Assyrian Nationalism - Ideology

Ideology

The ideology of Assyrian nationalism advocates Assyrian independence, and is based on the political and national unification of ethnic Assyrian followers of a number of Syriac Christian Churches (mainly those originating in, or based in and around Mesopotamia) with classical Syriac as its cultural language. Its main proponents in the beginning of the 20th century were Naum Faiq, Freydun Atturaya and Farid Nazha.

Within the Syriac Christian population in the near east as a whole, Assyrianism meets a degree of resistance as the result of geographic, ethnic, linguistic and confessional boundaries. Theologically in particular, the christological division between the Syriac Orthodox Church ("West Syriac") on one hand and the Mesopotamian Aramaic speaking adherents of the Assyrian Church of the East, Ancient Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church and Assyrian Protestants ("East Syriac")on the other. The first two churches are not divided by a formally declared schism, but their doctrine has moved so far apart for mutual accusations of heresy. However, a number of adherents of the Syriac Orthodox Church do espouse an Assyrian identity. In a geographic and linguistic context, the predominantly Arabic speaking Semitic Christians from Syria (excluding the Assyrian north east of the country), south central Turkey and Lebanon tend not to identify as Assyrians. In the bulk of Syria an Aramean identity is often espoused, and in Lebanon a Phoenician heritage is claimed. This is in part due to the term Syriac being generally accepted by the majority of scholars to be a derivation of Assyrian, and in part because the majority of the Christian population of these areas are not geographically from what was Assyria or Mesopotamia, and thus do not identify with an Assyrian heritage in the way that the pre Arab, pre Islamic Mesopotamian Assyrians from Iraq, north east Syria, south east Turkey, Iran and the Caucasus naturally do.

According to Raif Toma, Assyrianism goes beyond mere Syriac patriotism, and ultimately aims at the unification of all "Mesopotamians", properly qualifying as "Pan-Mesopotamianism". This variant of Assyrianism is independent of Christian, ethno-religious identity and qualifies as a purely ethnic nationalism, in that it identifies the Assyrian people as the heirs of the Assyrian Empire, and as the indigenous population of Mesopotamia, as opposed to Arabism, which is identified as a chronologically later, non indigenous, and foreign intrusive element, due to the non indigenous Arab Muslim conquests. This is expressed e.g. in the Assyrian calendar introduced in the 1950, which chooses as its era 4750 BC, the estimated date of construction of the first (pre-historical, pre-Semitic) temple at Assur.

Organisations advocating Assyrianism are the Assyrian Democratic Organisation, Assyrian National Congress, Assyrian Universal Alliance (since 1968) and Shuraya (since 1978). The Assyrian flag was designed by the Assyrian Universal Alliance in 1968.