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Relocating World Christianity
Christianity emerged in the Middle East, became a majority religion, and thereafter expanded into various geographical directions. Although the faith suffered a decline under Arab Muslim rule already in the eleventh century, the region nonetheless remained an important spiritual centre of Christianity until about the thirteenth century. Today, however, local Christians express fear about the end of their existence in this region, their ancestral home. This fear is also shared by scholars and experts who ask whether Christianity has a future in the Middle East (Jenkins 2004, Tamcke 2016). In the collective memory of Assyrians 1 , their traumatic past-transmitted through generations-continues to play a central role in their life (Atto 2017). One could say that each generation has experienced a form of continued dispossession, accumulated in the inherited memory of individuals. For example, together with Armenians and Greeks, Assyrians worldwide began 2014 with preparations for the commemoration of the centennial of the 1915 genocide of the Christians in Ottoman Turkey. Yet in 2014 they were confronted with yet another genocide; another systematic and intentional attempt to destroy their people, this time occurring in the present. Today, Christian communities in the Middle East are targeted by the Islamic State (IS) and other radical militant Islamist groups. Areas occupied by IS in Syria and 1 Assyrians is used here as a cross-denominational name for the various oriental churches in the Syriac tradition; it can be used synonymous with Syriacs and Arameans.
The Worsening Plight of Eastern Christians
As an Eastern Christian whose formative years took place in Syria and Lebanon during the 1930’s and the 1940’s, I have personally experienced a steady retreat of Eastern Christianity from the Middle East. Beginning with the1950’s, at the end of the French and British presence, a wave of nationalism swept over the Arab World. Quite often, it was accompanied by xenophobia; foreign nationals were no longer welcome to live and work. It became evident in Egypt, after the July 1952 coup that toppled King Farouk. Colonel Nasser expelled the Jews that had lived in the country for centuries; descendants of Syrian and Lebanese Christians whose forefathers had settled in Egypt during the 19th century, were no longer welcome!
A Century of Changing Perceptions of “Christian Militias” in Iraq
The Middle East Journal , 2024
This article traces the history of Iraq’s Assyrian Christians in armed struggle from the second half of the twentieth century to the contemporary era. It argues that, while “Christian militias” are not a new phenomenon, their modes of engagement in sectarian politics are new and representative of Iraq in the aftermath of the 2003 United States–led invasion. By contrast, during the twentieth century, and particularly during the rule of the Ba‘th Party (1968–2003), Assyrian activists were involved in secular and leftist political movements confronting the regime from within the larger Iraqi opposition. The history of this earlier, foundational period is contextualized to make sense of the sectarian politics of the post-2003 period. I make use of archival sources retrieved from Baghdad and Mosul as well as oral interviews, periodicals, memoirs, and songs in both Arabic and Aramaic.
International Journal of Middle East Studies, volume 45, issue 04, pp. 829-831, 2013
Department of African, Middle Eastern, and South Asian Languages and Literatures, Rutgers, State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, N.J.; e-mail: haberl@rutgers.edu
Καὶ τῶνδ’ ὅμοιον εἴ τι μὴ πείθω· τί γάρ; Tὸ μέλλον ἥξει. Kαὶ σύ μ’ ἐν τάχει παρὼν ἄγαν γ’ ἀληθόμαντιν οἰκτίρας ἐρεῖς. (‘What does it matter now if men believe or no? What is to come will come. And soon you too will stand aside, To murmur in pity that my words were true’). Aeschylus, Agamemnon, 1239-1241 (Cassandra addressing the chorus) The dissolution of the Ottoman Empire is a Crime for which the World will still pay much. The rightful state for all African and Western Asiatic territories between Morocco and Iran is the Ottoman Empire. However, in the aftermath of WW I, and because of the defeat of Imperial Germany’s allies, the Ottoman Empire was dispossessed of more than 80% of its territories (today’s Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Yemen) that had meanwhile been limited only in Western Asia, due to the French – English – Italian colonial expansion and illegal expropriation of Ottoman provinces in NW – N – NE Africa (today’s Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan and Eritrea). The colonial empires attempted to achieve economic and political benefits through their expansion, and they managed to do so, and in the process they diffused colossal amounts of lies, disseminated alien theories and insults against the indigenous nations’ traditions, performed heinous deeds, carried out series of crimes, imposed unacceptable policies, and offered every reason for any indigenous nation to reject their plans and to revile them for having spread in the process discord and enmity among the indigenous nations, fratricidal conflicts, successive wars, foreign military interventions, ecological and human disasters, and total social disintegration. On the other side, governed by puppet governments that do not obey the will of their peoples but carry out the orders of shadowy organizations and secret societies, the Western societies in their totality (except those who openly rejected the evildoing) became the undisputed accomplices of their governments and of their secret masters. Responsibility is therefore to be shared by all. Because the top of the Western societies, i.e. the powerful secret organizations that define who participates in the local governments and who does not, consists of unbelievers, immoral gangsters, and villainous cheaters, no consideration was given to the moral aspect of the policies implemented and the deeds performed. But this does not change in anything their responsibility, and the responsibility of the puppet governments, and the responsibility of the peoples who were controlled by this pyramidal hierarchical scheme. They all bear the common responsibility for the aforementioned deeds because, irrespective of any religion and faith, every human bears the responsibility of his / her acts. This is something that most of the simple people in all the Western countries tend to forget. If this attitude characterizes one agnostic or atheist person, it does not matter much because every person who rejects the universal order established by God (however perceived as per each specific religion and philosophy) is automatically immoral and no morality standards or principles can apply to, and be expected from, him/her. The notion of civic morality is a ludicrous attempt to effectively kill God and as such fully disregarded. Morality exists only within Faith; extreme cases like those of the Biblical stories about Sodom and Gomorrah bear witness to the aforementioned. So, Western people, who are Christian of faith and accept the Christian concept of morality (differently interpreted of course as per each denomination), must know that they fully bear responsibility for the criminal deeds and policies of their governments to which they (and their forefathers) did not duly react. What is to be concluded from this point is that, according to Christian morality itself, Christians in the West should not be surprised, if terrible acts against their life, integrity, safety, and security are to be tomorrow undertaken. These acts have already been spearheaded by their governments’ policies and by the inactivity of those who value Christian and Biblical moral concepts like the famous order ‘Ό μισείς, μηδενί ποιήσεις‘ (Do that to no man which thou hatest – from Tobias, 4:15 – http://www.sacred-texts.com/bib/apo/tob004.htm) which was exemplarily rephrased by Jesus as ‘Καθώς θέλετε ίνα ποιώσιν υμίν οι άνθρωποι, και υμείς ποιείτε αυτοίς ομοίως‘ (Do to other people what you want them to do to you – from Luke 6:31). First published on 11th October 2014 here; https://megalommatiscomments.wordpress.com/2014/10/11/ottoman-empire-fake-middle-east-the-pseudo-christians-of-the-west-and-the-forthcoming-tribulation/
Continuing the Ottoman Millet System: The Othering of Assyrians as ‘Christians’ in Iraq
Discourses and Practices of Othering: Politics, Policy Making, and Media, 2023
Assyrians are an ethnic group indigenous to northern Iraq, the majority of whom belong to a number of Christian denominations. Since Iraq’s independence as a state in 1932, the country’s successive governments have dealt with them according to their disparate denominational groupings, continuing a form of the Ottoman millet system, rather than recognizing them as a single ethnic group. This top-down reinforcement of communalism, promoting social divisions and appealing to group-based religious identities, has encouraged their further fragmentation, political marginalization and the perpetuation of Christian religious hierarchies, along with their associated elites, in positions of power, prestige and privilege. This has served to further reinforce the authority of ethno-nationalist governments entrenched in Baghdad and, later on, also in Erbil. The notion of an Assyrian ethnic identity has contradicted how they have been constructed and categorized in collective memory, a process historically governed by religious segregation. With the majority of Iraq’s population being Arab or Kurdish Muslims, such policies have additionally provoked feelings of prejudice and resentment toward the minority Christian “other.” This paper will deal with the representation of ethnic Assyrians at the political level in Iraq’s central government, as well as that of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, since their inceptions. In particular, the discourse of Iraqi Kurdistan’s Regional Government in relation to internally displaced Assyrians from other parts of the country since 2003 will be discussed within the framework of them being represented as foreigners in their own land. This is particularly relevant, since the Assyrians’ ethnicity has historically posed a threat to the nation-building and state-making strategies of Arab and Kurdish nationalist movements, which have sought the homogeneity of an “Arab” Iraq or a de-facto “Kurdistan.” Finally, an attempt will be made to outline Assyrian institutional, political, and social movements that have formed in opposition to the status quo, and in order to transform the discourse.
Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry, 2020
PREVIEW ONLY - READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE: https://doi.org/10.33929/sherm.2020.vol2.no2.06 This article re-examines the dominant scholarly perception that Christian support for Arab Nationalist regimes is primarily a product of fear of Islamism. After a brief examination of the Christian origins of Ba’athism—a form of Arab Nationalism—the author argues that a more granular understanding of the current Christian politics of Syria and Iraq reveals that while some Christians have supported regimes out of fear, there is also significant strain of active, positive support, though to what extent this is a product of Christian identification with Arab identity requires further research. The study employs an examination of posts from pro-Assad Syrian Christian Facebook pages.
Contested Nations: Iraq and the Assyrians
Nations and Nationalism, 2000
The formation of nation-states from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East after World War I, under colonial auspices, proceeded with negotiations in some instances and hostilities in others from previously autonomous communities, some of them formally designated as millets. Iraq comprised a diversity of religious and ethnic communities. The Assyrians, Christian mountain tribes, mostly refugees from Turkish Kurdistan under British protection, were one community which actively resisted integration into the new nation-state and, as a result, were subject to violent attacks by the nascent Iraqi army in 1933. This episode and the way it was perceived and interpreted by the different parties is an interesting illustration of the political psychology of communitarianism in interaction with nationalism, complicated by religious identifications, all in a colonial context. Subsequent histories and commentaries on the episode are also interesting in illuminating ideological readings.