The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Assyrians Exist

Assyrians Exist

Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Saturday, July 12 2008, 19:15:45 (CEST)
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Of course they do. Wasn’t I born in Assyria? Never mind “lineal descent”, which no one can prove...and let’s accept the argument that even if Assyrians “forgot” who they were, they now wish to remember. Let’s accept that anyone who was ever born in “Assyria”...roughly the north of Iraq, but covering the entire country, is as Assyrian as anyone can ever hope to be...there remains this problem of Christian Assyrians insisting that they and only they are true Assyrians. How can this be?

Christians claim that Assyrians converted to Christ during his own lifetime...they cite the fable of King Abgar and St Thomas and Mar Thaddeus...or whatever. But all of these people, legendary or not, were alive when there was no such thing as Christianity but only Judaism and the Messiah was a Hebrew notion of a savior who would save ONLY the Hebrews and only on this earth...no mention of heaven and no gentiles allowed. So that even if we credit these myths and legends it only shows that Assyrians converted to Judaism and not Christianity.

Let’s agree that however they did it, numbers of Assyrians converted to Christianity...and, since they got in the habit of converting “for advantage”, it isn’t difficult to see they would have converted to the next religion that came along offering benefits; which would have been Islam. Indeed much later, during the 18th and 19th centuries we see Assyrians once again considering and changing to still newer versions of Christianity in hopes of new and better benefits. Many had already returned to Catholicism for the supposed protection this afforded them with the French government. The Anglican Church also encouraged Assyrians to convert to their churches and petition the Queen for her protection....American missionaries dangled the same promise of benefits and protection from their government...and even the Russians enticed the Assyrians to convert to Greek Orthodoxy in hopes of receiving the Czar’s protection.

The notion that Assyrians were ever ready to convert to new religions, or revert to older ones, where they perceived some immediate benefit to themselves and community isn’t something hard to swallow for they did it so often. It shouldn’t be such a stretch to believe they also converted to Islam. Unless of course you’re a bigot who believes your own religion is best and the rest, including variations on your own, are all damned and evil. If that’s what you believe...then say so.

Christian Assyrians quickly dropped any and all indigenous Assyrian names and festivals, recounted none of their ancient history and were content to define themselves strictly as Christians...members of a universal brotherhood that transcended borders etc. Today, with the “reawakening” of the “lost” indigenous consciousness, modern Assyrians have attached the word “Assyrian” to what is in essence their Christian faith. “Assyrian” celebrations are now Christmas, Easter and various Saint’s days...needless to say none of these are Assyrian in any meaningful or indigenous sense of the word.

The claim that Muslim countries forbid them to be “Assyrian” is false...since they have maintained their language AND religion all these centuries. At no time would any of them have been stopped from forming an Assyrian band...opera....art museum or anything else Assyrian. Indeed when these supposedly “downtrodden” Assyrians escape to safety in the West, they produce nothing Assyrian, though no one stands in their way. Where are the Assyrian cultural centers...the Assyrian language and culture schools...where are the Assyrian museums and libraries? All they produce are churches and bingo halls...neither of which are Assyrian in origin.

Cries of persecution are attempts to deceive...just as nationalism is only a cloak behind which the same sectarian squabbles of the last 1000 years are played out. There is no nation, as such and no unity...merely religious sects locked in their age-old hatreds.

This deception is intended to lend some validity to the notion that Christian Assyrians deserve their own nation, because they are a Nation. They can’t very well make such demands under the banner of Christianity...so they try to make a “nation” of their religion and think their religious disputes are thereby elevated to a higher plane...one on which they can stand as equals, with other “nations”. But they are a hate-based “nation” of xenophobes and bigots...something no one wants to promote. And since Muslims will never agree to such a thing, the idea is dead in the water and was when first imagined.

There is no way to determine who is and who is not descended from the ancient Assyrians of Iraq. If the Christians say that any Muslim in Iraq must have come from Arabia, with the invading Arabs who brought Islam to BetNahrain...it can be said that all Christian Assyrians are originally from Israel where Christianity was born. If the Muslims aren’t indigenous then neither are the Christians...therefore religion can’t determine Assyrian ethnicity...since both these religions were foreign and have spread round the world and taken in many ethnic and language groups. If Christians can be Assyrians then so can Muslims...or Buddhists...or atheists.

The fact that Christian Assyrians “talk a lot about being Assyrians” merely indicates that they recently decided there might be something to gain in loudly identifying themselves as Assyrians...something like a “nation” perhaps. They didn’t “talk a lot about it” all those centuries when they only talked of Jesus. They hardly ever mentioned it before the WWI.

“Assyria” is part of Iraq. All of Iraq was once part of the Empire. Muslim Assyrians have a newer empire to identify with, the great Islamic Empire. Christian villages lay outside the mainstream and refused to join...keeping their sights on Christ. It’s in those villages that Assyrian “nationalism” took root a century or so ago...and the people in them who spoke up or acted on these beliefs were guilty of sedition and suffered for it just as they would have in America or Germany or any modern nation....there was prosecution, not persecution.

Christian Assyrians can’t tell other’s how to be Assyrian....especially as this means practically converting to Christianity. Muslim Assyrians are as free as Christians to decide for themselves how to express their Assyrianism. One thing they won’t do is give minority Christians a part of the country...when the country belongs to all the Assyrians there...Muslim as well as Christian.

The short of it is that the Christians will not deceive anyone into giving them a part of the country...there’s no need to. Christian Assyrians have been free to practice their religion and express their Assyrian pride, however they choose to define it, so long as they obeyed laws and committed no acts of sedition or treason.

Those Christians still agitating for this are hoping that with more “martyrs” the world will finally do the “right” thing and make a safe-haven for them...only it won’t be safe. Not at all. It would be the most dangerous and lethal act of self-destruction yet. They’re interests are in playing politics with the lives of other people...of inflating themselves as the only surviving Assyrians who need a country and funding in order to survive.

The vast majority of Assyrian survivors today are Muslim...and they extend freedom and peace to their Christian brothers and sisters...if they obey the laws and behave themselves.

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