Posted by pancho from customer-148-233-78-77.uninet.net.mx (148.233.78.77) on Monday, January 27, 2003 at 1:23PM :
I find it cumbersome to write "Christian Assyrian" all the time...Iīm going to combine them into one word..."Asstians"...pronounced: "AssChins"
It amazes me how we call each other traitors and non-Assyrians...Turks, Arabs and the rest of it whenever one of us doesnīt agree with another. Is it our position that any idiot Assyrian MUST be something else...that all real Assyrians HAVE to be virtuous and intelligent and honest and heterosexual, and of course Christian? That seems a strictly faith-based definition, smacking of all the absurd fanaticism youīd expect from a religious nut.
Why CANīT an Assyrian be stupid? Why canīt she disagree with any other Assyrian? Why canīt an Assyrian be Muslim? Do all Americans agree on everything? There are several in power now who would say, "yes, Americans have to all think and act one way". But we know thatīs dumb...unless being dumb is now to be the one defining characteristic of being American.
Why canīt I or Tiglath or Jeff or Sadie question Peter? Why does that make us non-Assyrian? The only explanation I can find is that once again everything is filtered through religion...and a religion can brook no dissention...not until there is enough to form a "new" religion.
These people are "Asstians", pure and simple...and those of them who arenīt strictly Christian, nonetheless hate Muslims for taking what they believe belonged to them...and can only claim it is "their" land if they buy into the notion that after all, real Assyrians HAVE to be Christians...even though they themselves have a reputation for not being much of any kind of Christian.
The entire Assyrian identity is wrapped up in the Cross...and that just has to be wrong...as wrong as if it were wrapped up in the Crescent. Iraqis as a people have NEVER stated that Ashurbanipal was an "Arab"...they have merely spoken what is true..that they are the descendants of the people of Ashurbanipal, who went through several religious transformations, from Ashur to Jesus to Muhammad...and that for the more sensible among them (Muslim or not), all of Iraqi history is THEIR history...they just refuse to stop at the Muslim Conquest, which is where the Asstians stopped reading or growing and started wearing their National Diapers. The Asstians went on to come up with this ridiculous claim that Iraq belongs to the true, original, indigenous people of Iraq...the CHRISTIANS (who arenīt a "people" anyway) who decided they didnīt want to be hoist on their petards, be known as "Arab" Christians...as they themselves called all Muslims anywhere Arabs...so instead they divined that they MUST be Assyrians...hence the original owners of the land...who canīt very well ask for a Christian enclave in those Muslim lands...that have been predominantly Muslim twice as long as ever they were Christian...so they hide behind the Assyrian name when any child can see there isnīt a goddamned thing Assyrian about them. They do nothing anywhere on earth for the Assyrian name...but everything for Christ...who was a Jew.
Unless to be stupid is the hallmark of being Assyrian, these people are more accurately defined by the term Asstian than anything else.
-- pancho
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