The Inside Assyria Discussion Forum #5

=> The Christian Fly in the Assyrian Ointment

The Christian Fly in the Assyrian Ointment
Posted by pancho (Moderator) - Sunday, March 22 2009, 21:19:28 (CET)
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The insistence that modern Assyrians can only be Christian to be real Assyrians is where this whole thing breaks down.

Even if we accept the notion that we “remembered” who we were just recently, it still makes no sense, and is highly suspicious, that Assyrians can only be Christians...and that anyone who left the more recent Christian faith thereby stopped being a “real’ Assyrian, when leaving the original Assyrian faith apparently had no impact on his “Assyrianism”. If we accept that Assyrians converted to Christianity, however it was accomplished, then there’s no reason to deny that they also converted to Islam, however it was accomplished. Or to any other religion or to no religion at all. Leaving a religion, or joining another, should have no bearing on the “national” identity of “Assyrian”.

“Assyrian” is a religious, not an ethnic or national, designation. “Assyrian” is simply ASHUR-ian and is no different than CHRIST-ian...or MUHHAMED-an...or YAHVE-ist...(”Jew” and Judaism deriving fromYehuda/Yahwehist/Yehudasim). Likewise BUDDHA-ist spells out the leader of the religion, which any people can follow, and not a national or ethnic identity.

“Jewish” is a religious designation not an ethnic or national one...that’s why the country of the Jews is called Israel...not Jewland. It is possible to be an Israeli without being Jewish...or Palestinian without being Muslim...as one is an American without being Christian, Jew, Muslim or anything else.

Even the name “Assyrian”, as used by the ancients, didn’t signify a particular ethnicity....as all sorts of people became part of Assyria. All the so-called survivors of Assyria...those “aristocrats” and others who continued on, were not Christians but worshipped Ashur...so we see that only in modern times does this notion that one HAS to be Christian to be Assyrian show up.

Since the name of the religious leader appears in such titles as Christian, Muhammadan and Assyrian...it is not possible to remain a Christian, for instance, if you transfer allegiance to Buddha...or Yahwe, or Muhammad. To remain Jewish you MUST remain faithful to the Jewish God. You can be Israeli and be Muslim, or Buddhist or Christian....but you can’t be Jewish and leave Yahwe behind. You can also be Arabian without being Muslim....since that is a national and not a religious designation.

To be Assyrian, technically, means you maintained faith with Ashur. You can’t be of two religions at once....you can’t, in other words, believe in two Gods...not if you want to be a monotheistic Christian. Therefore it’s impossible to be both Christian and Assyrian...because the two names include the names of two Gods....Ashur and Christ.

If anything, to be a “true” Assyrian means being true to Ashur...to the God contained in that name; ASHUR-ian. Just as to be a true Christian means to remain faithful to Christ. If you switch from Christ, you are no longer Christian. Doesn’t common sense tell you the same is true if you switch from Ashur? Why does abandoning Ashur make you “more” of an ASHUR-ian...while leaving Christ behind throws you out of CHRIST-ianity? Obviously if you leave Christ you are no longer a Christian. How, then, does leaving Ashur make you MORE of an “Assyrian”?

If any religion “proves” you are Assyrian, it is the original Assyrian religion itself...just as is the case for being a true Christian, or Buddhist, or Muhhamedan, or Yahvist. The name of the God, and not the ethnicity or nationality, is contained within the name of each.

If we wish to make the religious name “Assyrian” into a national identity....we either revert to the religion of Ashur and rule out ANYONE of another religion, or....we drop the religion requirement altogether...like any true national name. If “Assyrian” can only mean ONE religion, then that religion is of Ashur....not of Christ...or of Muhammad, or of any other God. If we are willing to ignore that fact and allow Christians in, then we have to let everyone else join this “nation”. “Nation”, not religious sect.

The nationalist (who is really a religion-ist in disguise) is not willing to do that because there goes the need for an “Assyrian homeland”...because it turns out that ALL of Iraq is the Assyrian homeland. But what he wants is a Christian enclave....a Christlandia...and to claim one he has to insist that only Christians qualify as Assyrians....and of course no one but he and his cousins are convinced by such spongy reasoning, if that’s even the right word for it.

The other component to the nationalists claim, besides that only Christians qualify, is that Muslims have persecuted and murdered etc. “Assyrian/Christians” since forever. He needs to believe this and spread it around because it forms the basis of his claim that he MUST be separated from “murderous Islam”, which is hell-bent on his destruction and always has been. To do this he has to lie, lie some more and then lie a whole bunch more. And, as we’ve seen in the sorry case of Jumblat, there is absolutely no objective proof to back up such an assertion. In fact, history is replete with exactly the opposite; that the Arabs and Islam saved our Christian ancestors, and that it was fellow Christians who were out to destroy them....just as it is Christians now who are causing the havoc in Iraq, and started it, and not Muslims, who are merely defending themselves.

The Assyrian nationalist cause is built on stupidity, ignorance and bigotry, heavily spiced with mendacity. This is just the kind of “nation” the world needs today...to sort of balance-out the tiresome growth of peace-loving, sane and spiritual countries we find so boring.

Note: Interestingly enough “Chaldean” contains within in it no designation of a God so that, technically, one can be Chaldean and be of any religion. It is a true “national” name deriving from the land of Chaldea, and not a religious one (as there was never a God “Chaldo”)...though Chaldeans would not agree.



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