Assyrian Agonistes
by Jerry Gordon (March 2011)
Honor Killing, was based, in part, on Timmerman’s nearly 20 year investigation of the Iranian nuclear development program and secret war against the US and Israel, as well as, humanitarian issues arising from Islamic totalitarian doctrine and infiltration of our government.
St. Peter’s Bones, Timmerman crafts plots revolving around the plight of the beleaguered Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac (hereafter referred to as the Assyrians) Christian community in Iraq. Timmerman’s motivation in writing this novel, based in part on his own involvement and reporting on the predicament faced by this ancient Middle East Christian community, was to add some emotional content beyond the meager news reports about the assaults against them by sectarian forces in Iraq and the flight of more than half the estimated 1.5 million Assyrians in the Iraqi community seeking safe havens elsewhere in their Diaspora.
Aramaic, the lingua franca of the Ancient Middle East was the mother tongue of the Assyrians and continues in daily use and in their liturgy and worship. The Aramaic script with blocked letters influenced what became Judaic Hebrew that adopted many Aramaic words in holy texts. Aramaic was spoken by Jesus and his disciples, including Sts. Paul and Peter both of whom were instrumental in founding the Church in Rome. Peter was executed by crucifixion (upside down) by the Emperor Nero in 66AD. Despite the schism between Eastern versus Western churches and the onslaught of Islam in Mesopotamia, the Assyrians have survived successive waves of massacres and persecution under Syrian Caliphs, during the barbaric Mongol invasion of Tamerlane and under Ottoman Sultans. The Assyrians, Armenians and Syriacs were subjected to a genocidal jihad by Ottoman Forces and Kurds during the period from 1914 to 1923. It is estimated that upwards of 270,000 to 500,000 Assyrians in Turkey, Western Iran and Mesopotamia were slaughtered during the Great Genocide. Kurdish forces massacred more than 3,000 Assyrians in August, 1933; some believe they were betrayed by the British administrators in Iraq. Episodic massacres of Assyrians by Kurds and Arabs have continued throughout the 20th and into the 21st Century. The latest incident being the bombing of Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad on October 31st, 2010 when 58 were killed and more 100 injured by a bombing attack during worship services. The fictionalized Assyrian interpreter cum narrator in St. Peter’s Bones is portrayed as a descendent of those who fled the Great Genocide from Persia to Mesopotamia in 1923.
Pope Leo the Fourth during a Saracen siege of the Holy City. See Andrew Bostom, The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims for a discussion of the Muslim assault on the Vatican and desecration of the holy relics. As noted in the novel, the sacred relics were re-discovered by the Vatican and their discovery was officially announced by Pope Pius, XII in 1950. The provenance of these sacred relics at the St. Hormizd Monastery is contested by a Vatican Priest, a relative of Pope Pius XII, in the Timmerman novel. The secret book is deemed to be explosive because it contains alleged evidence that Mohammed, the founder of Islam, took instructions about Christian doctrine from a Nestorian Priest, Bahira, as a youth, only to have Mohammed subsequently reject it in favor of jihad.
, The Satanic Verses.
Timmerman notes the contribution of Australian Anglican minister and human rights advocate, Mark Durie, in fashioning this central plot line concerning the views of Muslim scholars about the rejection of Christian doctrine that allegedly Mohammed was exposed to by the Nestorian monk, Bahira:
Ibn Ishaq’s Life of Mohammad. Ibn Ishaq recounts the influence on Mohammad of a Coptic monk named Bahira, as well as the influence of his wife’s cousin, a convert from Christianity who was known to have translated the Gospels into Arabic. I adapted his account of Mohammad’s early success as a caravan leader working in his wife’s employ as part of the “Secret Book” of the Guardians of St. Hormizd.
The Third Choice, is illuminating. Mark sent me a link to a remarkable website, written by Muslim scholars that told the story of the Nestorian monk Bahira and his alleged influence over Mohammad in great detail. He also steered me toward the Hadith from Sahih Bukhari, considered the most trusted of all the early Muslim chroniclers, quoted at the end of my book.
Tariq Aziz by a rogue corrupt official of an American security contractor firm in Erbil. The other is a young American Assyrian woman from California traveling with a party of human rights advocates investigating the threatened Assyrian community.
Why is the UN Determining Who Becomes Humanitarian Refugees in the US?
We noted what Timmerman and the members of the actual investigative group encountered:
UNHCR refugee certification effort in the region that discriminates against Iraqi Christians.
According to Dr. Keith Roderick of Christian Solidarity International (CSI), Iraqi Christian refugees, even those who would be classified under our Humanitarian Refugee guidelines as Extremely Vulnerable Persons (EVP), are being directed to UNHCR Offices in Amman, Jordan. They are entrapped in a long bureaucratic process. Many have reported that they are discriminated against, files are lost and stories that substantiate their profound fear of persecution including death threats are dismissed. The US Embassy in Amman is virtually impenetrable with Jordanian guards at the initial point of contact for refugees. They are all directed to UNHCR offices, even when they could take advantage of the Direct Access Program or Immigration P-2 Visas for family reunification.
The UNHCR receives tens of millions in compensation from our government for this processing function.
As Ken Timmerman writes in a NewsMax.com article, “Iraq Christian Refugees Ignored by U.N.” on the plight of Iraqi Christian translators, very few of the 500 translators and US Embassy workers eligible to receive emergency relocation have been certified under a Congressional mandate for those facing death threats. This, despite the fact that they had brought with them letters of appreciation from US commanders and the US Embassy in Baghdad. They were not allowed to present them. Why? Because local UNHCR workers discovered that they were Christians and would not process them.
Consider these comments from Murray in the Timmerman article:
I asked Dr. Roderick what he would recommend.
He indicated that CIS should waive these onerous requirements in lieu of the US Embassy and US commander letters documenting their valued service to America in Iraq. He suggested that perhaps the solution might be in the form of executive waivers and/or Congressional resolutions and legislative amendments. The other possible solution is to create administrative units or provinces for Iraqi Christian minorities in their ancestral homelands on the Nineveh Plain. These administrative units would provide local policing and security for their villages and economic development.
Karamlesh, the site of the ancient fortress of Assyrian King Sargon. The interpreter’s sister is freed with the assistance of the special procurement IG team leader who forces the corrupt American official to obtain her release from KRG security forces. The group wends its way in wild vehicle caravans drives under watchful KRG peshmerga minders and Assyrian security personnel through a thicket of attempted attacks by Al Qaeda units who reappear in the ultimate clash at the fortified Monastery of St. Hormizd at Alqosh. The Vatican priest engages in contretemps with the Assyrian military monks over acquisition of the sacred book and relics, in the midst of which the al Qaeda forces attack and nearly destroy the complex with a huge Fuel Air device detonation that destroys the main fortifications.
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