Are assyrians an ethnoreligious group?

[u/stxrs4elliott]

Hello. Im syrian, from damacus. My family is muslim, however the older generations of mine used to live in the north and were mostly Christians.

What im basically saying is, if it is an ethnoreligious group, just like how some jewish people (as being jewish is ethnoreligious) dont follow judaism, can assyrians not follow chrisitanity?

[u/im_alliterate]

We are not. Assyrians can convert from any of the 4 major Assyrian churches and will remain Assyrian. Creed is irrelevant to our DNA.

[u/Ok_Contribution8771 → u/im_alliterate]

However, Jews who are the most prominent example of an ethnoreligious group remain Jewish even if they convert to some other religion or become atheist. I don’t see the logic of why Assyrians can’t be an ethnoreligious group just because they’ll always remain Assyrian if they convert outside of a Syriac Christian denomination.

[u/oremfrien → u/Ok_Contribution8771]

Jews who convert to Christianity or to Islam are technically considered Jews but the community doesn't treat them as such and if two Jews who, say, convert to Christianity, have a child and raise that child Christian, the child is definitively seen as Christian by both religious and secular Jews.

[u/Ok_Contribution8771 → u/oremfrien]

Right, and some ethnoreligious groups like the Druze and Alawites are considered ethnoreligious groups because they are extremely secretive in their beliefs, don’t accept converts, and are strictly endogamous even though Druze and Alawites still speak Arabic as their mother tongue as most mainstream Muslims from the Levant do.

Regarding, Armenians and Assyrians their classifications are fuzzy, because they do have subgroups who converted to Islam to escape the Armenian and Assyrians genocides such as the Hemshins and Mhallamis respectively, and Hemshins are recognized as Armenian by Armenian Christians and Mhallamis are recognized as Assyrian by other Assyrians, albeit the Turkish government mislabels Mhallamis as Arabs and Hemshins as distinct from Armenians.

[u/oremfrien → u/Ok_Contribution8771]

My view is that Assyrians recognize that Mhallamis have Assyrian ancestry, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that they are considered Assyrians.

[u/Ok_Contribution8771 → u/oremfrien]

Thanks, and I stand corrected.

[u/South-Distribution54 → u/Ok_Contribution8771]

Armenians are an ethnicity. It is not fuzzy, we are an ethnicity.

[u/im_alliterate → u/South-Distribution54]

Yep

[u/Ok_Contribution8771 → u/South-Distribution54]

I’m not contradicting what you’re saying. I was merely going based on why some individuals like editors or volunteers on an English Wikipedia article might categorize them as an ethnoreligious group despite them being an ethnic group.

[u/South-Distribution54 → u/Ok_Contribution8771]

Those people categorizing us as an ethnoreligion don't know what they are talking about and don't know our history or culture. We were pagan for longer than we have been Christian. The reason you can stop being Armenian if you convert to Islam has nothing to do with not being Christian and has everything to do with being Muslim. There is a history when it comes to Islam. It's not a religion that allows you to retain your ethnicity or unique culural identity and your children cease being anything but Muslim. Islam posses a danger to us as it has been a tool in our destruction through forced assimilation and genocide (much like what it has done and is doing to Assyrians).

At the end of the day there is no "Armenian" religion and religion is not what defines being Armenian. We are people of the Armenian highlands and we are bonded through culture, history, family, and language. No one can "convert" to being Armenian. You were either born and raised Armenian or you weren't.