The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> I think I get it.....

I think I get it.....
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Thursday, October 13 2011, 3:45:28 (UTC)
from *** - *** Commercial - Windows XP - Mozilla
Website:
Website title:

Recently had a series of exchanges with someone in the AID Society about their schools in the north.....

Thanks so much for the give and take as it helped me define exactly what my concern is…I mean I know what it has been but now I know why it’s there and growing.

My worry has always been that those of us outside Iraq who don’t know what these people are up against have been urging them not to blend, not to be “fooled by the Qurds”, to “save the heritage and language” and the rest of it…to me it seems a way to increase antagonism between our minority and the dominant group, especially when you factor in this last Christian jihad against the people of Iraq…things are dicier than ever for our people and to me this was not the time to make us more separate, more the outsiders.

We urge them to “stand up and demand your rights” and the rest of it…but they know better…and yet they also know that we expect them to make a bold stand and demand a territory or a triangle or something…generally to make noise and refuse to settle…which has always been the problem dating back to when the Marshimun was the proximate cause of the Semele massacre, but that’s another story.

The irony is of course that we do none of that in the West…where we are really free to save the language and heritage but do next to nothing…but boy do we DEMAND they do something back there! For this reason I view your excitement and the realization of a long-held dream to educate our children in our own language as misplaced…it’s obvious that we are really worried that our kids might get along with Qurds, make friends and maybe even date and marry…and you know how we view that. So, you people are excited that you are saving the heritage…but what you really mean is that you are driving a deeper wedge between us and them…now our boys and girls can see only each other when puberty hits in high school…and maybe form love-attachments exclusively among our own…this is what is meant by “saving us”,,,,it means saving us from getting close to Muslims and getting too friendly.

This is something we don’t mind happening anywhere else on earth, I mean getting close to the dominant culture, in the West especially which is where the heritage and language are REALLY dying…but no one really cares because our kids remain Christian and marry Christian…we all know that in three or four generations the language and heritage will be forgotten…but not so in Iraq, but not because of your schools, but because our families have always passed down the heritage and will continue to do it for ages to come, without Assyrian math classes.

This is all about saving us from being Arabized, or Qurdisized…and the high school is simply the means by which we keep our kids away from their kids even longer…no doubt you’d love to have a college too…..

No…the language and heritage are safe in Iraq, but the people are not…and they will be less safe by removing themselves from the common thread of civic life and retreating into a ghetto of their own…it is in the West, where you all live, that the language and heritage are in danger…and this is how I know your efforts are not honestly what you claim…because if the danger to the language and heritage is what motivates you, you would work to save them where they ARE in danger…in the West, and not travel to Iraq with that intention while all the while you are merely driving our people farther apart and away from the people they must live among…something, I repeat, you would never stand for in the Christian West.

There…I’m done. Thank you for your help…the most important thing in life is to understand…and now I understand better.



---------------------


The full topic:



***



Powered by RedKernel V.S. Forum 1.2.b9