested that all his people be placed permanently under the British protection in their own country in Turkey's Kurdistan. He asked that the districts of Urmiyah, Sulduz, and Salmas on the western side of Lake Urmiyah be placed in this protectorate, if possible. He also requested the British government to recognize the position of the patriarch as the head of the millet: "Owing to the primitive state of our people." Note the total absence of Nineveh and of Mosul's fertile plain.

To be sure, the modern Assyrians were not without their super patriots with irrational projects and extravagant claims--almost all of them, even then, from the United States. Like a host of other minorities, they too had self-appointed representatives who were ready to put the claims of their people before the Peace Conference in Paris. A delegation made up of the president and other members of the "Assyrian National Associations of America" had an elaborate draft of "claims of the Assyrians" which it placed before that Conference. By "Assyrian" these diaspora nationalists meant not only the Nestorians, Chaldeans, and Jacobites, but also the Maronites as well as some "Islamic Assyrians" such as certain Kurdish tribes and the Yazidis of Jabal Sinjar. Totally out of touch with the true state of affairs that surrounded their people, their claims included the northern part of Mesopotamia and altogether comprised "an area which stretches from below the lower-Zaba, up to and including, the province of Dearbeker (Diyarbakr), where the Assyrians vastly outnumbered the Armenians; and also from Euphrates in the west to the mountains of Armenia in the east. Moreover, the Assyrians "naturally desired an access to the sea." While acknowledging the fact that the Kurds were "qualified to the benefits of the principle of self-determination," the American-Assyrian deputation thought that the Kurdish claims should not be permitted "to expand and infringe upon the exclusive right of the Assyrians."

The rest is history, summed up by the title of my chapter 8: "The Inevitable Clash." [For a discussion of "diaspora nationalism," see Ernest. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, N.Y., 1983), pp. 101 seq. ]

Hardly had twenty short years passed when the world was plunged into its second global conflict. The international decisions reached after World War II with regard to minority status, were based on a philosophy characterized by the universal protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Instead of concerning itself with minority problems as such, as the League of Nations after the First World War had done, the Commission on Human Rights of the United Nations concluded "not to deal in a specific provision with the question of minorities" because of its "complexity." Middle Eastern nation states, free members of the world organization now, sided with the majority and spoke of their unfortunate experience with regard to minority guarantees. The Syrian delegate pointed out that the principle of the protection of minorities "had often been used as a political excuse to interfere with the domestic affairs of other countries"; if it were incorporated in the Declaration of Human Rights, he noted, "some nations would feel justified in abusing [it]."

You ask: "have our people grasped this concept [of nationalism] yet?" I am afraid it is "Assyrianism" that has had our diaspora nationalists in its firm grasp, instead of them grasping the political and historical realities that their people daily face on the ground in the Middle East. That is why the majority of the Syriac-speaking Christians, the Chaldeans and the Suryaan, keep their distance from us. They have always shown more political savvy and sensitivity, and have been much better informed historically. This leads to your second question, on Simo Parpola's position on Assyrianism.



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