The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> Will Durant Raises An Interesting...

Will Durant Raises An Interesting...
Posted by Bob Aprim (Guest) - Wednesday, January 31 2007, 19:01:13 (CET)
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...issue which might have some bearing on Assyrian notions of politics. The most lasting and puzzling aspect of the war in Iraq and the consequent political fervor among Assyrians is the degree of animosity, accusations and bitter denunciations Assyrians have been firing at each other. Everyone appeals to Christian charity, everyone calls on Assyrian nationalism and the crying need for unity and almost everyone calls down hell and damnation on anyone who disagrees.
Why do people approach what are presented as national and political issues with all the fervor of orthodox believers battling heretics and vice versa? And is there a connection between Mar Bawi´s situation and the heightened political(and therefore one suspects religious) atmosphere. The high hopes, based on little more than hope, that some national/political solution might finally be at hand…has resulted instead in a shattering disillusionment with an inexplicable outcome no one would have dreamed possible…as if not only a homeland but the Promised Land itself, so close at hand, had been cruelly wrenched away yet again with the result that Assyrians are still “exiled”. And, as if to grind our faces in the dust, what we call our homeland of Assyria has been turned instead into Kurdistan, through the help and support of the very people, fellow-Christians no less, whom we placed our hopes in.

In his book, “The Reformation”, Durant says that oftentimes heresy was simply an attempt to enlist religious passions for political ends…and for that reason did popes, kings, princes and emperors react so harshly to what seemed, even then, mind-numbing and petty religious distinctions over which hundreds of thousands of mostly decent and well-intentioned Christian men, women and even children were brutalized and killed by fellow Christians.

The best example of this is the Protestant rebellion, led by Luther, which succeeded, where previous ones had failed, only because German princes, anxious to be the supreme authority in their dominions and, not incidentally, seize Church wealth and property, protected it. There were obvious abuses in the Church but the revolt was more a demand for national and state´s rights over a supernational church based in Rome and controlling the lives and wealth of distant people. The Germans, the French and English too, were mighty tired of the wealth of their nations being siphoned off to Rome…especially when the popes used the money from one king to support a rival in war.

But even before the Reformation of the sixteenth century, back in the fifth century, there were already numerous heresies in Rome and Constantinople and according to Durant these too were primarily attempts to thwart the unifying efforts of emperors, popes and patriarchs. A new heresy was often the religious banner and front of a revolutionary/political movement seeking independence from centralized control…to enlist god on its side and hopefully inspire followers, always outnumbered, with fiery zeal.

If religion was used to mask political rebellion and demands for nationalism as against central rule…might not the reverse be true…that is could politics and calls for nationalism be masks to hide or disguise religious disputes over supremacy? In other words; are competing Assyrian calls for unity, nationalism, political parties, agendas, governments-in-exile etc., what they seem to be or merely the cover and disguise for sectarian disputes?

Politics is the art of compromise. But between religions and even more so between sects of one religion, there can be no compromise. If anything is clear after five years of bickering it´s that no one knows how to compromise….not in religion certainly and not in politics either. In fact to even suggest political compromise is to risk being called all the names usually reserved for heretics. And when an effort is made to compromise, as in the hyphenated name thing, it´s done with reluctance, with every sign of great distaste and ill-will… with everyone practically saying out-loud that they don´t really believe in it but it might “work”…while those who refuse the compromise brand everyone who compromises, and are branded right back, as traitors, sell-outs, almost “heretics” and worse, so that people can´t even compromise over the need for a compromise. Not even compromise truly compromises anything but rather aims one more explosive projectile at the flames.

Can the explanation for this be that what people are really dealing in is their religious differences…battles which have been going on among Assyrians since before the Arabs came to Iraq. And just to make the point tantalizingly clear, in the midst of all this hope in a “national” solution comes yet another division, over what?…not politics which is what everyone says they´re most concerned with, but in religion…once more the attempt to “save” a religious argument threatens to turn people against each other some more. Which is exactly what heresies do to people whereas politics tries to find common ground.

Assyrians were historically split between two heresies…the Nestorian and Monophysite…before the rest showed up. Heretical sects aren´t only at war with Orthodoxy but with other heresies, with each other, as well. What we´ve just witnessed and what is still tearing at people, especially the Mar Bawi controversy, might be a continuation of those ancient sectarian wars of faith…of Christian against Christian, only under a political disguise. Add to the two original sects the later Catholics, Presbyterians, Protestants etc. and there is even less of a chance that people so impassioned over the fine print of competing religious doctrine will agree to compromise in politics. That could be the reason there is now more, not less, animosity and the reason there may well be no let up.

Furthermore, what Assyrians mean to imply by political “unity” resembles demands for religious orthodoxy instead. When people strike a compromise in politics all sides know and accept as normal and correct that the compromise exists only to further the basic goals of the group, over which there is little to no disagreement, while each side maintains its peculiar and personal point of view intact.

The idea that those who agree to political compromise are “traitors” reveals confusion over the very essence and nature of compromise. Confusion that results when people see the world and those practical aspects of it through purely religious eyes. It is religious unity which demands capitulation and total surrender, with no holding back, to one and only one point of view…not political unity. In fact every effort is made to weed out and condemn even the slightest reservations. This is often the manner in which Assyrians call on each other to “unify”…not in political terms which require and allow compromise, but with religious undertones which demand strict obedience to the one “correct” way and have never been achieved.

Unfortunately, since religion is at the very heart of the “Assyrian” identity, insisting that only one religion is the marker for a “real” Assyrian, it´s difficult to imagine any workable sort of compromise leading to political unity. Because, as was said earlier, politics is the art of compromise whereas religion is a declaration of certainty.

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