The archbishop of Canterbury and situation of the Aramean Christians in the middle-east in general and in particular in Iraq.

Aramean people: Aramean people (not to be confused with ‘Armenians’) speak Aramaic, the language spoken by Abraham, Moses and Jesus. They are the indigenous people of what was called in ancient times Aram- Nahrin, in our days it is called ‘Mesopotamia’.

Some Arameans today identify themselves with “Assyrians”, because of the spiritual colonial hate generating activities of the Western missionaries and diplomats in the Middle-East in 16th and 19th centuries. Other Arameans became known as “Chaldeans”. However all of them are Arameans.In Turkey, the Arameans are called: Süryani. In Arabic they are called Al- Suryan.

Dutch Version

December 23, 2006 the head of the Anglican Church, 70 million adherents worldwide, the archbishop of Canterbury, Mr. Dr. Rowan Williams lashed out at the English and American government whom he sees as the cause for the deteriorating situation of the Christians in the Middle-East. This is because of the short-sighted and ignorant policy of England (and America).

Mr. William is making here a appreciable and noble attempt to ask for the attention to the situation of the Christians in the middle-east. Other bishops support Mr. Williams. Please find at the end the article of “The Times” of 23 December 2006.

Problem Christians of the middle-east

Heritage of the powerful Jesus of the West.

But of course Dr. Williams is correctly rebuking the Americans and English governments policy. Indeed, since the start of the war against Iraq in 2003 the situation for the Christians is increasingly deteriorating.

However, there is a very important matter where Mr. Williams and others fail to discuses and that is: de fragmentation of the Christians of the Middle-east. All the Christians of the Middle-east, except Copts and Armenians, have Aramean origin. Yet this Arameans are divided into several churches and groups (this is also true for Armenians and Copts). It is this division which for a important part contributed to the decline of the Aramean nation in the middle-east. And for this mutual hatred within the Aramean nation, the Catholic Church and the Church of Mr. Rowan Williams can be held responsible. It is this very division which resulted in the Aramean spiritual genocide through which irreparable deep wounds has been struck.

In the 16th century (precisely 1552) the Roman Catholic missionaries brainwashed a part of East- Aramean clergy by means of bribery to call themselves “Chaldeans” and with that, the Chaldean Church (of Babylon) was born.

As a result of competition between the Catholic and Anglican Church, in the late 19^th century the same process was repeated, this time, being carried out by the Anglican missionaries, with the remaining part of the East-Aramean “Nestorian” tribes of Hakkaria (bordering Turkey and Iraq) and Urmia (Iran), who were wrongfully identified as “Assyrians”; purely geographical and only applied to the “Nestorians”.

The East-Aramean “Nestorian” tribes prefer, since then, to call themselves ,,Assyrians” and try, by all means possible, to force this term onto other Aramean denominations by spreading plenty of biased information regarding the origin of our people and our language.

After the adoption of Assyrianism by the East-Aramean Nestorians; they became so nationalistic/fanatics that they started to distort historical facts. For example: Aramaic language they changed in “Assyrian” language, Aramean people in “Assyrian” people. Saint Ephraim the Syrian became “Saint Ephrem the Assyrian”, Syrian Church became “Assyrian Church”. In this way they try by all means possible to falsify our history and our sacred Aramaic language.

The fanatic/nationalistic people, who seize every opportunity to distort the heritage of our people, have even killed their own Patriarch in 1976 because he refused to change the name of the (Syrian) Church of the East into the Assyrian Apostolic Church of the East. After Patriarch Mar Eshai Shamun XXIII was killed and a new one was elected; the name of the Church was changed into Assyrian Apostolic Catholic Church”. Regarding this assassination, professor John Joseph says,, The District Attorney further argued that one of the motives in the killing was Assyrian nationalism; he tried to prove that the Assyrian Universal Alliance (AUA) was involved in the assassination (page 133)

The painful and mythical descriptions in reference to our people, invented by outsiders, who were unaware of the Hidden Pearl - truths which have been- till the present day, buried beneath the persecutions and ethnic cleansing of past centuries, are definitely not in agreement with the historical facts recorded by the brilliant historians of the Syrian Church of Antioch who enlightened the world of their time, not only with the theological knowledge but with regular science as well.

Regarding brainwashing of the East-Aramean Nestorian by the West, Professor John Joseph is quoting from a letter he got from Patricia Crone, one of the others of “Hagarism” where she states, “..We take it for granted that they [Nestorians] got the modern Assyrian label from the West and proceed to reinvent themselves.. Of course the Nestorians were Arameans (Page 29, footnote 94)

What has been done to the indigenous Aramean people, in the name of ,,faith”, ,,education” and ,,development”, can be considered as a kind of, Spiritual genocide” in the sense of creating hatred, division and identity distortion. A divided nation is obviously a weak nation!

The situation in Iraq

If we restrict our discussion only to Iraq, we see that the Aramean nation is quite divided. You have the following denominations:

West- Aramean Syrian Orthodox, around 80.000
West- Aramean Syrian Catholics, around 40.00
West- Aramean Syrian Melkites??????
East- Aramean Syrian Nestorian “Chaldeans, around 250.000- 300.000
East- Aramean Syrian Nestorian “Assyrians”, around 20.000-25.000

There is a enormous mutual hatred, contempt and disdain between these Aramean denominations, yes a deeply rooted hatred. The root of this hatred obvious can be traced back to the spiritual war between Roman Catholics and Anglican Church under supervision of the Powerful Jesus of the West who made a havoc in the middle-east.

When Mr. Rowan Williams wish to improve the situation of the Christians of Iraq; first he should go to the source of the problem and try from there to solve it. In our article The Anglican Church and the recognition of the Aramean Spiritual Genocide we have tried to explain how the Church of Mr. Williams may help the Aramean nation of the middle-east.

He should not come up with short range solution, but start at the root of the problem, where he and Roman Catholics are responsible for! Providing them with temporary solution in the form of food, shelter and security will not help them on the long term.

How to help Christians in the middle-east?

If the archbishop Rowan Williams really want to help the Aramean Christians of the Middle-East, first he should start with examination of what his own church has been done in the past to the Aramean nation and confess their mistakes, that is to say: unambiguous condemnation of the creation and invention of their unholy product “Assyrians” by his church in the 19^th century to split our nation. Hereafter to go to the Roman Catholic Church and try to make them confess their mistakes as well. And after this, together with the Roman Catholic church making a plan how to rehabilitate the deeply divided Aramean nation to teach them their glorious and genuine Aramean history and to stop with the falsely and the objectionable history they have created which has destroyed our nation.

This will be the starting point of the gradual recovery of the Aramean nation. After the Arameans denominations are united under the Aramean flag, it will be for Mr. Rowan Williams and Roman Catholic Church much more easier to, although spiritually divided, unify them on the spiritual level.

After all, if they understand that they have a common goal on the national level, this will have repercussions for the spiritual field as well!

This is the holy task which Mr. Rowan Williams, as head of Anglican Church, together with the Catholic Church finally could carry out as a noble Christians to show they do not feel ashamed to confess the mistakes of the past and to repair them.

All the other will not help to permanent solution, no matter how noble they may sound!

And that is all about in the Christian faith !

************The Article of the Times*****************

The Times December 23, 2006

(http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2516916,00.html)

Christians suffer for Iraq, says archbishop

Ruth Gledhill and Michael Evans

· Rowan Williams warns of war's deadly backlash

· Thousands of believers in Middle East 'at risk'

Christians in the Middle East are being put at unprecedented risk by the Government’s “shortsighted” and “ignorant” policy in Iraq, The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, says today.

In an extraordinary attack, Dr Williams accuses Tony Blair and the US of endangering the lives and futures of many thousands of Christians in the Middle East, who are regarded by their countrymen as supporters of the “crusading West.”

He has been backed by bishops across the Church of England, who say that Christians in the Middle East are now paying the price for the “chaos” in Iraq after the British Government failed to heed their warnings about the consequences of military action.

Dr Williams, writing in today’s Times, says that one prediction that was systematically ignored was that Western military action would put the whole of the Middle East’s Christian population at risk.

Writing from Bethlehem, where the number of Christians has plummeted to a quarter of what they were, he condemns the Government for failing to put in place a strategy to help Christians.

“The results are now painfully adding to what was already a difficult situation for Christian communities across the region,” he says. “The first Christian believers were Middle Easterners. It’s a very sobering thought that we might live to see the last native Christian believers in the region.” In some Middle Eastern countries where Muslim-Christian relations have always been good, he says that extremist attacks on Christians are becoming “notably more frequent.”

Dr Williams, who is visiting Israel with Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster, Bishop Nathan Hovhannisian, the Armenian Primate of Britain and David Coffey, the head of the Baptist World Alliance, returns to Britain today with a call for all British churches to take action to raise the profile of Christians in the Middle East. Dr Williams said yesterday that the Israeli-built wall around Bethlehem symbolised what was “deeply wrong in the human heart”.

Despite Dr Williams’s attack on British policy in Iraq, the Government insists that the strategy in southern Iraq, where about 7,000 troops are based, is bearing fruit.

Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, told The Times in an interview this week: “There is no evidence that the strategy is not still on course.” He said that Operation Sinbad, under which troops and reconstruction teams are devoting resources to improving Basra, was the key to Britain’s strategy.

The Government hopes that next year British troops will be able to adopt a “watching role”, leaving the trained Iraqi security forces to take over responsibility for Basra. “I think it’s highly unlikely that we will need the same number of troops to watch over the Iraqis as we have there at present,” Mr Browne said.

He insisted that the environment in Basra was “genuinely improving”. In October, General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the Army, gave warning in a newspaper interview that if the British troops stayed for too long they would risk exacerbating the situation.

Senior bishops threw their weight behind Dr Williams.Dr Tom Wright, the Bishop of Durham, said: “Nobody takes any notice of what churchmen say about these things. Now this has turned into a very sorrowful ‘I told you so’.”

Dr Wright, who is one of the Church’s top five clerics, said: “We have argued all along that what was being done in our name by our Government, led by America, would have disastrous consequences.

“The 64-and-a-half thousand dollar question is, what do we do now? We have made a problematic situation far worse. Even if there were changes of government in America and Britain, they will still have to cope with the chaos that has been unleashed.”

He called for the UN resources in the region to be strengthened. “Long term, that is what we must do because it is ridiculous for any one, two or three countries to pretend they can be global policemen in other people’s parts of the world. We desperately need a credible international police force.”

“As long as it is America and Britain doing the policing, local people will see it as Christian nations coming in and beating up Muslim nations, so it merely makes matters worse.” He said that the ensuing chaos could lead to a situation that was “worse than Saddam”.

The Bishop of Chelmsford, the Right Rev John Gladwin, said: “I am fully aware of the appalling situation in which many Christians in the Middle East now find themselves and would wish to give my whole-hearted support to the Archbishop.”

The Bishop of Liverpool, the Right Rev James Jones, said: “The Archbishop has done much to deepen friendship between Christians, Muslims and Jews in this country. We must pray that this friendship spreads.

“We face two further possibilities: either a conflict of attrition between the faiths or a settlement of peaceful coexistence. We must hope that Christians will find the same just treatment in the Middle East as Muslims have a right to expect in this country.”

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