The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> How Assyrians Survived

How Assyrians Survived
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Friday, October 3 2008, 20:04:59 (CEST)
from *** - *** Non-Profit Organizations - Windows XP - Mozilla
Website:
Website title:

Assyrian Christians say Christianity saved them...kept them from being swallowed up or wiped out. I suppose if Assyrians had remained faithful to Ashur they may not have fared so well under Islam....perhaps, as pagan infidels worshipping “idols”, they may have been forced to convert to Islam or be killed...no amount of tax payment could have saved them. Yet that isn’t certain, but let it go.

The question is would we, Nestorian and Jacobite, have survived without Islam? The number of Christian sects suppressed and eliminated by Orthodox Christianity is numerous. Who remembers the Bogomiles, the Fifth Monarchy Men, the Albigensians, Jansenists, Paulines and so many other sects whose members were killed by the Orthodox Church? These were all Christians yet they fared even worse at the hands of Christian powers than they would have under Islam for as Christians, no matter how “heretical”, they would have been spared and protected by Islam as “people of the book”.

The same is true for our Nestorians and Jacobites who, if they had fallen into the hands of Rome or Byzantium would have been either forcibly converted or tortured and put to death, their children removed and raised accordingly.

It’s only fair to say that it was not Christianity that saved them....Christianity, some form of it, was their religion and in the face of the Orthodox faiths, a severe liability that got thousands of them killed if not forcibly converted. But rather what saved them was Islam. I suppose if they mean by “save”, the salvation of their eternal souls, then Christianity saved that. But what good would that have done if the entire group had been put to death and disappeared? What would happen to their message of “salvation” then...when there were no longer any members of the group left alive?

When our people say Christianity saved them, they mean it kept them alive, physically...kept them from fading from history or dispersing among the many religious factions and peoples. And for this they have Muhammad to thank, not Christ. Christ wasn’t able to save hundreds of thousands of Christians who were put to death by his own church....whereas Islam killed no Christian JUST for being Christian....Muslims cared nothing for the many controversies that got Christians killed at the hands of other Christians, but all were protected and allowed to worship as they pleased.

Professor Pagden again:

“Yet, despite all the restrictions of life as a member of a dhimmah, for some Christian groups, in particular the members of the breakaway Greek churches, the Nestorians and Monophysites, who had been subjected to harassment and persecution by the government of Constantinople, life under a Muslim prince, although restraining, might be preferable to life under an Orthodox Christian one. And the Jews generally fared much better under Muslim rule than they did in any Christian state before the late nineteenth century.

Whatever “restraints” Christians suffered under Islam, such as taxes and wearing distinctive clothing or not being allowed to ride a horse...which were only sporadically enforced, was nothing compared to being killed just for your faith.

If Assyrian Christians find themselves alive and well today let them thank Muhammad, for Christ nearly got them all killed.



---------------------


The full topic:



***



Powered by RedKernel V.S. Forum 1.2.b9