Despite being an indigenous people whose pre-Islamic jihad conquest era ties to the land antedated those of the mid-7th century A.D. Arab Muslim invaders by centuries, the 1930 Anglo-Iraq treaty under which Britain withdrew all its forces from Iraq by late 1932, deliberately excluded any guarantees for Assyrian Christian autonomy, or protection. The Assyrians concerns were trivialized, and their appeals condemned as inflammatory, as evidenced by these statements of the British High Commissioner for Iraq, Sir Francis Humphreys:

Too much importance should not be attached to local sectarian dissensions, the explanation for which was often to be found in some purely trivial matter or incident… reports [i.e., of potential threats to the Assyrian community] can only serve to excite religious animosities, to estrange the Iraqi government, and to unsettle the Assyrians themselves, whose hopes of future welfare depend upon their being merged into the body politic of Iraq, being accepted as loyal subjects of King Faisal, and living in peace with their neighbors…

Thus were the Assyrians sacrificed to Britain’s Muslim Arabophile policy. Beginning on August 7, 1933—hence the August 7th date commemorating “The Assyrian Martyrs Day”, less than a year after the British withdrawal, the ‘new’ Iraqi armed forces, aided by local Arab and Kurdish tribesmen, began the wholesale massacre of Assyrians in the Mosul area (Simel, Dohuk). The carnage was described in a contemporary chronicle believed to have been written by Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII, a Cambridge University graduate and Patriarch of the Church of the East:

The inoffensive population was indiscriminately massacred, men, women and children alike, with rifle, revolver and machine gun fire. In one room alone, eighty-one men from the Baz tribe, who had taken shelter… were barbarously massacred. Priests were tortured and their bodies mutilated. Those who showed their Iraqi nationality papers were the first to be shot. Girls were raped and women violated and made to march naked before the Arab army commander. Holy books were used as fuel for burning girls. Children were run over by military cars. Pregnant women were bayoneted. Children were flung in the air and pierced on to the points of bayonets. Those who survived in the other villages were now exposed day and night to constant raids and acts of violence. Forced conversion to Islam of men and women was the next process. Refusal was met with death. Sixty five out of ninety five Assyrian villages and settlements were either sacked, destroyed or burnt to the ground. Even the settlements which existed from the year 1921 and who had no connection in any way with the trouble were wrecked and all property looted by Iraq army and tribesmen.

Before the end of August, 1933, 3000 Assyrians were murdered, and thousands more displaced.

In a series of essays at The American Thinker, beginning in March of 2006 (here, here, and here), I warned of a policy failure that by virtue of its willful blindness to totalitarian Islam, was abetting Sharia supremacism in Iraq. By September 13, 2006, commenting on then President Bush II’s absurdly ebullient, making the world safe for Sharia assessment of the “accomplishments” in U.S.-occupied Iraq, I made a gloomy prognostication citing the same misplaced optimism expressed in 1935 by the British Arabist S.A. Morrison. Despite great expense of British blood and treasure, more than a decade of military occupation, and even after the Assyrian massacres (by Arab and Kurdish Muslims) of 1933-34, shortly after Britain’s withdrawal, Morrison wrote, (in “Religious Liberty in Iraq”, Moslem World, 1935, p. 128):

Iraq is moving steadily forward towards the modern conception of the State, with a single judicial and administrative system, unaffected by considerations of religion or nationality. The Millet system [i.e., dhimmitude—not reflected by this euphemism] still survives, but its scope is definitely limited. Even the Assyrian tragedy of 1933 does not shake our faith in the essential progress that has been made. The Government is endeavoring to carry out faithfully the undertakings it has given, even when these run directly counter to the long—cherished provisions of the Shari’a Law. But it is not easy; it cannot be easy in the very nature of the case, for the common people quickly to adjust their minds to the new legal situation, and to eradicate from their outlook the results covering many centuries of a system which implies the superiority of Islam over the non-Moslem minority groups. The legal guarantees of liberty and equality represent the goal towards which the country is moving, rather than the expression of the present thoughts and wishes of the population. The movement, however, is in the right direction, and it may yet prove possible for Islam to disentangle religious faith from political status and privilege.

I concluded with these disquieting observations (circa September, 2006), regarding the unintended, if predictable consequences of our supporting and re-affirming Sharia supremacism in Iraq:

Over seven decades later, the goals of true “liberty and equality” for Iraq remain just as elusive after yet another Western power has committed great blood and treasure toward that end.

Despite the absurd hagiography of the 2007 U.S. surge (notwithstanding the incredibly fierce and brave sacrifice made by America’s finest men and women—its troops), radio host Sam Sorbo was kind enough to allow me to address in brief, May 28, 2015, some of the crucial, if willfully ignored matters which have created the Iraq morass—unchanged two-years later—and rooted in denial of Islam’s Sharia-based doctrine of “international” (and domestic) relations”: jihad.

During our interview we touched upon the following:

We have a moral obligation to oppose Sharia, which is antithetical to the core beliefs for which hundreds of thousands of brave Americans have died, including, between 2001 and 2017, almost 7000 ( 6923 ) in Iraq, and Afghanistan. There has never been a Sharia state in history that has not discriminated (often violently) against the non-Muslims (and Muslim women) under its suzerainty. Moreover, such states have invariably taught (starting with Muslim children) the aggressive jihad ideology which leads to predatory jihad “razzias” on neighboring “infidels”—even when certain of those “infidels” happened to consider themselves Muslims, let alone if those infidels were clearly non-Muslims. That is the ultimate danger and geopolitical absurdity of a policy that ignores or whitewashes basic Islamic doctrine and history, while however inadvertently, making or re-making these societies “safe for Sharia.”

Assyrian Martyrs Day should serve as another poignant reminder of this eternal truth.

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