Adonis Diaries

Who are those “Christians of the Orient”? Who is playing Custer’s fiddle?

I have published many articles on the various Christian religious sects, before Byzantium Empire, during and after. Actually, the main theme is not about the Christian sects in the Orient, or even about minority religious sects, but what the Arab people means by freedom and equal rights.

It is known that this crazy General of George Custer used to play the fiddle as his troops were massacring the American Indians. Nero did play the guitar as Rome burned.

Lebanese journalist Samir Attallah published a piece in the daily Al Nahar.  It goes( with rearrangement and editing):

“I received an electronic mail at my bureau of the daily “Middle-East”. The letter was from the Iraqi immigrant, settled in Hamburg, Mahdi Abbas. Mahdi related how he witnessed the decapitation of the successor to the Iraqi throne in 1958 by the “revolutionaries”.  The head of this Hashemite son of the monarch from Mecca (appointed King by the mandated power England) was dangled from a building. The ground floor was the “Restaurant Kamar el Karhk”. One revolutionary was cutting the fingers of the monarch and throwing them to the crowd, asking for more body parts.”

The 60’s and 70’s witnessed a succession of military coups in the Middle-East (especially in Iraq and Syria). The main excuse is the failing of governments in confronting the new Zionist State. This letter of Mahdi arrived as an US drone assassinated the US/Moslem Salafist citizen, Anwar el Awlaki, in Yemen. President Obama made drone assassination his trade-mark: Over 2,000 are on the black list to be assassinated with utmost prejudice.

Don’t you think a criminal mind is the same, regardless of the means employed? In the time of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, duelists used to shake hands before shooting at one another. There got to be other alternatives than violent means to resolving matters.  For example, Qadhafi proclaimed in a mass rally that there are no prisons in Libya. Why? He had just executed 1,200 detainees in their sleep in the prison of Abu Salim prison.

Recent history shows that those who cut to pieces their adversaries ended up being cut to pieces, jailed for life, tortured, and turned one against another:  The slaughterhouse resumed for many decades in these dictatorial and absolute monarchy regimes. For example, Rifaat el Assad, brother of the late Syrian dictator Hafez el Assad, ordered his Special Forces to shell the Presidential Palace as he witnessed his brother in a coma in the year 2000!

The Soviet Union fell and nobody died, even in a traffic accident. (This does not exclude that President Yeltsin shelled the Parliament (the Duma) because the deputies obstructed his policies…).

Latin America was a hotbed of horror dictatorship, under the protection and support of the successive US administrations.  Things have evolved and changed toward democratic systems without this crazy death toll in the Arab World. It might be humoristic that Arab people are demanding freedom and equal rights. We are acting as the American Indians: All that we are asking is a piece of land to live on!

What’s the difference between the American Indians and the Christian sects in the Orient? Both communities were there first on the land, and when they are granted monopoly in selling cigarettes, they consider this gesture as a gift from heaven. Former US Senator from South Dakota, James Abu Rizk, learned to defend the Palestinian cause from defending the American Indian cause.  Samir Attallah asked former US senator George Mc Govern: “What’s with Abu Rizk now?” He replied: “It appears that the American Indian cause is more feasible to be won than the Palestinian cause”

Who are those “Christian sects from the Orient”? Media coverage is suspect: They focus on who is to protect them from extinction! As if a green light have been given for another round of genocides. Arab poets die in exile…Julius Caesar said: “Who am I to not forgive? Forgiving extend the life of a throne”  Attallah mentioned: “I once complained to a book shop keeper in Ottawa of the maltreatment that Lebanese passport holders experience in airports.” He replied: “Have you tried a German passport after 1949?”

Why the Christian sects in the Orient have to immigrate if they are the heart of the Arabic community? Why should they disappear to greener pastures when they represented the “awakening of Arab dignity” during the Ottoman Empire and during the periods of the mandated powers of France and England? (read note 1)

The Christian sects of the Orient were the administrative backbone of the successive Arab/Islamic Empires, and they were the translators of Greek and Roman manuscripts for the Arabic caliph.. The Greek culture would have vanished long time ago if the Christian sects of the Orient failed to transfer and translate culture to the Arabic language…

Note 1: Since the 19th century, most secular and national political parties and civic movements in the Middle-East were founded by Christian Arabs. For example, the reigning Baath party in Syria was created by the Christian Michel Aflak.  Most of the leaders of the Communist parties were Christians. All these political parties and their charismatic leaders were persecuted by the Ottoman Empire, the mandated poweres of England and France, and by the governments after independence of the States.

You wonder: “Is the Arab/Islamic spirit anathema to secular and national tendencies?” Fact is, only after successful military coups did Moslem leaders adopt nationalistic and occasionally secular laws. (More on that topic in later posts) 

Note 2: Post inspired by a piece of journalist Samir Attallah in the daily Al Nahar under the title” Restaurant Kamar (Moon) el Karhk”

Note 3:  I stumbled on a related article that I posted in 2008: Readers of my blog give me opportunity to re-edit older posts  https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2008/12/20/christians-of-the-orients-they-are-you/

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