The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> open letter to Paul Batou....painter.

open letter to Paul Batou....painter.
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Saturday, June 22 2013, 23:34:19 (UTC)
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...he wrote one of those abysmal "letters" to President Obama a few years back urging him to come to the rescue of "persecuted" Christians in Iraq......so, I wrote him an open letter....


Open Letter to Paul Batou,

I don’t believe we’ve met. However I’ve heard of you and seen some of your fine work. Although I take great exception to your letter to President Obama I find your tone to be somewhat reasonable, free from the wilder exaggerations common to such complaints and warnings. Therefore I write to you to ask you specifically about your allegations of Muslim or Arab abuse and other “crimes” against Christians.

In your letter, as well as others making these same complaints, there is a definite attempt to stir the pity and passions of those addressed, urging them to come to the aid of or “do something” about what you present as a dire humanitarian emergency facing Christians. But, is it “dire”? And, is it any more of an emergency, or even out of the ordinary, than any number of other, even greater, crimes against humanity? Like, for instance, this very war against the people of Iraq?

The organized, industrialized, systematic, government-inspired slaughter of innocent Jews a few decades ago was something the world had never yet witnessed. This indeed was an unparalleled emergency and crime of unbelievable proportions. Alongside of that I would place the unjust war against poor Vietnamese rice farmers and, of course, this 18 year war against the parents and children of Iraq. These are a few of the many really and truly horrendous acts of injustice, human folly and violence on a global scale. I would add that all three events were brought to the world by Christians...and not Muslims, Arabs or Islam. I can hear your objection now, “but, these were not the acts of REAL Christians”. Exactly...and this is one of the major complaints I make against your letter.

In your letter you list “crimes” committed against Christians by Muslims. The implication is clear; these are the acts of TRUE Muslims...hence Islam, and Arabs, are to blame. But I ask you, how many children have been murdered, raped, scalded and beaten to death in America in any given year? And these children are killed by Christians. In fact, how many acts of violence are committed in America, by Christians against other Christians? And what do you expect Obama to do about these “emergencies”? Should we say that the prisons of America are filled with millions of Christians...or criminals?

It is, perhaps, understandable that people of different religions would seek to harm one another...but what about Christians who murder Christians? What about Christian parents who rape and behead their own Christian children? Are these individuals behaving in these ways because of anything their religion taught them? Or are they sick and deranged individuals who have nothing in common with their religion? There are insane criminals and perverse people in every corner of the world, in every community, country and village. Can Obama protect the innocent women raped by Christian men in America? What , then,do you expect him to do for all the innocent women and girls raped in Iraq? And raped by American soldiers? Would you even mention a Christian girl raped by an American soldier?

It occurs to me that neither you nor any of the others who write such letters ever include, as victims, the many Christians of Iraq killed or raped by Christian soldiers. Why is that? Are they not innocent victims because their killers are Christians? How do you explain that when you gather once a year to commemorate those Christian martyrs, you never include the ones killed by Christians? Is it, then, not a tragedy to be murdered by a Christian...but only by a Muslim?

Majdolin Yonan’s family was bombed by Americans. She was blinded. Her husband was burned and disfigured and her two young daughters were killed...one of them ripped from her mother’s belly. yet none of them were cried over or even mentioned on your annual celebration of martyrs. Do you see some inconsistency here? Do you smell hypocrisy? The question any reasonable person would ask when confronted by this sort of thing is; “are you saddened over murdered Christians or merely using them to vent your anger at Islam, for which victims of Christians would do you ‘no good’”? Do the murderers mean more to you than their victims? Is your annual lament over your martyrs merely an anti-Islam rally?

American children have been shot, stabbed, drowned, beaten to death, boiled and, yes, even decapitated by their own Christian parents. These people are clearly sick (although it needs to be pointed out that many of them say their God told them to commit their crimes). It should be no surprise to you that Iraq too, as well as Australia and Finland etc. also have sick individuals among them. But, something other countries have, which Iraq does not, is a valid justice system and police to deal with crime or, most tragic of all, any form of social stability. When the Americans arrived they fired all police and army personnel, and then they opened the prisons. There has been no law or order, beside indiscriminate brute force, in Iraq for at least a decade. Under such circumstances you can imagine what would be the result if this happened in Chicago...or New York. Would it be fair to lay the blame on Christianity for the crimes which would ensue? Should every heinous criminal in America be laid at the feet of Christianity? Yet, isn’t this what you are trying to do? Aren’t you trying to blame Islam for sick and deranged individuals who happened to have been born in that religion?

How has Islam created these criminals? Be careful how you answer because Christian countries are filled with such cases and it would be far easier to show that Christianity, with its World Wars, atomic bombing of civilians and wars against innocent countries, lynchings etc. has been far more likely to produce master criminals...such as those who gave us the Holocaust. The true Holocaust and not the one you imagine yourselves to have suffered.

Additionally you claim that the coming of the Arabs ruined Christianity. I suggest you’ve heard this too often as a way of explaining how it was that many Christians converted to Islam, willingly. After all, once people have converted away from their original faith for a “better” one...what’s to stop them from shopping around some more? We have issued this challenge to every Assyrian nationalist we’ve come across....”show us one instance, only one, when Muslims forcibly converted Christians, and/or killed them JUST because they were Christian. And by show me, I mean real history and not religious propaganda. I can say that after ten years of issuing this challenge not one instance has been produced. Not one.

And yet, from actual historical sources, we have shown that over and over Christians both converted people by the use of the sword and killed them just because of their religion. The murder of over six million Jews, just for their religion, is a most recent example. Can you point to any similar instance in Islam? I will be happy to provide you with sources and events. I sincerely hope you can produce even one such instance to back your claim.

As to the tax issue....first of all the jizya was not levied against widows, orphans or the poor...and it was in proportion to a person’s means. There is nothing odd or unusual in a war-tax...or even a pole tax. At the end of WW I, a Christian world war, heavy reparations were laid against Germany. What is this but a tax? This tax was so out of proportion that the resentment it caused led to a second world war in barely twenty years...and 50 million people, most of them Christians, were killed by other Christians. In fact, no one, in the history of the world, has killed more Christians than other Christians. If Christians need protecting I suggest it is from other Christians, certainly not from Muslims or Jews.

Besides which, for all the times I have been told about how Christian mothers allowed their children to be slaughtered like pigs before their eyes rather than blaspheme or convert, I find it odd that a tax could get them to do it. There is a lie somewhere in there. Of the three main religions only Judaism does not seek converts. Christianity sought them even by the sword and on pain of death. Islam, also wanting unity in religion, laid a tax, a fair one, on all non-Muslims. Perhaps it was not this tax but the humanity, even the humor, of it as a “motivator” which convinced Christians that here was a more tolerant religion than the one they had been fighting among themselves over...and still are.

Have you ever wondered what would have happened to our numerous sects in BetNahrain if the Christian Romans or Byzantines had conquered us? Do you know what they did with heretics? The Arabs cared nothing for the fine points over which we Christians have been killing each other for centuries. All they did was insist on civil peace. They allowed each sect to live and thrive free from molestation. As to the cry that the Arabs ruined Christianity...let me remind you that from that day till today, there are Churches and sects in Betnahrain. And that only among the Ottomans was the effort ever made to allow all three great religions to live and thrive together. Surely you know that Christians repeatedly killed or exiled all Jews and Muslims. They were chased out of every country in Europe, practically, and the Muslims of Spain were likewise killed or exiled...and no one should have to remind you that barely 70 years ago, not 400, the Christians of Germany, France, Poland and Italy packed their Jewish citizens and neighbors off to be murdered with the hope and intention of killing off every last one of them.

Christians in the MidEast have suffered for what they have DONE...not for what they BELIEVE. And it is certainly understandable that Saudi Arabia, for one, would refuse to have any churches built there. Why is that? Could it be that the churches interested in going there, or among other “heathens” are the evangelical kind...the kind who plot and work to gain converts...usually by slandering and insulting existing religions? How often, from the perspective of non-Christian countries, has the introduction of Christian missionaries and churches been followed by interference and cries of “persecution” because authorities grew to resent missionary tactics? Muslims do not seek converts...they do not see themselves as missionaries with a heavenly mandate to “spread the word” among “the damned”. Mosques in Europe and America mind their own business...churches, especially of the evangelical kind, never mind their own business. Their “business” DEMANDS that they do not.

During the great wave of evangelical missionary work of the 19th century when churches from America and Europe descended on Turkey and Persia, their avowed goal was to rekindle the spirit of evangelism among the eastern Christians. They made no secret of their intention to use these Christians to once again go out and do the “Lord’s work” by converting Muslims away from that “devil” Muhammad. You can imagine how this was greeted by Muslims. Indeed, there is no good reason for ANY church from the West to seek to build a base in those countries. There are no Baptists or Pentecostals in Saudi Arabia...as there were no Catholics or Anglicans or Moravians in Turkey or Persia. So, what was the reason these foreign sects chose to open branches among Muslims in those countries? You tell me.

I ask you again to show us only one instance when Muslims used force to convert Christians, on pain of death.

What is happening in Iraq is a tragedy...a never heard of before attack, based on lies, against a totally innocent civilian population. It is understandable that under such a prolonged nightmare, brought to the country by Christians, there would be crimes committed...especially since the war itself is a major crime to begin with. People of weak mind or character ( or frenzied by grief) who live surrounded by violence, death and injustice every day for years can become deranged and seek even to blame religion for their ills. Isn’t that what you are trying to do? And you live in a well-ordered and tolerant society at peace...why then are you trying to foment race-hatred and bigotry? Aren’t you among the many who saw this war as “liberation”...as an opportunity to “save” Assyrians? Didn’t you, in essence and through either naiveté or blood-lust, WISH for this war? It is understandable that weak minds in Iraq would blame Christians for their ills and seek revenge, even on children...(after all the United States vented its rage against Iraqi children by starving to death over 700,000 of them for years)...but you? You live in peace....why are you behaving in this way...why are you encouraging hatred of Muslims when none of them are doing anything to you? be careful...for if you claim that past injustices, such as being denied benefits because you didn’t belong to the Ba’ath, justify your anger....think how much more an Iraqi parent has “good reason” to hate Christians.

And, lastly, the tired claim that the Turks massacred 750,000 Assyrians during WW I. This claim will never stick. mainly because hundreds of thousands of Turks also died...from starvation (and a war declared against them by Christians) and disease. There is no evidence at all that these deaths resulted from direct orders of the government. certainly there were individual criminals or instances of mob violence...and why not? Once again, Christian countries, eyeing the great oil reserves they are still fighting for, attacked the country, causing widespread death and destruction...as well as robbing territory. Surely, when we see the United States attack Iraq, when there wasn’t a single Iraqi among the ones who crashed into the buildings, we see an advanced, a Christian people not too concerned with direct responsibility but lashing out at the easiest target: Iraqi children...the first victims of a war of “retaliation”. Besides which, and here again one wonders about motive; among the over 700,000 Iraqi children under the age of five, killed by disease and starvation as a direct consequence of American Sanctions, at least 30,000 had to be Christian. Why are these innocent victims never mentioned by any of you? Do you think you would ever stop mentioning them if Muslims had killed that many Christian children? Wouldn’t you then, gladly, be telling Obama about the innocent Christian children starved to death by MUSLIMS?

The Ottoman Empire was the one place on earth where a concerted effort was made for the three religions to live in peace and mutual respect. Of course there were confrontations at times...but is that so odd when you consider what Christian did to Christian, to fellow believers in Christ, during the Reformation..or the Religious Wars of Europe or until very recently in Ireland? The Christians of Ottoman Turkey had their own representative and answered to their own Patriarch...that singular experiment (which you would love to have today) was ruined, not by Turks, Islam or Arabs, but by Christians who attacked the country...and by the missionaries who started the work earlier.

I believe your letter is another example of a hope and desire to get a country for yourselves....a Christian enclave. You believe that if you can fire up the emotions of Obama and others they will be moved to give you a “safe haven”. They will not. If it’s suffering and injustice you care about, there is far more of it elsewhere, and Obama and the world has done nothing about it. Your desire is to inflame passions, to slander Islam as a way of gaining some benefit for your religion. Let every Assyrian in America and England and Australia and Canada give back the land his home is built on to the “indigenous people” of those countries, and then come ask for what you believe is yours in Iraq.

All of Iraq is the country of the Assyrians, Muslim and Christian. What you are asking for is an exclusive Christian enclave to be given to you by outside forces...with plenty of oil, if you please. This will never happen nor should it. You people can’t govern yourselves in America or at picnics...to give you a country with police and an army, in the MidEast no less, would be an act of insanity...and no one will do it.

I believe the attitude and ideas and expectations voiced by you, though thankfully in much milder terms, as well as all the rest are mainly the result of two things. One, you are Christians and believe the Lord of the Universe laid down his life for you, personally and two, your parents, but most likely your mothers, spoiled you into believing you were the center of the universe and hence deserved everyone’s full attention..that somehow your injured finger was worth more than all injured fingers on the planet and that when you were hungry or bored it counted far more than hunger or boredom anywhere else in the world. Combined with a lack of any historical knowledge or perspective and filled with the pop-history of our churches and “intellectuals”, you grew up convinced that a great wrong has been done to you by Islam which has kept you from succeeding, as you deserved, and you, for whose salvation an innocent man, a God no less, was put to death, more than anyone else in the world needs to have your wishes and desires looked to NOW...just as your mothers and sisters had to drop whatever else they were doing to attend to your needs.

It is too much to hope that you will respond but, I have faith nonetheless.



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