Posted by pancho from adsl-64-168-25-150.dsl.snfc21.pacbell.net (64.168.25.150) on Saturday, February 23, 2002 at 6:30AM :
Assyrian Christians have a vested interest in maintaing tension and distrust between and among Muslims and Christians...as they both have for keeping Jews at arms length.
We are admitedly, a small minority surrounded by a sea of Muslims in our homelands and an ocean of mish mash Christians in the West, who in their heart of hearts don't think much of our almost pagan Christianity...remember it was a Heresy.
If we rest our identity on our Christian religion...the Christians among us that is...then we have every reason to be concerned for our survival AS that peculiar little sect. We have already been placed in the missionary position with the predictable results...being even more fractured and spread out among various sub sects of dominant and Industrial Strength Christianity. And in the MidEast of course we are as jumpy as can be...not only because another wave of Muslim atrocities may diminish our numbers (we don't mind being diminished by Christians)...but also for the opposite calamity...living in peace with Muslims...for we might just decide to intermarry and then where would we be?
We are hard pressed on all sides...and so long as Christianity is our standard for measure for an identity...with the result that we refuse to let go and build something more enduring and specifically ours...we will either be killed off by hostile enemies...or assimilated to death by friends. Not much of a future.
It is this lack of a viable alternative that has us edgy and nervous and jumpy and prone to see "enemies" and agents and traitors and accuse each other of selling out etc. It is also the reason we allign ourselves with a West that has ever betrayed and used us...as it is killing us even as we write.
We are like the person lost at sea, clinging to a sinking post, afraid to swim away for fear we'll not find another resting place...perhaps better, but certainly no worse...for our end is in sight if we don't DO something.
Better to die trying...and you may never know that a better support wasn't off somewhere in the distance.
It is the transition that is difficult...the letting go. Those too afraid to venture out will elevate their lack of courage into "martyrdom"...bowing to the inevitable. The sad part is, they will take their children and everything else with them.
-- pancho
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