Stop Calling Yourself Arab. You’re Not.
An Open Letter to Suraye Worldwide
The Jews don’t call themselves Nazis. The Armenians don’t call themselves Ottoman. When you mislabel yourself Arab, you imply an affinity with a group of people who massacred entire generations of Chaldeans, Assyrians, and Syriacs for the specific crime of being non-Arab Christians.
Calling yourself Arab not only desecrates the sacrifice of those who firmly rejected Arabization, but it also reduces your history by thousands of years. Most importantly, those who choose to misidentify themselves as Arab accelerate the mission of Arabization.
A Brief History of Two Arab Identities
The earliest record of Arab history arguably dates as far back as 853 B.C. when Assyrian King Shalmaneser III used the terms “Aribi” and “Arabaa” to describe a nomadic group of people that was indigenous to no land, according to Peter Webb’s Imagining the Arabs: Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam.
However, Webb also wrote that the Arabs of antiquity are not directly connected to modern-day Arabs, explicitly emphasizing that modern Arabs did not self-identify as Arab until after the rise of Islam in the 7th century A.D.
By the time Islamists decided to take the name given to the Arabs of antiquity, our forefathers had already existed for at least 85 centuries.
The Pride of Our Ancestors & The Power of Identity
During that span of time, our pre-Christian ancestors invented trigonometry, built the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, ruled the world several times, and expanded our kingdom from west of Iran to south of Egypt, along with every other nation in between.
Much later, around the time Jesus introduced himself to the world, an Assyrian Jew named Thaddeus was born a few thousand miles away from Bethlehem in an ancient city called Edessa.
Edessa was initially known as “Ur, Land of the Chaldeans,” which means Thaddeus shared the same birthplace as Abraham. He eventually became one of the 72 disciples of Jesus, according to most historians, and the Bible places him among the original twelve apostles of Jesus.
Today, we know this man as Mar Addai, and he is revered among adherents of our church for introducing us to Christianity and co-authoring the first liturgical mass, which we still use in our churches to this very day.
Mar Addai was also a close friend of St. Thomas the Apostle. Together, with Mar Mari, this trio set in motion massive waves of evangelization that spanned many centuries and nations, including our own.
That’s far from a comprehensive list of accomplishments, but here’s the point: the DNA of the geniuses who made these amazing things happen throughout ancient history flows within every single one of us today.
The best way to tap into that potential is to identify with it. When you misidentify as Arab, you erase that part of your identity and all the potential that comes with it.
The Concept of Arabization
Arabization is the gradual process of replacing the ethnic identities of indigenous non-Arab minorities, specifically to weaken their claims to the land of their ancestors.
This agenda catapulted into relevancy by any means necessary, including rape, genocide, and non-violent forms of Arabization whenever it was convenient.
Saddam Hussein, a modern proponent of Arabization in Iraq, understood this well.
Under the guise of a united Iraq, Saddam wanted the last name of every newborn Iraqi child to be replaced with the first name of their grandfather, according to a publication on HRW.org, a Human Rights organization founded in 1978.
In a study called The Typology of Arabic Proper Nouns, a few examples of Biblical names that were Arabized to fit their Quranic forms are listed.
For instance, the Muslim equivalent of Joseph is Yousif. Similarly, the name Aaron transformed into Harun; Abraham became Ibrahim, and Solomon became Sulayman.
Since the first names of most Iraqis were Arabic, this policy quickly and conveniently expanded the agenda of Arabization on indigenous minorities without the hassles of rape and genocide.
In just a single generation, Saddam effortlessly disconnected vast numbers of people from their identity with just the stroke of his pen, and it is the reason some of us carry Arabic last names today instead of the traditional ones of antiquity.
If your family’s surname was Arabized, chances are you won’t be able to trace your lineage beyond the grandfather in your family tree who’s Arabic first name eventually became your last name.
During the nineties and up to 2003, Saddam made a serious push to Arabize our history when he began by calling himself the grandson of Nebuchadnezzar during several antisemitic rants against the country of Israel and Jews worldwide. However, before he had a chance to Arabize our history permanently, America terminated his presidency.
The removal of Saddam paved the way for violent forms of Arabization to be reintroduced in Iraq in 2015, this time reappearing in the form of ISIS.
The Brutality of Arabization & Assimilation
Rape has been used as a tactical form of Arabization and genocide, and it is rooted in the belief that middle eastern children inherit their identity solely from their biological fathers.
Islamic proponents of rape see it as an efficient way to eliminate the lives of countless generations of Iraqi Christians before they ever even had a chance to exist. The Sunni Arabs who filled the militant ranks of ISIS, some of whom were former generals in Saddam’s military, represent only the most recent culprits of these unspeakable horrors.
In 1933, the Iraqi government, together with its Arabic military and their Kurdish subordinates, launched an unforgettable attack on the Christians of Simele.
The following is a transcript from a video of an older woman who witnessed the Simele Massacre as a child. Her testimony goes as follows:
I don’t know when I was born, but I know I’m at least 90. We were once young and small like dwarfs.
Father Odisho’s sister called out to my mom. He said, ‘Sherine, hide the kids in the house. There’s a genocide. If they kill us, so be it. If they let us live, so be it.’
We didn’t run. They said a lot of us had been killed. Kurds came around in trucks, circling around, taunting us [and] saying in Kurdish ‘It’s a Christian Assyrian Genocide.’
I went to the grave. It was filled with victims of the Simele Massacre. These were dark times, son. Christ himself said, ‘Woe to you, Assyrians. Your bones will be scattered everywhere.’ That’s where we’re at today.
But there will come a day when we rule the whole world. We were legendary.
To put things into perspective, this is just one story from one woman who witnessed one massacre. Altogether, there were over 92 massacres. Here is a rare photo of this massacre.
Several times throughout history, the Kurds, Turks, and Arabs united under the banner of Islam in a consolidated effort to eliminate our religion and identity. When the dust settled, the persecution was often followed up with oppression in the form of classism.
With that being said, imagine how the victims of Simele would react if they somehow discovered that some of their grandsons and granddaughters voluntarily adopted the identity of the people who committed unspeakable horrors against them.
They would tell you that each time you self-identify as Arab, you accelerate the mission of Arabization and all the horrors that accompany it.
