The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> not the book I started to write....

not the book I started to write....
Posted by pancho (Guest) - Monday, January 8 2007, 22:52:42 (CET)
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...just one time I`m going to post the introduction to the manuscript I`m working on...it isn`t the final draft but it will do for now. I can say now that I`m not going to "publish" it on a desktop or with one of those self-publishing houses where you can pay to publish any crap you come in with...as long as you have the cash...I`m surprised Dadeeshoo hasn`t written one. Anyway, I`m going to try to make it as scholarly as I can...meaning I will actually READ the goddamned books I`m going to lift from..and provide notes etc. But the book is written by an insider, so it isn`t altogether neutral and I`ll say that up front...I DO have a purpose in writing it..it isn`t merely to be writing....there`s something tragically worngheaded in the way this religious cult of nutjobs has hijacked this most noble heritage to wipe Jesus`s ass with it...and please always remember that when I refer to Jesus I mean the Jesus these rat bastards have gelded and put to work for them...I don`t mean the man who actually lived.

INTRODUCTION

I was told by my parents that we are Assyrians, direct descendants of the ancient Assyrians. History books have said we are no more, having been wiped out in 612 BC when our empire was destroyed. By our own account there are a few hundred thousand of us scattered throughout the MidEast, mostly in Iraq where the ancient homeland and the center of our empire used to be. About the same number live in western European countries, North and South America, Canada and Australia, having started to migrate in the late 1800s.

The area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, from which the Assyrians trace their descent, has been called The Cradle of Civilization due to the vast number of social institutions and legal, literary, artistic, scientific, architectural and domestic inventions which were first developed there and nurtured and expanded upon by succeeding waves of migrants and conquerors over 3000 years. The Akkadian Semites of Sargon the Great and later the Amorites, who produced the great king Hammurabi, are just two examples when a conquering desert tribe reinvigorated and then settled into the mix. The startling number and variety of gifts the Assyrians and kindred people, inhabiting such a relatively small region, gave to civilization is proof that many people of differing backgrounds and origins pooled their talents and energies to create and bequeath to us that vast treasure which forms the bases of Western Civilization.

That same region is also referred to as The Fertile Crescent because the network of man-made canals crisscrossing the plains between the two main rivers provided abundant irrigation for the crops which fed the population and created the surplus used in trade to secure the funds which won the leisure time, away from mere sustenance, for building such a brilliant civilization. Our word for that region is BetNahrain, “between rivers”, from which the Europeans derived Mesopotamia.

The Assyrian Empire was ultimately shattered by a coalition of Medes and Babylonians who destroyed the capital city of Nineveh in 612 BC. Many were killed and many were resettled elsewhere. Though the empire was no more, the people regrouped in smaller settlements or went on with their lives elsewhere under new rulers. The next momentous event in their lives was the advent of Christianity to which Assyrians were converted early on. Later they divided among two main sects; Nestorians and Monophysites or Jacobites, both originating in Roman Constantinople where they were quickly branded heresies. Dialects of the original Aramaic were kept alive through church ritual and common use. In the late 1890s Western missionaries arrived from Europe and America bringing Catholicism and Protestantism which won many.... (need info on this)

Assyrians feel that Christianity kept their Assyrian identity alive for without it, they say, they would have converted to Islam or allowed their children to marry outside their Christian faith, in either case the result being that they would automatically have ceased to be Assyrians. Many believe that the subsequent divisions among the Assyrians resulting from the introduction of Western Christian sects in the early 1900s has weakened a sense of unity they feel existed before and has now become nearly impossible to achieve. This fragmentation among the Assyrians along religious fault-lines is said to be at the heart of the current inability of Assyrians to defend the remnant trying to survive in the MidEast or advance any coherent strategy for the return of their ancient lands. It is claimed that the infighting which results from each sect´s conviction that it embodies the true meaning of Christianity, coupled with the dispersion of Assyrians among various Western nations, with their seductive charms, will make it increasingly difficult to instill a sense of unity or value for such an ancient heritage among our young people.

Today, in the face of recent events in Iraq brought about by the 17 year war still being fought there, our people feel they have missed out on a great chance to advance their cause. Assyrians sent their own sons and daughters off to this war in hopes that their sacrifice and the patriotic support fervently expressed by Assyrian families…the loyalty they felt as citizens of America and Britain would not be forgotten when the war was won. Today they see, not an Assyrian homeland for a harassed Christian minority rising in the north from the ashes of Iraq, but Muslim Kurdistan instead, supported by America and Great Britain, the two Christian nations which most inspired their faith and hope. And since many Assyrians consider the Kurds their greatest enemies and relative new-comers to Iraq beside, they are hurt and puzzled at what seems to them to be yet another great betrayal of the indigenous people of Iraq, in a long history of shattered hopes placed on Western Christianity and its alleged or actual promises to help the Assyrians.

It is a delicate proposition to probe this history of ours. Unless one is willing to completely gloss it over, merely confirming what past generations have believed, one will inevitably be called a traitor to ones heritage, an enemy to ones people and even a secret agent, paid by various hostile groups to undermine the morale of the Assyrians, thus keeping them fragmented and ineffective. As is the case with too many groups, the most stridently patriotic are often the least educated or knowledgeable, in the wider sense, while fervently believing, without question, what their priests or folk-historians teach them.

Add to this the blind faith which the religiously devout are almost compelled to feel for hopeless causes or impossible situations resolving themselves “through god”, as a means of keeping desperate hope alive, and one can readily see why any probing or inquiry is met with hostility. And too their reliance on miracles, promised or possible…their distrust of logic or reason as mere “fancy words”, more often misused than not, and carrying always the potential to undermine cherished orthodoxy, and the chances of having any thorough yet civil debate, which can´t help but be potentially contentious at every turn, is almost nil.

However, standing as we are amidst the ruins of yet another shattered dream…with more losses added to our burden… with people on all sides seeking scapegoats and warming themselves up for yet another internal assault of brother against sister to see who “betrayed the cause” and it seems worth the risk, if not imperative, to ask how this could have happened again…how it keeps happening and if, perhaps, it isn´t time to rigorously examine every precept and notion we´ve held dear and inviolable all these centuries in order to determine if we are our own worst enemies first...showing the way after and even inviting others to join in our own undoing.

In my experience I find Assyrians often making a case for themselves as if only they have suffered, or suffered far more of, what in reality has been and still is the shared history and common experience of a majority of people. Additionally English language words used in conversation or formal presentations are either willfully mangled to suit an argument, or tossed about recklessly with no apparent interest in communicating what are claimed to be life and death matters. When these claims of ours and the peculiar ways we have of putting them forward are kept within our own community they do the least harm to our credibility with others, though they keep us naïve, somewhat backward and out of harmony with the rest of the educated world which, one would think, is the one sector we most need to address. For, if we really believe that the world can or should “do something for us” because we have legitimate claims and grievencess, and that a clear understanding of our historical plight will lead the world to take action on our behalf, as we become dangerously more and more marginalized with the passing of each day, then it seems to me our responsibility to speak and behave and use language in such ways as can be clearly understood by the world.

When we speak of “all that has happened to us”, we must be sure that exactly the same, or worse, hasn´t happened to everyone else. If we claim Islam has brutally oppressed us because of our Christian faith, we must also ask if Christianity has used similar methods against Muslims and others. If not we risk displaying monumental ignorance and morbid self-centeredness or, worse yet, a conniving sort of naivte which seeks to win unmerited sympathy from a world drowning in unmerited suffering and injustice, relying for our advancement on the pity we think is our due, above all other people, even at the cost of our self-respect.

Instead of meeting our current situation head-on, unflinchingly determined to find the truth of the matter, even at the risk of overhauling our pet passions, we seem determined to believe instead that we need more of the same, not less, not another direction and certainly not an “attack” on what we were taught are our core beliefs as Assyrians. The possibility that much of our beliefs may be open to serious doubt so that nothing of any quality or duration can be built on so unsound a foundation, as we´ve seen happen often enough, is something we refuse to even entertain. There is every indication rather that we will continue to rely on being objects of pity in the hopes that powerful people may yet take an interest in us. The danger in this is that, subconsciously, we have developed manners and mechanisms to make ourselves into the sort of people deserving of pity.

We have gone beyond legitimately deserving pity for losses endured, as a result of events beyond our control, to having to become pitiful in order to keep hope alive…the hope that someone else will do for us what we refuse to do, or have become too ill-equipped to do, for ourselves. As a consequence we have fostered the sense of being eternal and hopeless victims who helplessly teeter between believing in and waiting patiently for either powerful foreign Christian leaders or Jesus Christ to bring salvation. This passivity is neither constructive nor healthy for our young and is very poor preparation, in any case, for someday being masters of our own fate when that long-awaited, fantastical, someone hands it to us.

When we call for justice to be done to us by those powerful Christian nations we most often appeal to we must ask ourselves if these same nations have not been guilty of committing the very same brutal acts upon a host of weaker people that we claim have been almost our exclusive cross to bear. When have these same nations, or any nation, ever cared to do right by others in similar circumstances? Are there any other minorities equally shorn of their ancestral lands, usurped and occupied by strangers who´ve been able to obtain justice and a redress of their grievances at the hands of a third party? Are there any indigenous people in the world today who´ve received just compensation from those who attacked and stole their lands and occupy them still? Is there some real chance of our receiving the fair treatment we claim is due to us based on precedent and not merely on desire?

In each topic raised my initial approach will be to ask if what we claim as a unique injustice or crime committed against us really was so and not something common to the experience of the majority of people on earth throughout history. By the same token has what we expect as our due and just compensation ever been handed down to others, or, rather, is it something unheard of whose realization would be a first of its kind, truly signaling a revolution in the way international affairs have been conducted to date.

Because we seem to rely so heavily on what non-Assyrians can or must do for us and believe that if we only tell the world of our suffering and losses the world will feel morally compelled to do something for us, it seems imperative to determine if we are, first of all, using language coherently with a firm and confident grasp and, secodnly, if what we are demanding would really constitute justice and last, if such a thing has ever been granted before. Otherwise we risk being seen, not the way we want and need to be, but as something else, something less than commendable which only damages us further in the eyes of the world and those of our children.



Claims Made By Modern Assyrians:

That they are the direct descendants of the ancient Assyrians.

That they were converted to Christianity by the Assyrian King Abgar during the ministry of Jesus Christ.

That only Christian Assyrians are legitimate Assyrians.

That there are no Muslim Assyrians and if there are, they were forced to convert on pain of death and are not true Assyrians.

That the Arab Conquest, which brought Islam, was a disaster for Assyrians as it brought persecution, forced conversion and massacre because of Muslim hatred for Christianity and, later, their Assyrian ethnicity.

That there would have been millions of them in the MidEast today if not for the repeated massacres by Muslims.

That today they constitute a nation in diaspora, much like the Jews until recently, and that they have suffered persecution, genocide, a holocaust and are still suffering martyrdom at the hands of Islam.

That they are the indigenous people of Iraq, which used to be Assyria and, as such, deserve their own homeland, as it was stolen from them by Muslim Arabs, or at least the northern part of it, which was the center of their ancient empire.

That the world, mostly ignorant so far of all they have suffered, needs only to be made aware of their persecution at the hands of Islam and it will rush to see justice done.

These are claims put forth by modern Assyrians. It is in support of these claims that they have formed political parties to wrest some territory or special recognition as a group apart from Muslim governments, written books and articles and sought media attention. The following will be an attempt to assess the validity of each claim

Some passing mention needs to be made of the widely circulated slander that the Assyrian people were a crude, barbaric and warlike nation addicted to violence and mayhem almost for their own sake…whose civilization and culture were crassly hedonistic and lacking in originality. The major source for these calumnies is the bible, the Old Testament in particular, written by the ancient enemies of the Assyrians. This dubious assessment of the very people of the Cradle of Civilization has influenced scores of writers and even scientists who have unthinkingly been ruled by what they read in it or picked up elsewhere. The point to bringing it up at all is to show what a burden it placed on our young people as they tried to maintain a sense of pride in their ancestry in the face of such callow and hostile ignorance. Thankfully wiser heads have prevailed in modern times and the ancient Assyrians are being re-discovered and assessed more accurately.

In a particularly unwholesome manner such an assessment of the ancient Assyrians has been used as justification by the Assyrian churches themselves for the “rightness” and soundness of the decision made to renounce Ashur, the god of the Assyrians who so obviously “misled” his people as to incur the wrath of yahwe. At the same time praising Christianity as the religion that “saved” the Assyrians from the destruction and damnation they presumably so richly deserved. . But the concern here is not so much with ancient history, as a subject apart, but how has impacted our standing in the modern era.

ASSYRIANS TODAY ARE THE DIRECT DESCENDANTS OF THE ANCIENT ASSYRIANS:

We claim that there exist in the world today direct descendants of the ancient Assyrians who eventually renounced their god Ashur in favor of Jesus and Christianity.

It is indeed highly improbable that the coalition which destroyed the Assyrian empire also went on to kill every last Assyrian. That would have been looked upon as inexcusable waste if nothing else. The Assyrians had much to offer their conquerors and one can see in later Persian art and architecture direct Assyrian influences…more than likely many Assyrians were spared and put to work or escaped. Therefore Assyrians undoubtedly continued to live and work and raise families, albeit in reduced circumstances.

Assyrian claims to have come down through four thousand years in a direct line from their ancestors need to be compared to similar claims made by other cultures in order to determine what might constitute “direct” descent. The people closest to the Assyrians historically, as well as in terms of the claim to direct descent, are the Jews.

It is practically impossible that there should exist a genetic marker that would settle the question. For one thing, the people of the Fertile Crescent were never pure…hardly anyone was. The very term “Cradle of Civilization”, given to that fairly small area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, could only have meaning through the resulting genius of the mixed populations and cultures continually formed and re-formed by the addition of new blood through periodic conquests. The empire of the Assyrians, particularly, was centered at the crossroads of major trade routes, on a vast plain open to attack and conquest from at least two sides. The habit, formed by all people in that region beginning with the Sumerians, of moving and mixing subject people within an empire, their willingness to mix and mate freely with neighbors, as well as the absorption into their settled communities of invading Semites, Amorites, Kassites, Hurrians, Hebrews, Chaldeans and others would indicate that even back then there was no such thing as a pure community.

For all the glory and high achievements of pharonic Egypt it has never been called a cradle of civilization in general. Perhaps the ancient Egyptians did achieve some sort of purity through their geographic isolation along with a kind of stultification. But it´s impossible that the Assyrians did or could have or ever wanted to.

For todays´ Assyrians to claim direct descent from their ancestors would mean they maintained, since the loss of their empire in 612 BC and through the intervening 2000 years since their conversion to Christianity, major and significant characteristics that were exclusively theirs at the time of their conversion. Of the singular characteristics each group or nation was known by in ancient times, ones religion and god would be among the most prominent.

To deny ones god and ancestral religion, for a people as blessed by and dedicated to their god as the ancient Assyrians were must have been a shattering event…one they would have resisted with all their ingenuity and might. It´s possible, however, that their lowered status since the fall of the empire had humbled them and made them receptive to a religion which seemed to favor the meek over the proud. Whatever the reason or method, a change in religions would have meant a drastic change in almost everything else.

Here again it helps to compare Assyrians with the modern Jews, who also make this claim.

Of all their cultural or ethnic markers and inspite of every loss and humiliation the majority of Jews held on tenaciously to their ancient religion centered around their god yahwe. Eventually they were defeated and brutally occupied by the Romans, then finally driven out of their homeland to live most of their lives among strangers in strange lands. They learned other languages, forgot their own and intermarried. Food, dress, diet, music, arts and crafts, literature can be shared with other cultures or people…but religion, above all else, would be the single thing a Jew could not change and remain a Jew.

The exile of the Jews in 70 AD presented a serious challenge to their religion because the traditional sacrifices through which they worshipped their god could only be legitimately made in the temple at Jerusalem. They made a timely modification, however, which allowed them to maintain their faith intact, even after being cast out of their ancient lands. Forced to find a substitute for animal sacrifice they chose instead to make study and discussion of the Torah and Law the mainstay of their wandering congregations. The Temple in Jerusalem was replaced with serene synagogues, animal sacrifice was supplanted by intense discussion and interpretation of their holy books, but the god remained the same as did the Law handed down by him even though they were forced to abandon the central part of the ritual demanded of them by that god.

A modern Jew may speak only Italian and no Hebrew, eat only kosher Chinese food, send his children to a French school, admire only Impressionist artists, listen only to Flamenco music, be a nudist born in Bolivia who dies there without ever seeing Jerusalem or the Wailing Wall…but if he maintains his worship of yahwe, even while changing everything else…he can call himself and be accepted as a Jew claiming direct descent from the ancients.

By the same token an ancient Jew, born and living his entire life in Jerusalem and also dying there, who maintained all traditional customs and observed all laws but denied yahwe or changed him for another god, even if everything else about his life remained “Jewish”, if that could even be, would not be accepted by his fellows as a Jew and wouldn´t even think of making such a claim. If, therefore, Assyrians wish to make a case for being direct descendants of the ancients, they should abide by definitions current at that time..and not the modern era when religion is of far less consequence. But even today no Jew can deny his religion and claim to still be a Jew…certainly not a direct descendant of the ancients.

Had Assyrians maintained their ancient religion and worship of Ashur, even if they´d lost everything else..as most Jews did, they would have a case for claiming direct descent from the ancients. But, since the ancestral religion is gone and in the absence of any genetic indicators that could settle the issue, biologically at least, it´s difficult to see how they can claim to be direct descendants of their ancestors in any meaningful way.

Finally, the claim of modern Assyrians that renouncing their ancestral god, Ashur, for another, newer one, made no difference in the direct link to their forbears, but that any Assyrian adopting Islam in place of Ashur, or Jesus even, meant that he would no longer be Assyrian, direct or otherwise, may be at the heart of the inner conflict and resulting political misery afflicting modern Assyrians. Their past and current losses and suffering may then, with some justice, be attributed to their own peculiar beliefs in this regard and the behaviors they have engaged in based on those beliefs. At the core of all their perceived and unique-in-history persecution or worthy-of-compensation losses and what is owed them by their foreign “enemy” Islam is the notion that all Muslims in BetNahrain must be descendants of the invading Arabs of 638 AD. They believe that no Assyrian would ever have converted to Islam willingly and that any who did were forcibly converted and therefore "Arabized". These converts, having bowed to Islam even though under pain of death or torture, unlike themselves who, when confronted with the like demand to embrace Islam, yielded themselves up willingly as martyrs, cannot compare with them in terms of rights, privileges or even honor, who remained the “true”, the indigenous, the Christian Assyrians.

...all comments will be paid back tenfold....verily.



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