The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> A Nation Built On Ignorance

A Nation Built On Ignorance
Posted by pancho (Guest) - Tuesday, March 25 2008, 19:05:24 (CET)
from 12.199.144.42 - mail.shpl.org Non-Profit Organizations - Linux - Mozilla
Website:
Website title:

The entire modern Assyrian identity is built on ignorance…not just a little but a whole bunch…industrial strength ignorance. First of all ignorance of history made worse by substituting hearsay and jingoism and blind, unadulterated ignorance for knowledge and scholarship…an ignorance that is carefully cultivated by steering clear of any chances to lessen it…even to condemning and cussing at anyone who tries…in Assyria it’s paramount to cling to and enhance the effects of prejudice and chauvinism.

Ignorance of history also in the sense of being able to put the Assyrian experience in context…to understand what else was going on in the world that impacted on the Assyrian experience..also what could be reasonably expected in the way of “compensation” or even interest and concern from outsiders…we were taught to believe that once the world “woke up” to our plight it would do magnificent things for us…and the worse our situation the more pity and hence the more benefits we could expect from a shocked world.

Like children coming from the schoolyard with bloody noses we only told our side of the story…we were never to blame, it was always the other guy’s fault….we were innocent and pure etc. We believed those who played into our prejudices and hurt feelings and were encouraged to feel outrage at what we believed was a unique and unparalleled example of loss and suffering without knowing how common this experience is to all people…we were predisposed to believe anyone who said they could and would “do something” for us…hence we foolishly trusted, and still do, those who said they would lead us to a promised land called Nineveh…and every time, every single time, WE were eventually and bitterly the ones who “woke up” to realize we had been betrayed…never learning that we have been betraying ourselves by cultivating our ignorance, taking our own story for the real thing while condemning the facts of the broader picture.


Instead of realizing that the incursion of western Christianity plus Russian Christianity into our lands and the subsequent massacre of Muslims by Christian occupying forces to which we attached ourselves in hopes they were come to stay, led to backlash each and every time…that our Muslim neighbors had a right to be incensed at our betrayal and the sight of our people taking up arms given to them by the foreigners and turning on our neighbors on their behalf…just as we’re doing once again.

We aren’t told of the frightful massacres of innocent Turkish, Kurdish and Persian villagers, the burning of their homes and theft of their cattle and wealth…we aren’t taught that it’s normal and natural for the kinds of resentment we faced when the Christians retreated, instead we’re taught to be outraged that ANY retaliation was forthcoming….and that nothing a Muslim did to avenge himself was justified while Christian troops had every right to kill and rob and rape Muslims…and we actually believed it and acted accordingly…and again expressed “shock” and “dismay” that ANY Muslim could feel hatred for what we’d done….instead of taking responsibility for our ACTIONS on behalf of the Russian armies in 1827 we believed and were encouraged to believe that it was all the result of Islam’s “hatred” for Jesus when WE’RE the ones who hate and have always hated Muhammad while Muslims have respected both him and his mother.

We again fail to teach our young that the coming of the Russians in 1914 into Persia and their actions there against the Muslims and our eager complicity meant that we were once again caught in the crosshairs when the Russians left…rather we’re taught and maintain, in the face of all sorts of solid evidence to the contrary available in any serious history class, that we did nothing and anyway it’s ‘wrong” to retaliate against an entire people for what a few did…not even realizing that this is exactly what is taking place in Iraq right now…that although not a SINGLE Iraqi had anything to do with 9/11, which everyone admits, yet the United States, with our blessings, has been punishing the men, women and children of Iraq…we aren’t outraged at this…we don’t see in this sort of cruel injustice any similarity to what we suffered when a few hotheads took sides with invading Christians…while not a single Iraqi had anything to do with 9/11.

This determination to remain ignorant of the larger picture…to learn what might be unpopular with our own people is what makes us scornful of History and historians…especially if any of them come from our own ranks…like Dr Joseph. How can people expect to prosper if they embrace ignorance in such a death-grip? You can still see it in effect among our nationalists who expect us to be shocked and disturbed whenever a Christian in Iraq suffers while cheering and feeling vindicated when dozens and hundreds of Muslims suffer far worse than an occasional kidnapping or murder. We know that Christian armies, with the most sophisticated weapons in the world are ACTIVELY hunting down Muslims in the streets of Iraq, which is not true of Christian Iraqis. It’s safe to say, if one could be objective, that while Iraqis did nothing to deserve this war, Christians among us HAVE done things and said things to deserve retaliation. That’s the irony of it, but it escapes us. When Russia defeated Turkey and its armies marched across the border, the Turkish and Kurdish villagers hadn’t done anything to the Russians to deserve the slaughter that came their way…but the Christians in the region DID do things that led to justifiable retaliation when the Russians retreated.

We seem to take great pride in our ignorance and indeed feel it’s the only way to “maintain” our peculiar Assyrian identity and historical perspective…is it any wonder that we’ve suffered nothing but loss in the MidEast and will continue on the same path?



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


The full topic:
No replies.


Content-length: 6330
Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5
Accept-charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Accept-encoding: identity,gzip,deflate
Cache-control: max-age=259200
Connection: keep-alive
Cookie: *hidded*
Host: www.insideassyria.com
Keep-alive: 300
Referer: http://www.insideassyria.com/rkvsf5/rkvsf_core.php?.Hdfn.
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.13) Gecko/20060501 Epiphany/1.6.5
Via: 1.1 localhost:3128 (squid/2.5.STABLE13)
X-forwarded-for: 127.0.0.1



Powered by RedKernel V.S. Forum 1.2.b9