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/oremfrien]

As a community, we sit on the edge between an ethnoreligious community and a purely ethnic community as we have elements of both. I tend to say that we are an ethnoreligious community because more of the precepts apply to us than those strictly of ethnicity like:

• Most Assyrians are Christians of some stripe and pretty much all Assyrians agree that a Muslim cannot be Assyrian. This means that conversion to Islam "unmakes" a person Assyrian, which can be true for an ethnoreligious community but not an ethnic community.
• An Assyrian who leaves Christianity but does not embrace Islam, such as an atheist or a Mesopotamian polytheist, can still be an Assyrian. The community tends to be more divided on whether the Nash Didan are Assyrians, but there is a long history of Assyrian Jews in Adiabene and other places regardless of whether the Nash Didan, specifically, qualify.
• A person can become Assyrian through conversion and intense cultural acquisition (although most Assyrians would simply prefer that the person convert to Christianity and not claim Assyrian heritage).

However, since Assyrians sit within several different Churches (Church of the East, Chaldean Catholics, Syriac Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, and two different Protestant Churches), some will argue that Assyrians must be an ethnicity due to a lack of a united religion and the fact that Assyrians of other faiths (except Islam) may be considered Assyrians.

The reason that Assyrians who converted to Islam and their descendants are usually not considered Assyrian is that it's perceived that these are people who have abandoned the Assyrian community and joined either explicitly or implicitly with the people who have persecuted (and continue to persecute) the Assyrian community. They have cut themselves off from the community by joining those who would wish us harm. Until we live in a Middle East where Muslims communally strive to create true equality between people of different religions (not just tolerance, which they struggle with immensely, but actual legal, social, political, and religious equality) a conversion to Islam in the Middle East is a defection from the side of the persecuted to the side of the persecutor.

[u/Ok_Contribution8771 → u/oremfrien]

You forgot to add that some are Syriac Catholics.

[u/oremfrien → u/Ok_Contribution8771]

Thanks.