Post by k5125 on Jul 31, 2004 17:14:12 GMT -5
Very interesting group.
In modern times, the group, which today numbers about 3.5 million, has been doubly mistreated; first by their Kurdish landlords, then by Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime, which forbade them to teach Aramaic. Assyrians were deprived of their cultural and national rights. There were only two nationalities in Saddam Hussein's Iraq: Arab and Kurdish. The Assyrians were not recognized in Iraqi censuses.
After Saddam's fall, the Assyrian Democratic Movement (http://www.zowaa.org) was one of the smaller emergent political parties in the social chaos of the occupation. While members of the Assyrian Democratic Movement, its officials make an effort to publicize, also took part in the liberation of the key oil cities of Kirkuk and Mosul in the north, the Assyrians were not invited to join the steering committee that was charged with defining Iraq's future.
Assyrians are not Arabs racially, ethnically, or culturally. Historically, they have contributed to the rise of the Arabic civilization during the Abbasid period and many scientists and scholars were in fact Assyrian (How Greek Science Passed To The Arabs (http://www.aina.org/aol/peter/greek.htm)). They have their own rich history which is distinct from the Arabs (in fact, the Assyrians were the first manufactureres of a sophisticated civilization in ancient times and prior to the Islamic expansion they made several breakthroughs in the fields of astronomy, philosophy and medicine) and were builders of the first known world-empire in antiquity under Sargon I that encompassed the western borders of modern-day Iran, all of Syria and Mesopotamia (Iraq), Palestine, southeast Anatolia, the Armenian highlands, Egypt and Sudan.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian
In modern times, the group, which today numbers about 3.5 million, has been doubly mistreated; first by their Kurdish landlords, then by Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime, which forbade them to teach Aramaic. Assyrians were deprived of their cultural and national rights. There were only two nationalities in Saddam Hussein's Iraq: Arab and Kurdish. The Assyrians were not recognized in Iraqi censuses.
After Saddam's fall, the Assyrian Democratic Movement (http://www.zowaa.org) was one of the smaller emergent political parties in the social chaos of the occupation. While members of the Assyrian Democratic Movement, its officials make an effort to publicize, also took part in the liberation of the key oil cities of Kirkuk and Mosul in the north, the Assyrians were not invited to join the steering committee that was charged with defining Iraq's future.
Assyrians are not Arabs racially, ethnically, or culturally. Historically, they have contributed to the rise of the Arabic civilization during the Abbasid period and many scientists and scholars were in fact Assyrian (How Greek Science Passed To The Arabs (http://www.aina.org/aol/peter/greek.htm)). They have their own rich history which is distinct from the Arabs (in fact, the Assyrians were the first manufactureres of a sophisticated civilization in ancient times and prior to the Islamic expansion they made several breakthroughs in the fields of astronomy, philosophy and medicine) and were builders of the first known world-empire in antiquity under Sargon I that encompassed the western borders of modern-day Iran, all of Syria and Mesopotamia (Iraq), Palestine, southeast Anatolia, the Armenian highlands, Egypt and Sudan.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assyrian