The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> assyrians and their friggin Christianity

assyrians and their friggin Christianity

Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Sunday, September 5 2010, 13:13:50 (UTC)
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...when you try to explain his real history to an assyrian he inevitably reacts as if you were challenging the valdity of his religion...and since religious beliefs always come down to a matter of "faith"..and since assyrians insist you MUST be christian to be assyrian, then any questions about a so-called assyrian identity are also seen as an atack on FAITH....with the result that the assyrian says the same thing when his religion is questioned as when his identity is, "it´s a question of faith and I just BELIEVE I am assyrian/christian".....no, it´s worse actually because there needs to be no proof that a person is christian, beyond their belief that they are (even if they break every christian rule)...but there does have to be proof that a person is French...or Swiss...or Greek. You can´t tell a border guard, " I KNOW I am Greek and that should be enough for you too, so let me into MY country".

assyrians become indignant when you ask them to provide some documentary proof that they are who they say they are...of course they´ll produce the bible and say..."I was born in Iraq and Iraq is really Assyria, so I´m assyrian, you fool". I can be born in Beijing...it doesn´t make me ethnically Chinese...sure, I can get a Chinese passport and birth certificate, I can even learn the language, but none of these makes me ethnically Chinese...I can´t claim to be the rightful heir of Genghis Khan simply for being born in the country where he once ruled...hell, even HE wasn´t Chinese.

And all assyrians DO have official papers and none of them call them assyrians...no passport, no birth certificate, except for very old ones like I happen to still have which, oddly enough call me Chaldean and not Assyrian..but that´s probably because it was a Catholic church that tried to drown me. The very papers assyrians carry around prove who they are..and that is NOT assyrian.

As to this nonsense about "Arabification" or "Arabization", when Saddam "forced" everyone in Iraq to adopt an "Arabic Culture"...all he was doing is what every other country on earth had done much earlier...In America, when asked for nationallity, after the 1890s, you had to list "American"...you could no longer say you were Apache or Navajo...that´s because America wanted to UNIFY its citizens under ONE category as a NATION and not a smattering of tribes...unfortunately, and only because of their tolerance and respect, Muslims allowed the millet system to go on too long...they waited too long before insisting that their citizens too adopt a unified national character or at least the same name.

No doubt there were Native Americans who hated the idea of using the name of the very people who conquered them and stole their lands...but in time they came around and all became proud Americans, of Native descent...and Saddam had no problem with assyrians wanting to call themselves assyrians in private or at work...what he objected to was when some of their clubs went on to preach sedition...which is a criminal offense in any country, as Native Americans found out in the 70s...at about the same time Saddam was imprisoning assyrian nationalists and hanging a few...even as the United States shot and killed many Native Americans...for sedition, not because they were Cherokee or Souix.

assyrians are nothing if not slow learners...when they learn anything new at all.

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