Posted by pancho from ? (64.79.4.2) on Thursday, February 28, 2002 at 3:39PM :
But Christianity is on its way out of the Mideast...ushered out finally by its insistence on aligning itself with colonial terror and imperial and neo-imperial theft and robbery.
In time the only Christianity the West will recognize as "untainted" will be Protestant sects identical to any you'll find in Philadelphia.
This agitating and calling for an independent state or "inallienable rights" in Iraq or elsewhere is madness. It's the call of the grandly miffed who sit in obscure comfort in basement clubs and garage halls in Chicago and Gary and Flint and Turlock sending out "calls" and issuing manifestos whose only result will be to make life even more miserable for those Christian Assyrians left back home.
Since about 700 AD Iraq and much else around there, became Muslim, as it had become Sumerian and Amorite and Assyrian and Kassite and Babylonian and Chaldean before that. The religion of that area became Islam, as it had been any number of other things before giving rise to Judaism and Christianity along the way. Some of the greatest events in Muslim history have occured in Iraq and are burned and etched and built into the last 1,300 years of its history.
Ain't no way that land is going to revert to Christianity, ever! Life doesn't move backwards...as those lands didn't go back to the worship of Ashur. Iraq is Muslim in religion and has had an overlay of Islamic culture imposed on it...from which it has benefitted as well as been hurt...as all cultures bring good and bad with them.
No Assyrian living in Chicago today would be impressed by a Native American's prior claim to the land his house sits on. No Assyrian, who claims Iraq is Assyria and rightfully belongs to "US" and was stolen and HAS to be returned to its rightful owners...no Assyrian in Chicago would leave his house and return it to the desecndants of the Illinois tribe, once rightful owners of Chicago, whose lands were stolen from them. And we all know it...and the rulers of Spain will not give anything back to the Basques and the rulers of Iraq will give nothing back to the Assyrians.
The best, the absolute best we can hope for, is that those of us who are Christian, will make our peace with reality and strive to find a way to convince the rulers of that land that we pose no threat to them...that we will not turn to our "fellow" Christians from the murderous West in a fond and foolish hope that THIS time they will ride to our rescue and give us our own Welfare State.
Our destiny, in what were our ancient homelands, lies with the Muslim majority, and if it is true that we are doomed to be abused and driven out by them, then for god's sake let's not provoke them any more than we have by our blind hatred for eveything Muslim and our willingness to be duped time and again by the West. Let's just move out and spare our children the pain of eventually being routed and thrown out one last time. And if that is supposed to be our fate anyway, why not try to ameliorate it, why not try to allign ourselves with those who control the land and work within the system to gain some security for this Christian minority...instead of having our heroes here inflame the Muslims back home against the few of us who remain?
Who is really the traitor and sell out here?
Mind you it doesn't bother me all that much. Just because Christianity is shoved aside, it doesn't mean that the Assyrian or Babylonian or Hellenic or Parthian or Sassanian or Persian or Abbassid Heritage will die out...in fact it is ONLY Christian states and people who are destroying that land for everyone, in ways never attempted by civilized people against those who are far more civilized than they.
This is a victory for Barbarism, not a defense from it.
-- pancho
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