The Chaldeans: Politics and Identity in Iraq and the American Diaspora 9781788313698, 9781788316675, 9781786736000

Table of contents :
Cover
Half title
Title
Copyrights
Dedication
Contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
INTRODUCTION
Chapter 1 ON THE POLITICS OF APPELLATION: THE MAKING OF THE MODERN CHALDEANS
Chapter 2 ARCHAEOLOGY, PHILOLOGY AND MISSION: THE MODERN HISTORY OF ANCIENT CHALDEAN HISTORY
Chapter 3 ARAB/CHALDEAN/ASSYRIAN DISTINCTIONS: POLITICAL SURVIVAL IN THE NEW NATION STATE OF IRAQ
Chapter 4 FROM RELIGIOUS TO ETHNIC MINORITY: BETWEEN IRAQ AND AMERICA IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Chapter 5 FAMILY, MARRIAGE AND ETHNIC ECONOMY: A TRANSNATIONAL SOCIAL FIELD PERSPECTIVE
Chapter 6 THE MODERN CHALDEAN CHURCH: GLOBAL CIRCUITS OF ECCLESIAL POWER
Chapter 7 A SAFE HAVEN DREAM: HOME BETWEEN DETROIT AND THE NINEVEH PLAINS
Chapter 8 CHALDEANNESS: THE OFFICIAL NARRATIVE AND ITS CHANGING DISPLAYS
EPILOGUE: CENTRE AND PERIPHERIES OF CHALDEANNESS IN THE TWILIGHT OF THE NATION STATE
Appendix: Appellations and Languages
Notes
Works Cited
Index

Citation preview

THE CHALDEANS

THE CHALDEANS Politics and Identity in Iraq and the American Diaspora

Yasmeen Hanoosh

I.B. TAURIS Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, I.B. TAURIS and the I.B. Tauris logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2019 This paperback edition published in 2021 Copyright © Yasmeen Hanoosh, 2019 Yasmeen Hanoosh has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. Cover design: Paul Smith Cover image: Iraqi kids walk past a stone mural at St Peters Chaldean Catholic Chruch El Cajon, California, USA. (© Sandy Huffaker/Corbis via Getty Images.) All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: HB: 978-1-7883-1369-8 PB: 978-0-7556-3848-2 ePDF: 978-1-7867-3600-0 eBook: 978-1-7867-2596-7 Series: Library of Modern Middle East Studies Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

In memory of my mother Janette who did not have the luxury to contemplate her Chaldean identity

CONTENTS List of Figures ix Acknowledgementsxii Abbreviationsxvi INTRODUCTION

1

Chapter 1 ON THE POLITICS OF APPELLATION: THE MAKING OF THE MODERN CHALDEANS

19

Chapter 2 ARCHAEOLOGY, PHILOLOGY AND MISSION: THE MODERN HISTORY OF ANCIENT CHALDEAN HISTORY

43

Chapter 3 ARAB/CHALDEAN/ASSYRIAN DISTINCTIONS: POLITICAL SURVIVAL IN THE NEW NATION STATE OF IRAQ

77

Chapter 4 FROM RELIGIOUS TO ETHNIC MINORITY: BETWEEN IRAQ AND AMERICA IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

111

Chapter 5 FAMILY, MARRIAGE AND ETHNIC ECONOMY: A TRANSNATIONAL SOCIAL FIELD PERSPECTIVE

121

Chapter 6 THE MODERN CHALDEAN CHURCH: GLOBAL CIRCUITS OF ECCLESIAL POWER

151

Chapter 7 A SAFE HAVEN DREAM: HOME BETWEEN DETROIT AND THE NINEVEH PLAINS

171

Chapter 8 CHALDEANNESS: THE OFFICIAL NARRATIVE AND ITS CHANGING DISPLAYS

211

viii

Contents

EPILOGUE: CENTRE AND PERIPHERIES OF CHALDEANNESS IN THE TWILIGHT OF THE NATION STATE

231

Appendix: Appellations and Languages 236 Notes239 Works Cited 283 Index306

LIST OF FIGURES 1 2 3 4

5 6 7 8 9 10 11

12 13

First communion celebration at St Thomas Catholic Chaldean Church in Basra, c.1958. The church was built in 1886 and remained in operation until 2004 (Courtesy of the Issa family, Sidney, Australia) 11 Elias Abdelahad left Mosul and went to New York to study medicine in the 1920s. This was the last photograph his Mosul-based family received before losing contact with him (Hanoosh family archive) 14 The current four major Chaldean/Assyrian identity debates. ‘All One People? Will – and Should – Chaldeans and Assyrians Unite?’ CN, Michigan 4 (2007) 6:28 37 Map of ‘Assyro-Chaldee’ as proposed by Assyrian nationalist leader Petros Elias (Agha Petros) in a letter addressed to Percy Cox, High Commissioner to Mesopotamia. 28 December 1920. British National Archives, FO839/23 39 Modern and ancient Assyrians as compared in W. A. Wigram, The Assyrians and Their Neighbors. London: G. Bell & Sons, 1929 67 The reaction of Muslim workmen to the head of Nimrod as pictured in Layard’s Nineveh and Its Remains. London: J. Murray 1849, vol. 166 71 The Nineveh Gallery, official stationery of the British Museum, in use 1851–83 (Copyrights © The Trustees of the British Museum) 72 Baghdad-born Chaldean youth posing with the Assyrian winged bulls on a trip to Nimrod and Mosul, 1977 (Courtesy of Suhair Sami Shammas)75 Men’s and women’s church groups in northern Chaldean village of Tellesquf (Tisqopa), c. 1930. The bearded priest is seated in the center. (Issa family archive) 84 Urbanized siblings of a Basra-based Chaldean family, Basra, c.1963 (Hanoosh family archive) 96 Chaldean schoolgirl entrusted with President Saddam Hussein’s portrait for the eighth-grade class picture. Al-Nahdha High School for girls, Dora District, Baghdad, 1980 (Courtesy of Suhair Sami Shammas)104 First-Grade Syriac reading book, 20,000 copies issued by the Iraqi Ministry of Education, 1974. (Author’s archive) 105 George Bino’s ‘Declaration of Intention’ from 1905 showing his place of birth as ‘Tilkef, Turkey’, his race as ‘Syrian’ and his nationality as ‘Turkish’ (source: Bacall, Chaldeans in Detroit, 38) 113

x

List of Figures

14 Two issues of al-Mashriq ‘Iraqi’ weekly newspaper (est. Detroit, 1949). The 1972 issue (top) shows the original set-up of the front page with Arabic and English titles. The 1975 issue (bottom) shows the addition of the title in Syriac to indicate the Chaldean character of the paper (Author’s collection) 116 15 CFA logo with the Aramaic title on the inside circle (Courtesy of CFA) 144 16 CACC logo featuring the title in Aramaic, the Ishtar Gate with designs of the lions of Babylon and the American flag (Courtesy of CACC) 144 17 A volume of the series Chaldean for Kids (2008), by Margaret Shamoun and Melody Arabo 145 18 The author chanting next to Patriarch Paul Cheikho in a first communion ceremony he attended in Baghdad shortly before his death. St Joseph Church, July 1988 (Author’s collection) 156 19 Instagram caption: ‘Suryoye all over the world’ (Courtesy of Juliana Taimoorazy, Philos Project and Iraqi Christian Relief Council, July 2018) 172 20 Floor plan of the CCC gallery exhibit, showing its five divisions, (Courtesy of CCC) 212 21 Martin Manna for the Detroit News. The background is a replica of the Lion Hunt, an Assyrian stele relief from Nineveh, reproduced in Amer Fatuhi’s Mesopotamian Gallery (Courtesy of Martin Manna) 215 22 Left: the image of Maria Theresa Asmar that appeared in the 1844 version of her Memoirs of a Babylonian Princess, showing her Ottoman-style headdress and her autographs in Arabic and English at the bottom (Asmar, Maria Theresa. Memoirs of a Babylonian Princess: (Maria Theresa Asmar) Daughter of Emir Abdallah Asmar. Henry Colburn, 1844). Right: the author as imagined in a 1918 American publication, showing the image of Assyrian king Sennacherib (705–681 BCE) at the bottom (Autobiography in the Middle of the Nineteenth Century (1820–1870). University Library of Autobiography. New York: F. Tyler Daniels Co., Inc., Vol. XIII) 216 23 The ‘Chaldean National Calendar’, a publication initiated in 2002 by the CCC (Courtesy of CCC) 216 24 Although the Babylon Museum gallery did not materialize, the architecture of the Chaldean Educational/Cultural Center in ‘Chaldean Town’, Detroit, MI, founded 1974 (above) and the largest Chaldean Church in the world, St. George Chaldean Church in Shelby Township, MI, founded in 2006 (below) show how modern Chaldeans are invested in Babylonian-inspired design (Author’s archive) 218 25 Interior design of Ishtar Restaurant in Sterling Heights, Michigan, featuring a large replica of the Ishtar Gate. (Courtesy of Nadir ‘Awni, 2018)224 26 Cover art of Michael & Zach Zakar’s memoirs, Pray the Gay Way (2017) (Courtesy of the authors) 227

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The spectre of the ancient Chaldeans and Assyrians stalks this book throughout, and so I must begin by expressing my awe of their civilizations. Without the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia, the modern history and collective identity of the living Chaldeans I have tried to understand and discuss in this book would not have been imagined in the same ways. Gratitude to the ancient Chaldeans and Assyrians also necessitates thanking many living Chaldeans and Assyrians, some who have understood the ancients in ways different from mine; others who have inspired me to seek the necessary analytical skills to delve deeper into notions of Chaldeanness; and others still who are part of the theoretical problematic of this book – the discourse on monumental history and the vast diasporic Chaldean imaginary. I have countless individuals and institutions to thank for contributing to my findings. A large number of people welcomed me into their homes, churches, cultural venues and businesses over the course of the decade it took to complete this project. The direct words of Chaldeans and other Iraqis do not appear as often in this text as I would have liked, but the stories, artefacts and knowledge they shared with me inform every argument I make in this book. I am immensely thankful to everyone who agreed to be interviewed. Some names appear below but a larger number of individuals have chosen to remain anonymous – a debt of gratitude to all. First and foremost, I thank Carol Bardenstein, my advisor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where this book began as a doctoral dissertation. My indebtedness to Carol is enormous. Not only was she a most nurturing dissertation advisor and attentive reader, but she also constantly alerted me to comparative discussions about diaspora, identity and collective memory, ensuring that my research did not become too narrow or antiquated throughout the prolonged period of collecting data and conducting fieldwork. She is one of the rare advisors that graduate students dream of finding and a role model I try to emulate as an associate professor today. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the other members of my dissertation committee, who lent unconditional support and firm guidance on this project. I heartily thank Andrew Shryock for his enormous courage to navigate beyond cultural formats and appearances, and for infecting me with a similar desire. His unconventional and daring insights accompanied me throughout the long writing period. I thank also Kevork Bardakjian, Ernest McCarus and Nadine Nabir for helping me bring the chapters to focus, and for their continual support, patience and encouragement. Initial work on this project could not have been completed without the various forms of support from the staff of the Graduate Program in the Department of

Acknowledgements

xiii

Near Eastern Studies at the University of Michigan, mainly Angela Beskow, Lisa Michelin and the late Margaret Casazza. ZoeAnn Dimond and Kelli Martin provided this indispensable office support later at the Department of World Languages and Literatures, Portland State University. Along the way towards completing this project, I incurred a great deal of debt to Chaldean institutions and their representatives from Detroit, West Bloomfield, Southfield, Troy and Warren in Michigan for generously sharing valuable information, treasured photographs and papers. Of these institutions I am particularly thankful to the Chaldean Federation of America, the Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce, the Chaldean Cultural Center at Shenandoah Club, the Chaldean News and the Chaldean Iraqi American Association of Michigan. Uncharacteristically many individuals representing these vital institutions kindly took the time to meet or answer my endless questions over phone or email. Of these I single out Vanessa Denha Garmo, Martin Manna, Judy Jonna, Manuel Boji, George Kassab, Jacob Bacall, Amer Fatuhi, Weam Namou and the late Rosemary Antone. To these I add Chaldean immigrants in France, Chaldean refugees stranded in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon, and many Chaldean individuals and families in Michigan, Arizona and California, all of whom contributed to weaving the contents of this book through their stories, anecdotes, referrals, passion for Chaldean history and warm familial hospitality. Not everyone will be flattered by the stark honesty of this book, but I hope they will accept it as a form of ‘tough love’. The Chaldeans was my best shot at academic neutrality. It is the highest form of empathy I could offer, so that the struggles this community often witnessed, whether under the Ottoman Empire, Iraq or the United States, may be taken in more earnest by scholars, students and the world at large. I shared formal and informal discussions about the Chaldean community in Iraq and the United States with many artists, academics and friends who are associated in some capacity or another with Middle Eastern minority identities. This book would not be the same without the incisive input of Deborah al-Najjar, Sinan Antoon, Dunya Mikhail, Samuel Shimon, Dahlia Petrus, Baher Butti, Heather Raffo, Lavon Ammori, Alda Benjamen, Adam Becker, Randa Kayyali, Laura Robson and Arbella Bet-Shlimon. I thank them for their valuable scholarship and artistic products, for their thoughtful comments on my ideas, and for their abiding encouragement through the years that it took to complete this book. The financial support that sustained this project at various stages of development came from Faculty Enhancement grants at Portland State University, the American Academic Research Institute in Iraq, the International Institute and Rackham Graduate School at the University of Michigan, King-Chavez-Park award, Bentley Historical Library’s Bordin Gillette Researcher Travel Fellowship from Bentley Historical Library, the Arab American National Museum’s Evelyn Abdalah Menconi grant and a postdoctoral fellowship from Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Germany. I am also grateful for Freie Universität Berlin for providing me with office space during my research year in Berlin. I would be remiss not to mention that during my fieldwork in and around Detroit, I was also greatly assisted by the knowledgeable staff of the Arab American

xiv

Acknowledgements

National Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, particularly Matthew Stiffler and Kristen Terry. The year I spent as a postdoctoral fellow at Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Germany, offered a much-needed intellectual forum through the stimulating seminar programme ‘Europe in the Middle East/the Middle East in Europe’. The weekly seminars shaped and sharpened my ideas for this project. I thank Georges Khalil, the director of this programme, for this rigorous opportunity, and also the other postdoctoral fellows from that year – especially Bashir Bashir, Haytham Bahoora, Nazan Maksudyan, Sonali Pahwa and Kirsten Scheid – for influencing my work through the cutting-edge theories and ideas they shared. I could not have asked for more genial and accommodating department chairs than Gina Greco and Jennifer Perlmutter while working on the manuscript of this book. They supported me on every step of the way, making sure that I have access to funding, course-buyouts and workspace to focus on completing my writing project. My colleagues at the Department of World Languages and Literatures, the Migration Research Cluster and the Middle East Studies Center at Portland State University have been a wonderful source of inspiration and support. I am particularly thankful to Enrique Cortez, Isabel Jaen, Anousha Sedighi, Pelin Basçi, Steve Thorne, Jon Holt, Craig Epplin, Alexander Sager, Laura Robson, James Grehan and Angela Zagarella for the productive academic environment they foster round me. Finally, I was able to conclude my work on this book thanks to a sabbatical, leave provided to me by PSU and the selfless colleagues at the Arabic programme, Lina Gomaa and Clifford Breadlove, who took on extra teaching and advising responsibilities so I could be free to focus on writing. Elliott Young and his cohort of academic-activists at the Tepoztlánt summer Institute for the Transnational History of the Americas helped me conceptualize the practical utility of my scholarship. Their commitment and passion for social and racial justice helped me connect the dots between my role as a scholar of minorities and diasporas and my ethical responsibility towards the historically marginalized groups that I study. Several colleagues and friends agreed to read earlier drafts of the book, in whole or in part, and to comment productively on them. Sally Howell has been by my side on this book journey from its inception to its conclusion, painstakingly reading through my manuscript, correcting my many mistakes and offering creative solutions for my conceptual and stylistic impasses. Norman Yoffee offered his erudite suggestions on ancient Chaldean and Assyrian history in the early stages of this project. Victoria Gardener’s mistrust of academic jargon was responsible for whatever clarity I managed to cultivate in the language and organization of the early versions of the text. Jonathan Glasser’s nuanced reading and insightful comments on some chapters challenged me towards more complexity and helped my arguments evolve. Isis Sadek’s reliability, deep engagement with the text, expert linguistic skills and relevant theoretical knowledge posed her as a superb proofreader of this manuscript. I thank also the anonymous readers from I.B. Tauris press. Their knowledge and guidance made this book far better than the

Acknowledgements

xv

initial manuscript I shared. Without Rory Gormley, my editor, the manuscript would not have gone to press. I alone, of course, am responsible for the views expressed in this book. I also thank my close circle of friends. Sara Feldman, Mohammad Salama, Dhia Jubaili, Ioan Mitrea, Ali Issa, Giri Iyengar, Laura Brown, Emanuela Grama, Jack Baikoff, Gabriele Ross, Anton Shammas and Sofia Carlsson helped me battle fits of homesickness, identity crisis, ‘impostor syndrome’ and rage over racial and social injustice. Their kindness and enduring presence in my life made it possible to garner the self-esteem, patience and courage to accomplish the writing of this book. I cannot imagine completing this project without their friendship. On a personal note, I would like to thank my extended family, which is too large to list all the relatives who contributed to this project. I must, however, mention my father Sabah Hanoosh, whose mind is a living depository of Basra’s twentiethcentury social history. My father and siblings provided my earliest lessons on how to think outside the box and how to question religious and societal structures. I thank my cousins Suhair and Raghad and uncles Munir and Faiq for the many beautiful images, discussions and innumerable references about the community in Iraq and the Western diaspora. The Issa and Hanoosh family photo archives deserve credit for beautifying and illustrating this book, but most of all I am grateful to my extended family for opening my eyes to what it means to grow up in a Chaldean microcosm inside a Muslim/Arab macrocosm in twentiethcentury Iraq, what it looks like to be collectively uprooted at the intersection of local authoritarianism and foreign imperialism, and what it entails for an ethnoreligious minority to disperse in the Western diaspora after decades of integration into the nation state of Iraq. The deepest gratitude is the hardest to express. My son, Sasha, not only adapted so resiliently to my need for writing time, endless submission deadlines, research obligations and speaking engagements, but also helped more than he knows – and more than I am consciously aware of – with his good humour, grounding hugs, bright smile, boundless energy and infectious enthusiasm for life. Thank you, Sasha.

ABBREVIATIONS AAI

Arab American Institute

ABCFM

American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions

ADM

Assyrian Democratic Movement

AFLC

American Freedom Law Centre

AICC

American Islamic Community Centre

AUA

Assyrian Universal Alliance

BCI

Building Community Initiative

CACC

Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce

CAIR

Council on American-Islamic Relations

CALC

Chaldean American Ladies of Charity

CARE

Chaldean American Reaching and Encouraging

CASCA

Chaldean Assyrian Syriac Council of America

CB

Census Bureau

CCC

Chaldean Cultural Center

CCF

Chaldean Community Foundation

CFA

Chaldean Federation of America

CIAAM

Chaldean-Iraqi American Association of Michigan

CN

Chaldean News

CSA

Chaldean Syriac Assyrian people

DAAS

Detroit Arab American Study

HIAS

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society

IBP

Iraqi Ba‘th Party

ICP

Iraqi Communist Party

IPC

Iraqi Petroleum Company

JN

Detroit Jewish News

KA

Kurdish Assembly

KDP

Kurdistan Democratic Party

KRG

Kurdish Regional Government

NCA

Nineveh Council of America

XXH

Kheit Kheit Allap I & II

ZOA

Zionist Organization of America

I N T R O DU C T IO N

Chaldeans are the foundation of everything important and religious and civil … Everything of importance was discovered by the forefathers of Chaldeans. Sarhad Jammo, Chaldean Bishop in California, 20011 When I went to interview Iraqi poet Dunya Mikhail2 in her Michigan residence, I asked her a question I had been asking all my informants of Chaldean descent since I started this book project in 2004: what did it mean for her to be Chaldean. She gazed ahead as we sipped our sweetened Iraqi tea and answered pithily in Arabic, ‘Well, it’s our people here who reminded me of it!’ We both laughed, changed the subject and proceeded to talk about topics that were more relevant to our shared culture and personal histories, such as our experience of war in Iraq, what it meant to be nonwhite immigrants in the United States and Arabic literature. As Iraqi immigrants of Chaldean descent who were steeped in Arab culture since an early age and who predominantly spoke colloquial Iraqi Arabic instead of Aramaic due to our upbringing in urban centres in Baghdad and Basra, rather than Chaldean villages in the north, Mikhail and I momentarily conspired to associate certain grandiose, dramatic and even comic inflections with the ethno-religious label ‘Chaldean’, an exteriority that remained disconnected from our intimate conversation in the private sphere of Mikhail’s home. The word ‘Chaldean’ was also irrelevant to our shared secular Iraqi identity of the second half of the twentieth century. To us, the label ‘Chaldean’ represented a deliberate distortion of the very idea of identity. Projecting ourselves in private as more Iraqi and less American than is typical among the Chaldean jaliya (diasporic community)3 that we encountered upon arriving from war-torn Iraq to the United States in the 1990s, Mikhail and I overlooked for a moment how ‘American ethnicity’, as ethnic literature scholar Werner Sollors noted, ‘is a matter not of content but of the importance that individuals ascribe to it’.4 In our conversation, we temporarily bypassed Chaldean ethnicity because we implicitly ruled that it was an American cultural product. Yet that ‘Chaldeanness’ which Mikhail and I situationally neglected to register as a form of identity for ourselves, is, from a more normative, public point of reference of other Chaldean collectives and spaces in the diasporic community, the very backbone of

2

The Chaldeans

identity. ‘Chaldean’ is one signifier – fraught as it is with cultural references (race, religion, conversion, sectarian persecution, language, family values, industriousness, Americanness, etc.) – that has historically ushered the community that adopted it into the American mainstream as a legitimate and distinct ethnic group. In fact, the ancient label has in so many contemporary contexts managed to secure better socio-economic opportunities and upward mobility for the group despite all the commonalities that make Chaldeans coextensive with Arab, Middle Eastern and Muslim diasporas. Chaldeanness is not simply a project of the diaspora, however, but also one with its own tempestuous history and fluctuating meanings in Iraq. In this book, therefore, my use of the term ‘identity’ is inspired by Stuart Hall’s classic construal of the term as a ‘process of identification’. Like all identities, Chaldeanness is a situational ‘structure that is split’ between contesting affiliations, one that, as we shall see, ‘always has ambivalence within it’.5 Chaldeans in Iraq, for example, may think of themselves as more modern vis-à-vis the Muslim Arab majorities within which they are embedded by virtue of their sustained historical contact with the West. At the same time, they may think of themselves as more historically rooted, ancient and indigenous to the land that constitutes Iraq today. When articulating their identity in the United States, many Catholic Iraqi immigrants and refugees conjure an association between their monumental history, the progress of modernity and the label ‘Chaldean’. These identity benchmarks are often exported back to the ancestral land through various political and social networks of remittance. One of the underlying political agendas of this construction of identity aims to set Chaldeans apart from Islamic and Arab discourses associated with Iraqi ethnoreligious majorities (Sunni and Shi‘i Arabs and Kurds) to bring them conceptually closer to the Christian West.6 This agenda becomes particularly urgent in the diasporic locale of the United States, where members of these Christian minority groups have chronically contended with racialized inflections of Islamophobia. How did one section of the same community become so thoroughly Arabized and another, as this book will show, so removed from, if not hostile to, Arab associations? The answer lies both in processes at home where, for the bulk of the twentieth century, Chaldeans from the northern villages were acculturated differently than the ones who grew up in the urban centres of the capital and southern cities, and in the diaspora where ethnic identities solidify along intersections of class, political agendas and generation-specific identifications. The Chaldeans is the first monograph to combine the study of Chaldean communities in both Iraq and the American diaspora and to go beyond the ecclesiastical context of the Church of the East. By jointly considering a variety of contexts and timelines, including the region of origin (Iraq, Ottoman Mesopotamia and Qajar Iran), the American diaspora and the global transnational social networks forged between Chaldeans in these countries and multiple transitional locales from the thirteenth century to the present, this study casts a panoramic view on the community’s historically shifting political and ethnic profile, one that transcends the nation-centric models of belonging and consequently bridges the divide between Church histories, native historiographies, migration studies

Introduction

3

and diaspora studies. The Chaldeans carries out an ethnographic history of the modern community by examining the coexistence of ancient and modern inflections in contemporary Chaldean identity discourses, the uses of history as a collective commodity for developing and sustaining a positive community image in the present and the uses of language revival and monumental symbolism to reclaim association with Christian and pre-Christian traditions. Going beyond the customary definition of the Chaldeans as an Aramaic-speaking Catholic East Syriac minority from the ancient land of Mesopotamia, the book engages the modern contexts that have gone into muting Chaldean particularity in Iraq and augmenting this particularity in the Western diaspora. Although the percentage of Chaldeans in modern Iraq has significantly dwindled in the past three decades due to sectarian violence, internal displacement and westward migration to other countries, they continue to form the largest Christian group in northern Mesopotamia. Ranging from 100,000–150,000 by the turn of the twentieth century7 to 44,000–140,000 just before the Second World War,8 Chaldeans formed nearly 3 per cent of the total 16,278,000 Iraqi population in 1987. Their numbers declined to less than 450,000 by 2013.9 Between 1961 and 1995, the number of Chaldeans and Assyrians in northern Iraq went down to 150,000 due to the war of attrition between the Kurds and the Iraqi army, shifting the population not only southward to Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, but also outside of the country.10 In the Western diaspora, Chaldeans are spread thinly across many countries in Europe. In North America and Australia, the large concentrations of Chaldeans have allowed the Church to replicate its independent Chaldean ecclesiological identity, enabling worship under Chaldean jurisdiction since 1982 and 2006, respectively.11 Since migration to the United States intensified in the 1960s, Chaldeans have typically constituted the largest non-Muslim Iraqi group. Sizable, Arabic speaking and boasting a long autochthonous history that predates the creation of the Iraqi nation state, the Chaldean community has traditionally articulated its Mesopotamian belonging and political demands in ways that contrast significantly with the demands and articulations of other Christian minorities from the Middle East and Iraq, most relevantly the Assyrians. Several notable studies have examined the collective memory and identity of the Assyrians, their relationship to the nascent Iraqi state and their demands for autonomous nationhood.12 A striking question emerges in this context: considering that Chaldeans are a larger and more established Christian minority, why have they not been the subject of similar continuous academic scrutiny? The Chaldeans redresses this scholarly gap and answers the question by turning to the politics of appellation, questions of conversion and missions, and religious and ethnic belonging at home and in the diaspora. In the process, it provides the first multi-site history of the modern Chaldeans. To what extent are the appellations ‘Chaldean’ and ‘Assyrian’ transmitted from antiquity, revived, invented and reinvented in modern times? How do geopolitical exigencies lead the communities to fluctuate between asserting Chaldeanness as a religious affiliation at times and as an ethnic identity at others? These are pivotal questions which this study explores through

4

The Chaldeans

enquiry into the intersectionality of cultural imperialism, colonial influence, nation-building, westward migration and transnational networking. Chaldeans and Assyrians share common religious and ethnic origins. Both are splinter groups from the ancient Church of the East or what was stigmatically called ‘the Nestorian Church’. Yet since the beginning of the gradual conversion to Catholicism in the fifteenth century, which initiated the use of the Chaldean appellation, the Chaldeans have been diverging geographically and doctrinally from those East Syriac remnants who later came to be known as ‘Assyrians’ through the intervention of a different set of Euro-American missions. By the turn of the twentieth century, the linguistic and social distinction between the two groups had become so great that when the Assyrians were displaced from southern Anatolia by Ottoman massacres and the exigencies of the First World War, they were settled in Iraqi camps as foreign refugees at a time when Chaldeans occupied nearby villages as Iraqi citizens. If the followers of the Church of the East that was subjected to Catholic conversion came to think of Chaldeanness as a religious identity, the remainder of this population who did not convert came into contact with the Anglo-American missions in the nineteenth century and emerged through their influence as ‘Assyrians’. The culture-makers of the latter group think of their ‘Assyrianness’ as far more than a religious difference; for them, it is an ethnic and nationalist identity that firmly subsumes the Chaldean branch and all other splinter Eastern Syriac branches that exist today. I therefore use the term ‘Assyrian’ throughout this book not to denote a racial, ethnic or linguistic distinction between contemporary Assyrians and Chaldeans, but to point out the cultural divergence of the two groups after their multiple ecclesial schisms that began in the fifteenth century, and the ideological schism that was deepened by the arrival of the Anglo-American missions and excavation campaigns in nineteenth-century Mesopotamia. None of these divisions were straightforward, linear or definitive, nor are the identities they produced. Rather, the discursive nature of these schisms and the interchangeable, reversible character of the appellations are the distinguishing features of this ethnoreligious history. Pointing to the historical corollary of the schisms, I treat the USbased Chaldeans and Assyrians as two distinct collectives to succinctly reference their contemporary denominational and political divergence and their separate geographical concentrations in suburban Detroit and Chicago, respectively. When and how the two groups segregated and became schismatic is a key issue that spans the first three chapters. If the sectarian milieu and the ethno-sectarian quota system in post-2003 Iraq have resulted in new ethnic alignments among the Chaldeans and Assyrians, the group’s ethnic initiation into the American cultural mainstream that had begun in the mid-twentieth century is the product of multiple tensions between the public and private spheres of identification, and between the stereotypically particular – the official narrative of Chaldeanness – and the ungeneralizably plural – the fluid individual positions vis-à-vis this narrative. ‘Chaldeanness’, more than anything, is a case study of how identities are fluidly and situationally constructed. At home, to be decisively ‘Chaldean’ became

Introduction

5

more clearly circumscribed only after the First World War, but that too was a discursive and unstable process during a period when a pan-Arab identity that was all-encompassing in religious and ethnic terms was taking shape in the region. Looking deeper beyond and before the pan-Arabization period reveals that multiple cultural and political binds resolved in the reinvention of ‘Chaldeanness’ at home and in the diaspora, now and for the past five centuries. Diasporic scholars, intellectuals and artists with urban Iraqi backgrounds – such as Mikhail, Sinan Antoon, Samuel Shimon and others – tend to bypass the convoluted history of Christian conversions in their discussions of what constitutes Iraq’s modern society. Antoon, whose renowned Arabic-language fiction presents markedly Shi‘i, Sunni and Christian protagonists, disdainfully refused to write about Iraqi ‘Christian literature’ when he was approached by the editor of an anthology on modern Iraqi literature. ‘I’ve never heard of something called “Christian literature”’, he replied. According to Antoon, in modern times there are only Iraqi writers who are ‘Christian by accident and mostly atheists’.13 London-based Samuel Shimon’s autobiographical novel An Iraqi in Paris (2005) depicts Assyrians as ‘non-Arab but Iraqi’.14 The text portrays Assyrian life in Iraq through a microcosmic reconstruction of the town of Habbaniyya, a historical site in Mandate Iraq where Assyrian refugees from southern Turkey were settled by British administrators after their displacement during the First World War. Rather than depicting a separate Assyrian identity, the novel’s emphasis is on a nostalgic image of a bygone pluralistic Iraq, where Arabs and non-Arabs coexisted side by side during the twentieth century. Intellectuals and public figures of Chaldean and Assyrian descent may identify more readily as Iraqi or Arab rather than Chaldean or Assyrian, whether because they are seeking a wider audience or aiming at a depiction of a more universal Iraqi experience in their works or due to their immediate formative experiences in secularized modern Iraq and familiarity with and rejection of Western imperialistic hegemonic processes that have contributed to forming ‘minority’ identities in the Middle East and their corollary anti-Arab and anti-Muslim divisive rhetoric. In a stark contrast with these class-related points of reference, a much larger group of culture-makers populate the Chaldean-American and Assyrian-American communities, and see themselves as agents in charge of shoring up, standardizing and certifying the collective as quintessentially ‘Chaldean’, ‘Assyrian’ or ‘ChaldoAssyrian’. Whether they are located at home or in the American diaspora, throughout the book I refer to these individuals as ‘culture-makers’ to signal their active role in dictating the ingredients of the Chaldean/Assyrian identity not only for themselves but for the imagined community at large. In the 1980s, Eric Hobsbawm alerted us to the close affinity between national sentiments and the ‘invention of tradition’.15 Extending his argument further into the transnational matrix, I contend that navigating minority identities in between nation states requires inventing situational ‘political traditions’ that may bypass the established national narratives of tradition at home in order to assert counterterritorial claims and establish new bonds of loyalty in the diaspora. For instance, since their consolidation in the post-Ottoman period, Arab nation states have

6

The Chaldeans

asserted strong links to the pre-Arab history of their territories. Iraqi governments, especially, have indulged in large-scale cultural campaigns to promote the link between Iraqi and Arab identities and Mesopotamian antiquity.16 As Chaldeans initiated their immigration to the United States, they began to strongly assert their Chaldean identity, promote their Aramaic language and look down upon affiliations with Arabs and Arab culture. Another tendency that was making itself felt among a large number of Chaldean immigrants was their growing eagerness to assimilate into the narrative of the ‘melting pot’ of American society. Yet, although they wanted to be considered ‘American’ and although the second generation’s capacity to speak the language of heritage – be it Arabic or Aramaic – generally diminished and their physical ties to the homeland weakened, successive generations of immigrants continued to actively affiliate as Chaldean. This assertion of identity became a mode of denouncing Arabic-Islamic heritage as well as an exercise in linking the Chaldean community to a reconstructed past of a homeland whose civilization and glory outshine those of war-torn contemporary Iraq.

Minoritization in the American Diaspora The rapid transformations in the system of governance in Mesopotamia, along with the ongoing changing relationship between religion (Catholic Chaldeanness, non-Catholic Assyrianness and the Islam of the overarching majority in the Middle East or adjacent minorities in the United States), nation (Ottoman Empire, Iraq, United States) and ethnicity (Arab, Nestorian, Chaldean, Assyrian and numerous hyphenated variations) and the sustained contact with the West, drove segments of the Chaldean communities that have been settling in the United States over the course of a century to search after their ancient historical roots to solidify a sense of ethnic belonging outside Arabness, and to seek to foster a uniform, stabilized public image that relies heavily on Catholicism and monumental Mesopotamian symbolism over and above Islamic or Arab symbolism. Anyone in the United States interested in understanding ‘who the modern Chaldeans are’, and who directs this enquiry to Chaldeans themselves, is likely to be offered a description that factors in some or all of the following collective identity tropes: 1. Modern Chaldeans are the offspring of the founders of the first civilizations, the Chaldeans and Assyrians, whose existence predates Christianity by a few thousand years. 2. They originated in the village of Telkeif, in modern-day Iraq. 3. They speak Aramaic, ‘the language of Jesus’. 4. They are devout Catholics. 5. They are hardworking, successful entrepreneurs. 6. They are community-oriented and have ‘family values’. These components are typically offered as stable, uniform identity benchmarks. They appear in tabloid versions on official websites and internet forum discussions,

Introduction

7

in community publications, in documentaries and in the verbal accounts of culture-makers to instruct anyone – whether a non-Chaldean ‘outsider’ or an uninformed Chaldean ‘insider’ – who wishes to learn more about Chaldeans. Heeding Stuart Hall’s warning about the binaries and polarized extremes that tend to characterize representations of minorities in Western discourses, we are due for an account that does not reduce Chaldeans to fixed ‘types’ through the construction of binary oppositions that channel complexity into two extremes (official narrative vs. counter-narrative). While the various historical and political events we will look at contributed to crafting the experiential domain of Chaldean life, the modes of interplay between experience and expression will guide the discussion as we parse out the representational politics of Chaldeanness. The relationship of experience and expression to reality, as Edward Bruner noted, is a complex one, consisting of three levels: life as lived, life as experienced and life as told.17 The stream of occurrences in a person’s or community’s life (life as lived) is always interpreted and ascribed meaning by the person or community while drawing from other sources such as previous experience and cultural repertoires (life as experienced). The framing and articulation of these experiences to others then subject the experience to another level of understanding (life as told). This book focuses on the interplay between the three levels of Chaldean life. It explores a set of events that occurred during Chaldean modern history causing the ancient/modern self-identification and giving rise to their current affiliation with the appellation ‘Chaldean’ and its prehistoric correlates. Chapter 1 traces the hybrid roots of the modern Assyrians and Chaldeans and the circulation of persons and identities within these two engineered appellations. The chapter examines the two groups’ perennial concern for establishing their distinctness by laying claim to tropes of historical firstness, continuity with monumental antiquity and lastness to the present. Chapter 2 focuses on the role of the encounter with Christian missions and archaeological findings in coining and reinforcing the Chaldean and Assyrian appellations among different denominations of people who formerly belonged to the same Eastern Church and were characterized as a single Semitic race. Situating these same events within their Victorian context reveals how Chaldean and Assyrian antiquities and modern identities come to constitute an integral part of the Saidian ‘Orient as the theatrical stage affixed to Europe’.18 The reinforcement of the inter-imperial exchange between the Ottoman and European Empires, and the mobile display of oriental artefacts and people made the ancient–new modality a defining feature of Oriental Christianity by the conclusion of the nineteenth century. Together, Chapters 1 and 2 situate the modern history of the retrieval of ancient history, especially the transitional period of the nineteenth century when the excavation of ancient Chaldean and Assyrian past, both literal and figurative, was in its formative stage. The fact that US-based Chaldeans use selective representations of folklore and antiquity to express a revived ancient–modern identity that was constructed over a century ago indicates the resilience of the politics of representation and its centrality in mediating and interpreting ethnic identities in the United States, where they get to claim this monumentality for themselves to the exclusion of other co-nationals.

8

The Chaldeans

Chapter 3 situates Chaldeans within the political context of twentieth-century Iraq showing how, during the nation-building era, the livelihood of the Chaldean communities and their Church depended on framing Chaldeanness as a religion and adopting Arabness as an ethnic and national identity. The chapter illustrates the divergence between Chaldeanness as a religious identity and Assyrianness as a national identity in the nascent state of Iraq during the twentieth century. Chapter 4 proceeds to explain how this equation shifted as the community transitioned to the American diaspora, where the distinctions and intersections between ethnic and religious identities were complicated and reconfigured in different ways. It examines the transition from Chaldeanness as a religious to an ethnic identity at that same period during which the group began to form visible immigrant clusters in the United States. Chaldeans and Assyrians first congregated in two separate cities, Detroit and Chicago, respectively. While many diaspora Assyrian nationalists, historians and activists continued to claim that all the Syriac people should be subsumed under one ‘true’ unifying Assyrian identity, the Chaldean diaspora increasingly conducted its social affairs and identity building separately from the Assyrian community. The chapter shows how understanding Chaldeanness in the United States bears upon the movement farther away from the Assyrian identity, but also, and more prominently, the shift from religious to ethnic identification, the project of becoming ‘Arab American’ alongside Christian minorities’ project of de-Arabization and the project of becoming ‘white’ – all of which entail looking at two important formations: the overarching Arab and Middle Eastern Christian community and its collective conduct in the US diaspora, and the Chaldean transnational social networks between home and host countries. Chapter 5 explores the life and to some extent the expression of Chaldeanness through examining the transnational circuits and dynamics that connect the diaspora community with Chaldeans in other parts of the world. It emphasized the influence of local diasporic projects on the crafting of politics and identities at home. Chapter 6 explores the modern history of the Chaldean Church at home and the American diaspora through the transnational social field framework, showing how the traditional political centrality of the Chaldean Church in Iraq gradually gave way to new distributive tendencies in the diaspora whereby lay institutional networks have become legitimate political contenders. Chapter 7 looks at the mobilization of Zionist representational rhetoric and models of Jewish-American belonging in the US diaspora, towards efforts to reclaim the Nineveh Plain as autonomous region for Christian minorities to administer independently of the overarching nation state. The chapter also looks at the correlate efforts to create protected, non-Muslim spaces for Chaldeans in the US diaspora during the post9/11 attacks decade. To tie these threads, Chapter 8 looks at modes of representing Chaldeanness in the public sphere of the host country through textual and visual displays. The multi-threaded narratives and counter-narratives of ‘who the Chaldeans are’ that are emerging in the American diaspora are forming with a definitiveness that contests the ambiguity of the ‘minority’ status circumscribing the group’s life and identity in legal and other Iraqi discourses today. Together, the

Introduction

9

chapters of the second half of the book combine to illustrate the emergence of a Chaldean-American elite interested in heritage attractions and capable of carrying out auto-ethnographic and political projects successfully and on a transnational scale. Through these projects the new articulations of Chaldeanness are exported to Chaldean communities in transit and in other diasporic locales as well as back to Chaldeans in the originary country.19 Modern Chaldean identity, including the appellation itself, developed discursively betwixt and between different systems of thought straddling the imperial logic of the Ottoman era, the expansionist apostolic mission of the Roman Catholic Church, the Evangelist and Anglican rhetoric of self-reliance of the AngloAmerican missions, the print enterprise of Protestant America, the museumizing frenzy of the Victorian era, the Arabizing campaigns of the nation-building era, the transnational networks of co-ethnic marriage and economy and, most recently, the binary of escalating sectarian violence at home and intensified Islamophobia in the United States. This book’s perspective sheds light on how Chaldean identity developed en route while its holders – the majority of whom are refugees, migrants or geographically displaced in one form or another at some period in their lives – inhabit and negotiate multiple locales and continually reinvent and stage their collective identity in accordance with the geopolitical exigencies of their time. By mapping out this demographic and conceptual mobility, The Chaldeans resignifies notions of minority, religion, ethnicity, sectarianism and Islamophobia in accordance with their relation to contexts of citizenship and belonging in Ottoman Mesopotamia, Iraq and the United States.

Geographies of Modernity and Pre-modernity The earliest extant knowledge of Chaldean demographics is a reflection of the whereabouts of their ecclesial structures, which in this book I generically call ‘the Church of the East’ as is commonly done, or the ‘Nestorian Church’, as the Western missionaries stigmatically labelled it for centuries. The Church of the East developed as a religious community in Mesopotamia and Persia possibly as early as the second century, and gradually consolidated its ecclesial distinctiveness and ecclesiastical organization from the Church of the Roman Empire over the course of three centuries. By the fifth century, the Church of the East developed its exclusive character as the Church of the Sasanian world and by the conclusion of the century its learned clergy, who had formed the ecclesiastical schools of Edessa and Nisibis, began pursuing a policy of expansion into central Asia. During the early to high medieval periods the Church of the East established numerous missionary posts throughout Asia and China, boasting the widest geographical jurisdiction of any Christian community worldwide and exerting considerable influence within the Abbasid and Mongol Empires. The fourteenth to the late nineteenth centuries are often viewed by Church historians as a period of ‘decline’ and schismatic conversions and reconversions to and from Catholicism. Tamerlane’s rule and invasion unleashed the

10

The Chaldeans

rapid destruction of peoples and structures, and those who survived were dramatically displaced. Together with expansionist pressure from Islam, Taoism, Buddhism and the West Syriac Church, the Church of the East was reduced from approximately 100 dioceses in the late thirteenth century to 3 by the midsixteenth century.20 The lay communities that survived the incursion retreated eastward, populating mainly the Nineveh Plain (modern-day Iraq), the Urmia Plain (contemporary northwestern Iran) and the rugged mountainous region of Hakkari (west of Urmia and north of Mosul) which served for centuries as a buffer zone between Ottoman and Qajar territories that neither empire controlled administratively. Those who emerged as ‘Chaldean’ Catholics through contact with Rome were eventually the majority of the East Syriac communities of northern Mesopotamia, eastern Asia Minor and north-west Persia. Mosul and its environs, along with most of the area south of Hakkari, Bohtan (west of Hakkari) and the Salmas Plain (north of Urmia), were heavily Catholicized by the nineteenth century. There, approximately 199 Chaldean villages and 30,000 Chaldeans, more than one-third of the total East Syriac population, were located before the conclusion of the century.21 While the desire to recreate the ecumenical character of the Church of the East was perhaps what prompted engagement with the Latin convoys from the thirteenth century onwards, the retreat of schismatic patriarchic lines to remote locations around northern Mesopotamia inhibited their and their communities’ further contact with these Latin missionaries. Thus, the Eastern Christians who remained isolated in or near the mountainous regions of Hakkari and southeastern Turkey did not come into any notable contact with foreign presence, or even the Ottoman state, until Anglican and American Protestant missionaries ‘discovered’ them in the mid-nineteenth century.22 There are different hypotheses as to why patriarchs from Sulaqa’s schismatic line (Sulaqa had converted to Catholicism through contact with the Capuchin Franciscan missions and was murdered by his adversaries in 1555) geographically retreated from the Church’s headquarters in Mardin and Amid (Diyarbakir), where the missionaries were stationed in south-east Asia Minor, to form the monastery of Mar Jacob the Recluse near Seert, Selmas and Kochanes in the Hakkari mountains. Some argued that the gradual geographical retreat was a strategic attempt to avoid representatives of the Catholic Church and the other convert branch of the Eastern Syriacs in the plains.23 Others suggested it was to avoid Ottoman persecution and suzerainty.24 And others still argued that the Turco-Persian wars circumscribed these patriarchs’ mobility and precluded their contact with Latin representatives.25 After centuries of managing their ecclesial and social structures independently, this isolated segment emerged as the ‘Assyrian’ Church as a consequence of contacts with the Anglican and American protestant missions. By the beginning of First World War these Assyrians were divided into three groups: the mountaineers of Hakkari, modern-day Turkey; the plain dwellers of western Lake Urmia, modern-day Iran; and the lowland dwellers in southern Hakkari, modern-day Iraq.

Introduction

11

Figure 1  First communion celebration at St Thomas Catholic Chaldean Church in Basra c.1958. The church was built in 1886 and remained in operation until 2004.

Homes of the Old World The end of the nineteenth century witnessed increased movement of Eastern Syriacs. Chaldean clergymen travelled more frequently to Rome to be educated in the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of Faith (Propaganda Fide), which was established in 1622 to promote Catholicism among the Uniate (converted) Eastern Churches,26 while Assyrians toured Britain and America as ‘oriental’ informants or studied there through the assistance of the Anglican and the Protestant missions. Moreover, Tbilisi (Tiflis) in Georgia and some parts of the Russian Empire were increasingly the destination of East Syriac migrants seeking work, who had formed a noticeable community there by the early 1900s.27 In the twentieth century, migration patterns shifted as the main destination for East Syriac migrants became Iraq’s major economic centres, Baghdad, Basra and Kirkuk and the United States. The Archdiocese of Erbil, one of the oldest centres of East Syriac ecclesial activity before the rise of Mosul, estimated the size of the Chaldean community in Ankawa, Shaqlawa and Kirkuk to be 5,840 by 1913, a figure that had grown to 9,000 by 1949.28 Basra’s Archdiocesan records, accounting for a vast swath of Iraq’s Chaldeans in the southern region, reveal a dramatic increase in baptisms from the turn of the century to the mid-1960s, after which the population steadily declined.29

Telkeif The village was smaller than a graveyard and bigger than the planet Venus which fell into the tannour [kiln] of my aunt so her bread had a flavor of roses. Dunya Mikhail, Diary of a Wave outside the Sea30

12

The Chaldeans

While internal movement in mid-century Iraq saw Chaldean concentrations shifting from the north to the centre and the south, migration patterns changed dramatically in the wake of the first Gulf War, prompting Chaldean families to take up a reversed migration from major cities like Baghdad, Basra and Kirkuk towards the northern region of Iraqi Kurdistan, which became an administratively independent ‘no-fly’ zone in 1990.31 Those who did not move northward settled outside the country when legally and economically feasible. Baghdad alone is estimated to have lost up to half of its Chaldean population between 1990 and 2000 as more individuals left the country or headed north towards their ancestral villages.32 This trend was exacerbated after 2003. While the Chaldean Patriarchate remained in Baghdad, the focus of Chaldean life, political and ecclesial authority shifted either northward to the Kurdish-governed provinces of Kirkuk and the Nineveh Plain or westward to the well-established dioceses of Michigan and San Diego. Of the towns and villages of the Nineveh Plain, Telkeif, or Telkeppe (Aramaic: Stone Hill), stands out as the main source of the first large-scale migration into the major Iraqi cities and also into Detroit from the 1950s onwards. During the first half of the twentieth century, a time when the church structures served as foci of social organization, Telkeif was significant for the patriarchal headquarters in or near its town and the many monasteries, convents and theological hubs that surrounded it.33 The other significance of Telkeif, which attained a symbolic status as the ‘original home of the Chaldeans’ in the American diaspora, reaches back to the previous century when the French and British archaeological missions excavated in or near the Nineveh Plain leading to the discovery of the ruins of ancient Assyria that served as raw material for the new ethnic and nationalist imagination of the Christian locals. Located at a three-hour ride from the excavation site, Telkeif provided the manual labour which the expeditions favoured over the provisions of nearby Muslim tribes. Pioneer British archaeologist Austen Henry Layard made many individual friendships with the locals of the town, including its Chaldean bishop, which he describes at length in his sensational bestseller, Nineveh and Its Remains.34 Boasting 5,000 Chaldean families up until the mid-twentieth century, the town became a geographic trope to which now much attention is devoted in the public displays of Chaldean ‘heritage’ in the United States. For the past half century, the image of Telkeif has served as an emblem of veritable Chaldeanness.

Home in the American Diaspora It is unclear exactly when Chaldean immigrants began entering the American continent since immigration records referred to entrants by their Ottoman or Iraqi administrative identities only.35 From the 1920s to the 1960s, political and economic turmoil – the offshoot of alternately falling out of favour with Arab, Turkish, Kurdish and British powers in the region – prompted a number of male members of the Chaldean community to seek refuge in the Americas. Most of

Introduction

13

these individuals and their descendants trace their origins to Telkeif.36 A majority of Chaldeans, who first immigrated to multiple US destinations, were soon to congregate in Detroit by the 1920s, drawn to the stable wages and the low-skilled jobs made available by Ford’s automobile assembly line. An unstable political and economic scene in the homeland continued to prompt later waves of Chaldean migration from Iraq to Detroit. Added to this ‘push’ was the ‘pull’ of favourable modifications to the US immigration laws facilitating family-based ‘chain immigration’, which began to reunite male immigrants with their other family members in the mid-1960s.37 When Telkeifi men migrated to the United States in the 1920s, the first kindred population they encountered were the Assyrians of Chicago. The Assyrian diaspora was a few decades older and comprised primarily of financially established and welleducated immigrants from Urmia, who had been deeply steeped in the traditions of the American Presbyterian Mission that had established itself there in the 1830s. The first Assyrian immigrants were sent by the various American protestant missions in Urmia to study in American colleges and universities. Those early immigrants were soon joined by survivors of the 1915–18 Armenian genocide,38 who flocked from several transit sites such as Syria, Russia, Iran and Iraq, and were joined by the Assyrian Patriarch and his family, who had been exiled from Iraq in 1940. Together, these multi-national, multilingual Assyrian communities affiliated with ten different Churches in Chicago (Presbyterian, Evangelical, Nestorian, Pentecostal, Lutheran and Catholic).39 Instead of consolidating the historical Church of the East under the banner of Assyrianism, as some of the early pioneers had aspired to do, they became heavily invested in consolidating Assyrian ethnic unity, reviving the rhetoric of ancient Assyrian nationhood and the Syriac language and promoting an image of Turkish/Persian Islam as barbaric.40 The Chaldeans of that period, on the other hand, were more linguistically Arabized and acclimated to their ‘religious minority’ status in an overarching Arab society by the time they began their emigration to the United States. It was not until the First World War and the massacres of the Assyrians and other Christian groups north and northeast of the Chaldean villages during the first third of the twentieth century that the Chaldeans were impelled to seek asylum outside of the Middle East.41 What is often overlooked is how this migration took place within the context of mandate Iraq. In tandem with Chaldean migrations, the minority treaties of the time and the policies of the nascent League of Nations were beginning to develop a narrative about the ethnic, religious and national differences of the Middle Eastern mandate territories. Not only did these narratives serve to legitimize mandate rule over Arab majorities, but they helped institute the League’s supervisory capacity over what came to be construed as vulnerable ‘minorities’ within these Arab provinces.42 From this perspective, which solidified their Middle Eastern identity as a ‘minority’ identity, coupled with the exigencies of proving their whiteness in the United States for citizenship purposes,43 a new discourse of Chaldeanness slowly emerged to replace former concepts of self and community. Since the first pioneers began to form a visible cluster in Detroit in the 1920s, waves

14

The Chaldeans

Figure 2  Elias Abdelahad left Mosul and went to New York to study medicine in the 1920s. This was the last photograph his Mosul-based family received before losing contact with him.

of Chaldeans have continuously entered the United States. In addition to the waves of the 1960s and 1970s, new waves of Chaldean immigrants began to enter the United States since the 1990s, most of which came from urban centres such as Basra and Baghdad as opposed to the countryside. An estimate of 5,000 Chaldean immigrants entered the United States immediately after the Gulf War.44 Another 50,000 Chaldeans fled to Jordan as refugees during the economic embargo on Iraq (1991–2003). By the year 2000, the Western diaspora became the new homeland for close to 25 per cent of the total population of Chaldeans.45 The US invasion in 2003 escalated Chaldean internal displacement and their search for asylum and refuge outside of Iraq. While many Chaldean city dwellers returned to their ancestral villages in northern Iraq, alarmed community reports estimated that 200,000 Christians (mostly Chaldeans) left the country between 2003 and 2007.46 At least half of these 200,000 migrants were in transit countries such as Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Turkey during that period, and others relocated to refugee camps in Europe.47 Another segment of these refugees has been steadily making its entry to the United States to join family and kinship networks. By the end of 2008, approximately 12,000 Chaldean immigrants were settled in the United States.48 With the Islamic State’s occupation of Mosul and its vicinities in 2014, displacement figures multiplied.

Introduction

15

Today, the largest and oldest settled concentration of Chaldeans outside of Iraq can be found in Southeast Michigan, where approximately 34,000 to 160,000 individuals lived by 2018.49 With these multiple waves of migration, Chaldeans who leave Iraq today to reside in the United States encounter multiple options for reconfiguring, consolidating and negotiating their ethnicity in a host country where their family and kin are already established. The urban, professional character of the newcomers – coupled with their integration with Iraqi society and their intensified exposure to the discourses of Arab nationalism and the Arabic language during the second half of the twentieth century – has altered the socio-cultural composition of the Chaldean diaspora, which had been predominantly Syriac-speaking and rural in origin. The demographic shift introduced competing notions of identity and belonging within what ostensibly appeared to be the same migrant community. While new Chaldean migrants engage in negotiating their new identities and reconfiguring their economic status, established diaspora Chaldeans are encouraged by the socio-cultural structures in the United States and in their ambitions to gain recognition from the national and international communities and to maintain reinvented and imagined links with the originary land. In this manner, the various generations of Chaldean immigrants have exhibited assimilative tendencies, refurbished traditions that they or their families brought from the native homeland of Iraq and forged new identities that combine processes of innovation and renovation in a fashion that reveals multiple inflections of the hyphenated identity ‘Chaldean-American’. Some of these inflections – whether or not they could be subsumed under the categories of ‘reactive’, ‘symbolic’ or ‘linear’ ethnicity50 – outline the dialogical matrix where ethnic identifications are retrieved, negotiated and recycled between home and diaspora.

Between Sectarianism and Secularism This book is not directly concerned with the history of Iraqi secular and nationalist formations and their political genealogies. It is, rather, about the ways in which the secular and nationalist underpinnings of contemporary ‘minority’ identities expand the meaning of ethnicity and religion and complicate their definitions. Although very palpable and unmistakably alarming, Iraqi sectarianism – the divisive ideological and physical clash whereby individuals and collectives are marked, alienated or violated based on static notions of majority vs. minority, descent, religion or ethnic belonging – is not the angle from which this book approaches Chaldean identity. Rather, focus is on the historically shifting imaginary of Iraqi sectarianism and the ways in which it is manifesting today among Chaldeans as a symbolic site for negotiating identity and belonging both at home and in diaspora. Expressions of Chaldean secularism and ethnicism were fostered as much by nascent Iraqi and Kurdish nationalisms as by the prolonged, cumulative, coextensive experience in the Western diaspora. As we assess social formations in the post-2003 decade, we must carefully note the political output of

16

The Chaldeans

Chaldean institutions (besides the Chaldean Church) that lobby from the diaspora on behalf of Chaldeans at home and the ways in which this diasporic political output is recasting Iraqi sectarianism and minority identities at home. Influential institutions such as the Iraqi central authorities, the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and the Roman Catholic Church have exerted power over moral positions in reaction to critical events, and over what is emphasized and what is omitted from collective identity accounts. For example, since the sectarian wars of the post-2003 decades, the history of Chaldean–Muslim relations in twentieth-century Iraq has been narrated as a history of sectarian intolerance, which acutely contrasts with the ways in which it was often narrated as an example of peaceful coexistence during the Ba‘thist period of Saddam Hussein’s rule. Before proceeding further, I must echo Fanar Haddad’s concerns about studying sectarianism in Iraq. The label ‘post-2003’ itself risks essentializing sectarian experiences in Iraq insofar as it is ‘open-ended and forever contemporary’.51 The ‘post-2003’ or ‘post-Saddam Hussein’ labels that permeate most discussions of sectarian strife in contemporary Iraq implicitly suggest a degree of continuity as well as of departure, when in fact the events, especially sectarian violence, that have ensued in Iraq since 2003 might punctuate different developments and reflect overlapping geopolitical upheavals, such as the specificity of the sectarian violence of the 2006–08 period, the Arab Spring, the Islamic State’s infiltration into the northern region, the 2017 Kurdish Referendum for independence and the several waves of Chaldean migration and displacement, both within and outside of Iraq. Overemphasizing the role of the year 2003 also undermines the relevance of related prior transformations on reforming the Chaldean identity, such as the 1991 US-led attacks on Iraq and the establishment of a ‘no-fly’ zone in a coalitionprotected Kurdish region with which the demographic concentrations and political alliances of the Chaldeans began to shift more decisively as they fortified their connections with the KRG; the devastation of the embargo years following the 1991 Gulf War; the deleterious impact of the 9/11 attacks on Middle Eastern minorities in the United States and their sense of identity; and, most recently as the book goes into press, the amplification of Islamophobic and anti-migrant/ refugee rhetoric and practices under Donald Trump’s administration. Throughout the book I aim, therefore, to situate ‘post-2003’ and ‘pre-2003’ references within their specific spatio-temporal contexts, in both Iraq and the United States, and to emphasize the retrospective and perceptual nature of their relevance, especially as the articulations in question are fostered and recycled between diaspora and home.

Ethics and Methodological Limitations This book has been long in the making, relying from its post-9/11 beginnings on an interdisciplinary approach that benefitted from anthropological perspectives, cultural studies and sociology in combination with fieldwork among multigenerational Chaldean residents of Southeast Michigan. I collected the

Introduction

17

empirical data during fieldwork conducted between 2004 and 2018. The methods I used to interact with my informants and their environs were open interviews, group interviews, family interviews and participant observation. When not performed over email, the oral interviews were digitally recorded and subsequently transcribed. If the interviews were in Arabic, I transcribed and then translated them to English. The latter is what appears in my text’s citations. I based my analysis on these transcribed interviews as well as on formal or informal follow-up conversations and email exchanges with the informants, their friends, family and referrals and on observations made during social and cultural events or religious ceremonies. During the course of my fieldwork, about seventy individuals and twelve institutions contributed to my data collection. The informants were firstand second-generation Chaldean men and women whose ages ranged between fourteen and eighty-two. However, they are not represented in equal measure in the overall analysis of this book. The intention was to let the informants tell their life stories in an open-ended fashion in order to understand the ways in which they construct their personal and collective identities, and the ways in which they relate to the overarching Chaldean majority. Since some revealed more interest in articulating these issues, their contributions received more space in the study. Informants appear in this book under pseudonyms, unless the information they provided is cited from a published text or the informants expressly agreed to reveal their real identities. Sometimes, other personal details have been slightly modified or omitted to ensure the anonymity of the informants. First priority has been given to the preference and safety of the informants, many of whom expressed concern over their personal or family ‘name’ or ‘reputation’ in what some characterized as a ‘heteronormative, conservative Chaldean community’ in Southeast Michigan. A chief methodological concern underlying fieldwork for this book comes from my own personal limitations. As a Chaldean immigrant in the diaspora of Southeast Michigan, I had a lot in common with many of the individuals I spoke with for my project. Because of this shared past or present, the boundary between professionalism and familiarity was constantly shifting. Echoing debates on ethnographic authority, so often dealing with native anthropologists’ concern,52 I was constantly self-conscious about the power relations attending the production of (auto)biographical ethnographic texts. I had to pay attention to my own role in the production of narrative data and the representation of lived experience as text. In this manner, I continually reshaped the boundary of my insider–outsider relationship with my informants. In most situations, it was best not to conceal my position both as a Chaldean who has participated in the interactions of the community as an insider and as a researcher who did not subscribe to some of the fixed notions of Chaldeanness. Interestingly, within this area of tension, I was in fact speaking to a wide range of Chaldean and Iraqi individuals some of whom were more willing to share information based on assumptions of our common points of cultural confluence, and others who were more careful not to express their viewpoints based on the self-same assumptions. Moreover, as the ‘native informant’, I admit it has become immensely difficult to write about the Chaldeans in recent years. Not only do I set out to discuss the inner

18

The Chaldeans

workings of a numerical minority that has been the subject of several historical episodes of mass persecution, the latest of which is taking place at present, but also my liminal ‘gaze’ as a war survivor from Iraq and an uprooted subjectivity in the United States continuously points me to a set of Chaldean political dealings and positions vis-à-vis Western powers that have aided their own people’s persecution at home. This is especially difficult to reconcile with the knowledge that the main purpose behind these pro-West/anti-Arab positions has always been the contrary: to influence foreign policy with the aim of providing aid to their persecuted kin. Nor is there solace in reaching a century back to this ethno-religious group’s late-Ottoman history only to find that similar political miscalculations, whereby the community’s leaders entrusted their identities and survival to their Western protectors, eventually contributed to their own demise during the Armenian genocide in 1915 and the massacres of the Iraqi army in 1933. Finally, it is no less heart-rending to witness a large section of contemporary Chaldeans in the American diaspora cling to a set of US neoconservative, Evangelical Zionist promises of a Christian ‘safe haven’ in northern Iraq reminiscent of the unfulfilled imperialist promises made to their predecessors by British and French authorities during the mandate era. These political reiterations make it all the more urgent to understand the recent historical roots behind the collective demands, desires and visions that sustain the invention of Chaldeanness today.

1 O N T H E P O L I T IC S O F A P P E L L AT IO N : T H E M A K I N G O F T H E M O D E R N C HA L D E A N S

I am an Assyrian today, tomorrow, forever, and I am proud of it. Raphael Bidawid, Chaldean Patriarch of Babylonia, 19741 Any Chaldean who calls himself Assyrian is a traitor, and any Assyrian who calls himself Chaldean is a traitor. Emmanuel Dally, Chaldean Patriarch of Babylonia, 20062 Disputes, negotiations and resolutions regarding the representatively ‘accurate’ appellations for the modern Chaldeans and Assyrians are not confined to the statements of the two recent patriarchs. They dot the diasporic history of the Eastern Christian communities throughout the twentieth century and extend well into the present. What accounts for this contentious history? In the diasporas of Europe and the United States, where most of the communities are now settled, Syriac studies and Assyriology developed as the two authoritative scholarly traditions of writing about Eastern Christianity. The appellation debate has also found its way into various contemporary religious and political discourses at home. Additionally, a discursive transnational social field of native scholarship on Chaldean and Assyrian history and nomenclature has emerged in the diasporic locales, creating distinct narratives of identity that link the ancient past to the current present in specific ahistorical ways. This chapter offers a rereading of these narratives to locate the links, or missing links, between the ancient and modern Assyrians and Chaldeans and to retrace the occurrences of the appellations ‘Chaldean’, ‘Assyrian’ and ‘Nestorian’ to particular events and periods. The controversies over collective identities to be disentangled here are central to understanding what shapes the particularity of the contemporary Chaldean collective. Historically, the circulation of the three labels was crucial to the survival and reshaping of the group. Moreover, the denominational affiliation of the followers of the Church of the East played a crucial role in determining the kind of foreign protection they received from the sixteenth century onwards. The genealogy of these interconnected and overlapping identities directly links to the Churches

20

The Chaldeans

that make up the historic Iraqi Christian presence. This genealogy provides insights into the formative imperialist relations responsible for West–East dichotomies and the intermediary position these native Christian institutions and communities served within those divides. This marginalized history critically locates some of the earliest – although by no means only – hegemonic dynamics that led to constructing the identitarian crisis in the post-Ottoman ‘Middle East’ and ‘Arab world’. By turning to the intervention of institutional powers such as the Roman Catholic Church and other organized Western Christian missions to the Middle East, this discussion marks some of the earliest sectarian politics that augmented the tensions between ethno-religious majorities and minorities in the modern Middle East. Three questions direct the enquiry into the appellation dispute: first, how did the term ‘Assyrian’ become attached to a Church that materialized in 431 CE, when the last – needless to say non-Christian – Assyrian Kingdom began to dissolve in 612 BCE? That is, who are the modern Assyrians, who today affiliate with the ‘Assyrian Church of the East’, the ‘Assyrian Ancient Church of the East’, the ‘Assyrian Evangelical Church’, the ‘Assyrian Pentecostal Church’ and other ‘Assyrian’ Churches, in relation to the ancient Assyrians from whom they claim descent? Second, what is the relationship between the ancient Chaldeans of southern Mesopotamia and the modern Catholic Chaldeans of the Nineveh Plains, northeast of Mosul (and Detroit suburbs), followers of the ‘Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans’? Third, how are the ancient and modern Chaldeans and Assyrians related or unrelated to each other? That is, how did the ‘Nestorian’ appellation that used to apply to both groups fall out of use and how did its holders become the ancient-turned-modern Chaldeans and Assyrians? From approximately the third to the fifteenth centuries, both Chaldeans and Assyrians belonged to the Church of the East, or the ‘Nestorian Church’, without denominational distinctions and were generally known as Syriacs (Suraye). Later on, as the missionary activity of the Church of the East intensified in East Asia and as Western missionary posts became more prominent in and around Mesopotamia, Syriac communities splintered to form several distinct collectives that conceptually converge or diverge in selective political and cultural contexts. While several historical studies have documented the denominational conversions within the Church of the East,3 most community historiographies of these communities bypass this ecclesial history and turn instead to pre-Christian history as the primary originator of modern Assyrian and Chaldean identities. Understanding how members of these communities reconstruct and appropriate pre-Christian history and the strategic utility they designate for its use in the present is key to understanding the contentious modern history of these communities. The importance of the complicit, European- and American-enabled history of modern Chaldean and Assyrian identities is twofold. Significantly, we may be on the verge of witnessing the erasure of Christianity in Iraq. Moreover, this history shaped a distinction between Assyrianness as an ethnic and national identity and Chaldeanness as a religious identity for quite some time, in ways that have created a different appeal for the primordialist argument at different times and places between home and diaspora. This complex history calls for telling the distinct story

1. The Making of the Modern Chaldeans

21

of identity-making as performed by or on the modern Chaldean and Assyrians since their earliest contact with the Christian West. Current narratives of identity underscore three components: one, a claim to the Aramaic language; two, a distinct Christian liturgy that links back to the liturgy of the Church of the East; and three, a place of origin in contiguous or overlapping regions of historical Mesopotamia.

Chaldeans and Assyrians: The Pre-Christian Context Scholars generally prefer to use the term ‘Assyrian’ to refer to a language rather than an ethnicity. On the other hand, popular encyclopaedic sources such as Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Britannica and Encarta – and less straightforwardly the Old Testament4 – concur that the term ‘Assyrian’ refers to the various ethnic groups that occupied the region on the Upper Tigris River or Assyria or Ashur, until the fall of Nineveh in 612 BCE. Popular sources also refer to the ancient Chaldeans as semi-nomadic tribes who settled in southern Mesopotamia in the early part of the first millennium BCE. The Chaldean dynasty, the last of the Babylonian dynasties, assumed power after the fall of the Assyrian Kingdom in 612 BCE, and until the Persian invasion of 539 BCE. The town of Ur Kasdim (traditionally rendered in English as ‘Ur of the Chaldees’) is presented in the Hebrew Bible, Old Testament and other related literature as the birthplace of Abraham.5 Other traditional sources such as Josephus and Maimonides locate Ur Kasdim in northern Mesopotamia. Early twentieth-century archaeology identified the place with the Sumerian city of Ur in southern Mesopotamia, which was under the rule of the Chaldeans. ‘Chaldea proper’ initially referred to the vast plain in the south but eventually came to represent all of Mesopotamia.6 The early Assyrians spoke what came to be known as Akkadian or Old Assyrian, while the contemporaneous Chaldean tribes likely spoke a dialectal subset of the same language. Their dialect came to be known as ‘Babylonian’ in reference to the Babylonian region these Chaldean tribes populated.7 Around 2000 BCE, the Akkadian or Old Assyrian that early Assyrians spoke along with its ‘Babylonian’ subsets that the Chaldean tribes spoke constituted the lingua franca of Mesopotamia. One millennium later, Aramaic began competing with Akkadian so that by the mid-eighth century BCE both Chaldeans and Assyrians were speaking Aramaic. The Arameans, a semi-nomadic and pastoral people who originated and populated Upper Mesopotamia after 1100 BCE, introduced Aramaic’s relatively advanced Phoenician-based writing system. Not before long, it became the second official language of the Assyrian Empire in 752 BCE. Aramaic eventually supplanted the Akkadian that the Chaldeans and Assyrians had spoken earlier. It thereby gained the status of a lingua franca among the various ethnic groups living in the Assyrian Empire, as well as in most of the Near East and Egypt.8 From a lingua franca, Aramaic mushroomed into an array of dialects, some mutually intelligible and some not. They were roughly classified into Western and Eastern dialects, according to their geographical location in relation to the

22

The Chaldeans

Euphrates River. Of these dialects one gained a particularly prestigious status later. It came to be known as ‘Biblical Aramaic’ in relation to the sections of the biblical books of Daniel and Ezra – along with the Talmud – that were written in this dialect. Another variety of Aramaic was believed to be the mother tongue of Jesus as well as the language of the New Testament. As the East Syriac communities, mainly with the help of Catholic and Protestant missionaries, began to introduce the Syriac alphabets as a writing system for Aramaic, the Aramaic variety they spoke eventually came to be known as ‘Neo-Syriac’.9 A number of Aramaic – or Syriac – dialects died out, while a few transformed and survived. Later on, predominantly in the nineteenth century, British and American Christian missions played a seminal role in reviving Biblical Aramaic and consolidating the living Aramaic dialects through providing a writing system, a printing press and new font types. The relevance of this ethno-linguistic history lies in the evocative power of the nomenclature in use today. The dialects that contemporary Assyrians and Chaldeans speak are known interchangeably as ‘Neo-Aramaic’ and ‘Neo-Syriac’ – or Sureth in the native tongue. They harken back to eras that predate the social formations of the current ethno-linguistic groups that identify with the original users of these languages.

Chaldean, Assyrian and Nestorian: The Early Christian Context Historian John Joseph was one of the first to significantly note that the enlisting of Christianity as a decisive component of the group’s communal identity—along with its immense confessional convolutions—gave rise to the identity disputes among modern Chaldeans and Assyrians.10 When Christian missionaries and pioneer excavators arrived in Mesopotamia from the United States and Britain in the early nineteenth century, they encountered three representatives of the Church of the East: Jacobites, Nestorians and Chaldeans. In particular contexts these three groups referenced themselves with the title ‘Syrian Christians’ all the while applying the other titles in formal contexts to differentiate their religious filiations. This was during a time when the title ‘Assyrian’ as a referent to a living group of Mesopotamian Christians had not been fully revived yet. It came to widely replace the term ‘Nestorian’ much later. Nonetheless, long before this revival the appellation disputes were set in motion due to the interchangeable use of other titles. Germane to this context is the title ‘Uniate’, which refers to the six Eastern Churches which were excommunicated or deemed heretical by Papal Rome, but who at some point abjured the schismatic doctrines and accepted Papal supremacy in Christological matters. These are the Catholic branches of the Maronite, Armenian, Melkite, Chaldean, Syrian and Coptic Churches. The notion of ‘rite’ developed around these Uniate groups. While they looked to the mother Church in Rome they were allowed patriarchic and liturgical autonomy at home. Thus, the Nestorians (later known as Assyrians) were not Uniates because they did not join the Church of Rome, whereas the Chaldeans came to be Uniates by virtue

1. The Making of the Modern Chaldeans

23

of converting from Nestorianism to Roman Catholicism.11 Simultaneously, this transformed them from ‘Eastern Christians’ or the pejorative ‘Nestorians’ to the prestigious, legacy-laden ‘Chaldeans’. Today, the only Uniate rite with a noticeable presence in Iraq (though alarmingly dwindling since the 1990s) is the Chaldean Rite. According to contemporary nationalist and religious Chaldean publicity, Chaldeans have constituted the largest group of Iraqi Christians since the East Syrian schism with Rome in 431 CE. The two other recognizable churches that make up the historic Iraqi Christian presence are the Jacobite and Assyrian Churches. The former is also known as ‘Syrian’ and ‘West Syrian Orthodox’. In Arabic the followers are known as ‘Ya‘aqiba’ or ‘Siryan Orthodox’ to differentiate them from ‘Siryan Catholic’. The Jacobites are one of three Monophysite groups that formulated a doctrinal reaction against Nestorianism and continued to uphold their orthodoxy. The following sections detail the formation of the two other churches, the Chaldean and Assyrian, in the wake of the Nestorian schism.

An Origin Story: The Nestorians ‘Nestorius’, the patriarch of Constantinople, wrote Aubrey Russell Vine of the Anglican Church in 1937, ‘has provided a name for a heresy which he did not originate, possibly did not even hold, and for a Church which he did not found.’12 Yet his name and the Christological heresy became firmly co-associated, turning the Nestorian appellation into a stigmatic title for the Church of the East and its followers. The ‘Nestorian schism’ originated in the wake of the condemnation of Nestorius at the 431 CE Council of Ephesus. It caused the enduring separation between the long-anathematized Nestorian Church of the East and the Byzantine Church. Nestorius’s anathematized followers began to be referenced as Nestorians by their adversaries. By 1332 CE, as we know from an Arabic manuscript by Slewa ibn Yohannan of Mosul, the Nestorian appellation had become a stigmatic title for the Church of the East. The trend persisted well into the nineteenth century until, thanks to the support of the Anglican Church, the clergy appropriated the title ‘Assyrian’. To offer a partial justification for his Anglican Church which had relatively recently conjured up the ‘Assyrian’ appellation when he was writing his book in 1937, Vine pointed out that the early Eastern Churches who espoused the new Christological doctrine ‘never officially used the title Nestorian to describe themselves, though they have not usually objected to it; their own designation is “Church of the East”’. But through the term ‘Nestorian’, emphasis had shifted from the geographical to the theological designation of these Churches, which became unified and independent from the Roman Empire in Persia only in the early sixth century.13 Pronounced a flagrant heretic, Nestorius was banished to Arabia in 435. Little is known about his life in exile, yet his legend contributes an anecdote of practical utility to the pool of contemporary narratives of appellations. Among modern

24

The Chaldeans

Chaldeans, this anecdote associates the non-Catholic Assyrians with a heresy greater than their non-Catholicism. It presumes Nestorius’s doctrinal affinity with Islam while tacitly justifying the Catholic Chaldeans’ otherwise censured departure from the Nestorian Church and their acceptance of the lucrative offers of the Roman Catholic Church. The year 489 marked the end of Nestorianism in the Roman Empire, when Emperor Zeno gave orders to close and destroy the Nestorian school of theology, compelling the followers of this doctrine to seek refuge in Persia. The Persian government was initially opposed to Christianity, the religion of its national rival. Yet when the Nestorians sought refuge in Persia, the authorities found it politically viable to espouse and even encourage this schismatic doctrine among the Christian subjects of the empire. Thus, what began as a tactic of alienating Persian Christians from the Christians of the Roman Empire soon worked to converge Nestorianism and the Christian Church of Persia into a synonymous entity. While headquartered in Persia, the Nestorian Church managed to extend roots across Asia, establish posts in central and southern Asia, and reach as far as China. Recognizing the missionary nature of the Nestorian Church during that period is important for understanding the historical transformations of the appellation, as some of the earliest diplomatic communications between the Church of the East and the Catholic Church in Rome, that resulted in the reinforcement of the modern appellation ‘Chaldean’, were carried out by Chinese Nestorian monks. In fact, the most thorough accounts of (pre-Chaldean) interactions between the Catholic and the Nestorian Churches come from the thirteenth-century travelogue of the Turkic-Chinese monk Rabban bar Sauma (c.1220–94).14 Mobility was crucial for the maintenance and prosperity of the identity of the Nestorian Church of the East. During the early centuries of the Caliphate, the centre of the Church moved westward from Persia into the region that constitutes present-day Iraq, which became one of the places where the Nestorian Church flourished most. Within ten years of the construction of the city of Baghdad in 762, patriarch of the East, Hnan-Isho II, made it his seat instead of SeleuciaCtesiphon in Persia.15 In Baghdad, the Nestorian patriarchic office became associated with the court circle and accordingly gained a worldly status as a political and social as well as a spiritual position. In the province of Mosul, one of the few surviving Eastern Church bishoprics and a seat of the Metropolitan were created as early as 651, with the bishopric of Nineveh also relocated in the province.16 During the fourteenth century, the Eastern Church moved from Baghdad and dispersed eastward into Azerbaijan and northward into Mosul and its northern surroundings. The move constituted one of the earliest diasporic experiences of the followers of the Eastern Church. This was to have a lasting effect on the transformations and splintering of collective identities. By the mid-fifteenth century the Nestorian Church had a sparse presence in a few towns in Urmia (Persia), Hakkari (Turkey and Iraq) and the Nineveh Plains (Iraq). Most of its churches in this region were converted to Catholicism (with the Chaldean Rite) through successive papal missions. The centre of power of the Church shifted

1. The Making of the Modern Chaldeans

25

to a specific mountainous triangle in Kurdistan, whose three corners lay in the Ottoman Empire and Timurid Persia.17 Significantly, from this period onwards the denominational affiliation of the local Christians played a crucial role in determining the kind of foreign protection they received. This phenomenon gradually reinforced the social and titular differentiations between the ‘Chaldeans’ and the ‘Assyrians’. By the midnineteenth century, when the French held administrative power in the region, they were able to demand guarantees for their ‘ra‘aya’, the Catholic (Chaldean) protégés. In 1844, the French consul interceded on behalf of its Chaldean ra‘aya to demand millet status for them, henceforth officially segregating them from the non-Catholic Nestorians (eventually Assyrians) who lived in the district.18 A year later, through the aid of the protestant missions, the Nestorians obtained the millet status from the Ottoman government as well. Their patriarch, the Mar Shimun,19 was now a salaried official of the Ottoman Empire in addition to being the spiritual leader of his community. Under this administrative system that socio-politically restructured the former Nestorians into two groups, the patriarch of the Church of the East assumed the highest religious and temporal authority among the Christians of northern Mesopotamia.20 As political relations between the Muslim Ottoman Empire and the Christian Western powers directly shaped the life of the Eastern Christian communities, a series of conversions from the Nestorian doctrine to Western Christian doctrines took place. Most of them were not motivated by a shift in religious beliefs, but rather made to secure the religious protection of the Roman Catholic Church, the political protection of the Catholic French Consul or the protection of the Church of England.

From Nestorians to Chaldeans The Chaldean and Nestorian titles originated in particularly convoluted contexts. To complicate matters, the groups that adopted them converged, overlapped or divided among themselves in various historical periods, numerous geographical locations and over several doctrinal and political issues. There are sources that suggest the facetious use of the term Chaldean and its derogatory connotations before modern times among the Jacobites, the Nestorians’ neighbouring rivals. The thirteenth-century Catholicos Ibn al-‘Ibri, for instance, referred to Nestorians as ‘descendants of the Chaldeans’ and ‘children of the ancient Chaldeans’ in a derogatory manner that equated these ‘wonderful Easterners’ who spoke ‘unintelligible’ dialects of Aramaic with the biblical ‘magician’ and ‘sorcerer’ Chaldeans who appear in Daniel (2:2, 10). Ibn al-‘Ibri even defined ‘Kaldayutha’ (Chaldeeism) as ‘astrology and the art of magic’, thus creating evidence for one of the earliest textual conflations of the ancient Chaldean tribes with a religious group that materialized nine centuries after the demise of the Chaldean dynasty.21 Particular readings of the Old Testament are mainly responsible for these erroneous associations between modern and ancient Mesopotamians. The

26

The Chaldeans

American missionary Asahel Grant made similar associations when he interpreted the Chaldean title as a name ‘used to express their [Nestorians’ and modern Chaldeans’] relation to Abraham, who was from “Ur of the Chaldees”’.22 Although the pre-Christian and Christian Mesopotamians appear in different biblical contexts, the Old Testament unintentionally evokes the geographical association between a pre-Christian group (the ancient Chaldeans of Babylonia) and a Christian group (those who consider themselves descendants of Abraham) that occupied the same region in different times. Irrespective of whether or not the Christian Chaldeans whom Grant met in the mid-nineteenth century are the progeny of Abraham, the Chaldean Church as such did not materialize until the mid-sixteenth century. The Church of the East had been following a tradition of hereditary patriarchal succession by the mid-fifteenth century, whereby authority passed from uncle to nephew because the patriarch did not marry. Untrained minors were often assigned the patriarchal throne as a result, to the dismay of many of the community’s elders. This was the case in 1552, when a group of local bishops refused to accept the young Simon Dinkha as their eighth Mar Shimun (or Patriarch).23 To sustain their authority, these local bishops sought doctrinal union with Rome. A ‘reluctant abbot’, Yuhannan Sulaka of the Rabban Hurmuzd Monastery near Mosul, was chosen as the new patriarch. While the young Mar Shimun continued to rule over the mountain Christians in Kurdistan, Sulaka was sent to Rome to arrange a union with the Catholic Church, which transpired in 1553. Sulaka was one of the first Eastern Christians to obtain a ‘Chaldean’ title when Pope Julius III proclaimed him Patriarch Simon VIII ‘of the Chaldeans’. Upon his return, Sulaka initiated a series of reforms with the hope of winning over all the Nestorians. Had he succeeded, the history of the Church of the East would have concluded there, and the modern Assyrians would never have existed. But Sulaka confronted a host of oppositions by the supporters of the hereditary patriarch Mar Shimun. Sulaka’s eventual imprisonment and assassination in 1555 worked against the absorption of the entire Eastern Christian population into Roman Catholicism. Too small and powerless, Sulaka’s followers considered lapsing back into their original faith. Despite Rome’s attempt to steer the conflict to its own advantage, the Church of the East was unable to recover its former unity and the stage was set for 200 years of turmoil and schismatic plotting. Significant stabilization took place in 1830, when Pope Pius VIII styled Metropolitan John Hormizdas head of all Chaldean Catholics, with the title ‘Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans’. The title was retrieved from a pre-Islamic episode during which the patriarchs of the East had used it at Seleucia-Ctesiphon.24 Between the papal ordinations of Sulaka in 1552 and Hormizdas in 1830, the descendants of the Church of the East weaved together one of the most unique and perplexing ecclesiastical disputes in the history of Christianity. In addition to the recurrent schismatic leitmotif, the patriarchs switched roles of allegiance to Rome. They confused the lines so frequently that it became virtually impossible to clearly distinguish the followers of the Catholic patriarch from those of the nonCatholic patriarch. By 1830, just before they were enticed into unity under the

1. The Making of the Modern Chaldeans

27

grand designation of ‘Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans’, there existed three Eastern patriarchs who bore the ‘Chaldean’ title upon their ordination. There were two non-Uniate or ‘Nestorians’ at Urmia (present-day northwestern Iran) and Mosul, and one Uniate (already subject to Papal authority prior to his ordination) at Diyarbakir. Why did Rome allow that? Writing in 1937, Aubrey Russell Vine attempted to disentangle the plotline: Sulaka’s successor […] received the pallium25 from Pope Pius IV, and the next two … seem also to have been truly Uniate. But subsequently touch with Rome became somewhat fitful […] Patriarchs sent a Catholic profession of faith to Rome, and a promise of obedience to the see of St. Peter; in return they received the pallium. Others did not trouble to do so […] Mar Shimun XII sent the last such profession […] after Mar Shimun XII the patriarchs of the Sulaka line are again Nestorian […] the Patriarchs of the old line had also adopted a uniform name. This was done soon after the dispute between Simon Denha and Sulaka, the name chosen being Elias. This line began negotiating with Rome during the time of Pope Sixtus V (1585–1590), the Patriarch Elias V sending him a profession of faith. This, however, was rejected on the grounds that it was tainted with Nestorianism.26

And so on the conversions and reconversions continued until 1826, when one line in Mosul settled on being Uniate Chaldean and another line, that of Mar Shimun of Urmia, henceforth represented the Nestorian (later Assyrian) Patriarchate. Partially responsible for this confusion were also the reactions of the local followers of the Church of the East at the time. Generally, they disfavoured any kind of control from Rome and did not place value on the Pope’s recognition of their Patriarch. Theologically and liturgically very little had changed among these splinter groups, and when it did it was mostly in matters of the Patriarch’s confession and relationship with the state rather than the practices of the people.27 After one of the episodes of schismatic conversion in 1681, the Roman Catholic Church discontinued using the heretical term ‘Nestorian’ in reference to the Uniate branch. However, it augmented the confusion by coining additional appellations by way of designating the geographical location of the Eastern Churches and patriarchies under its papal authority.28 The Uniates became ‘Chaldean Catholics’ or ‘Catholic Chaldeans’. Many ‘exotic combinations’ appeared subsequently by way of redefining the convert community and its patriarchs in a fashion palatable to the Roman Catholic Church. They included ‘Chaldeans of Assyria’ and ‘Eastern Chaldeans of Catholic Assyria’. As we shall see next, these interchangeable titles set off communal identity disputes that have lasted to this day.

Western Scholarship and the Search for ‘Accurate’ Appellations It should not be surprising that the abundance and interchangeability of titles befuddled the host of visitors from France, Rome, Britain and the United States in the nineteenth century. Those early Orientalists – scholars, proto-archaeologists,

28

The Chaldeans

clergy, travellers and artists – laboured to disentangle these appellations in dozens of ethnographies, reports and travelogues they wrote about the inhabitants of the region. These visitors had chanced upon two factions of Syriac Christians who situationally picked from the same set of titles to refer to themselves and each other. One group was officially designated ‘Chaldean’ by Rome, but which occasionally chose to call itself ‘Nestorian’. The other was doctrinally ‘Nestorian’ but referred to itself simply as ‘Christian’. ‘Nestorians’ seldom referred to themselves or to Chaldeans with this title, but rather used the derogatory ‘Frangayé’, or Franks, to denote the Catholic group’s disparaged connections with Latin authorities and Rome. Moreover, when the context was neutral, involving no discussions of theological or doctrinal professions, both groups referred to themselves and to members of the opposite group as ‘Surayá’ in their Aramaic dialect, or ‘Siryan’ in Arabic. For example, in 1852 the British Anglican missionary and pioneer scholar of the Church of the East George Percy Badger put the question of nomenclature before a Nestorian patriarch. The latter summed up the titular dispute with a blanket statement: ‘We call all Christians Meshihayé, Christiané, Soorayé and Nsâra; but we only are Nestorayé.’29 All of this complicated matters for the Catholic, Presbyterian and Anglican missionaries whose efforts to master the challenging Aramaic and Arabic vernaculars, plus their classical correlates, did not aid in this matter. The period during which the term ‘Chaldean’ was introduced into the discourse of the Church of the East, and whether or not it predated the usage of the term ‘Nestorian’, has been subject to much acrimonious debate among Western and Eastern scholars alike. Some references suggest that the overlap of ‘Chaldean’ and ‘Nestorian’ predates negotiations with the Holy See while others stress denominational conversions. That the Roman Catholic Church chose the far-fetched designation ‘Chaldean’ for its new converts when they had already appropriated so many names is potentially retraceable to an erroneous conflation of the location of modern Baghdad and ancient Babylon.30 This should lead us to conclude, Joseph argued, that the term Chaldean was given to the converts because of their geographical location at the time of conversion rather than their ethnic origins. The geographical identification existed long before the seventeenth century, when the term Chaldean ‘was used [by the Roman Catholic Church and ancient historians such as Xenophon] to refer to all the East Syrians because of the geographical location of their head church’.31 Wilmshurst (2011) and Galleti (2003) explain the choice of the title ‘Chaldean’ in linguistic terms. According to their reading, the choice derived from the Holy See’s awareness of the community’s use of the Syriac language, which was referred to as the Chaldean language in Europe.32 Girling (2018), on the other hand, suggests that the 108-year period between the first named Chaldean group’s establishment in 1445 in Cyprus to that of Mesopotamia in 1553 may clue us into the sources of the appellation confusion. The first group existed in isolation and likely did not have time to adhere and develop a distinctly ‘Chaldean’ ecclesial identity separate from the Nestorian Church of the East. Furthermore, with the first wave of conversions, which predated the Trent Council (1545–63) that brought the definitive shift to

1. The Making of the Modern Chaldeans

29

centralized papal leadership and jurisdiction, the Holy See did not intend to enter a union with an East Syriac community but rather merely hoped to bring East Syriac Cypriots into the Latin ordinary’s jurisdiction.33 Badger’s mid-nineteenth-century hypothesis about the use of the term Chaldean is equally compelling: The Romanists could not call them ‘Catholic Syrians’, or ‘Syrian Catholics’, for this appellation they had already given to their proselytes from the Jacobites, who also called themselves ‘Syrians’. They could not term them ‘Catholic Nestorians’, as Mr. Justin Perkins, the Independent American missionary does, for this would involve a contradiction. What more natural, then, than that they should have applied to them the title of ‘Chaldeans,’ to which they had some claims nationally in virtue of their Assyrian descent?34

That the modern Nestorians and Chaldeans were nationally and racially related to the ancient Assyrians was a common assumption among nineteenth-century American and European onlookers, who chanced upon what they deemed a ‘long oppressed nation’ during their Christian missions to the indigenous Christians of Mesopotamia.35 The terms ‘nation’ and ‘nationally’ may seem anachronistic prior to the crystallization of the post-Ottoman nation states in the Middle East, yet it is important to note that the designation of the Chaldeans as a nation could be retraced to an alternative source. What the term could have retroactively meant to Badger and other nineteenth-century visitors pertained strongly to religious and racial categorizations. From a Latin perspective, the term natio was used widely in the context of the Ottoman Empire to describe any social group with a shared ecclesial identity that stems from the group’s geopolitical particularity and as such was used interchangeably with the terms ritus, traditio and Ecclesia after the Council of Trent (1545–63).36 The use of linguistic criteria, location, physiognomy and custom to draw ethnic associations between the ancient and modern inhabitants of Mesopotamia is evident in Badger’s statement and those of other nineteenth-century missionaries and travellers who referenced dress and later ‘vulgar Syriac’ to draw similar associations.37 Significantly, however, these associations also indirectly reflect the widespread adoption of the Tridentine discourse that differentiated Eastern Christians in accordance with their union with the Holy See and the concept of universal Catholic Church of rites – which, following Girling, were by then largely coterminous with the concept of natio.38 In light of all of this, it becomes more patent why the converted (Chaldean) Eastern patriarchs continued using traditional and more familiar titles such as ‘Patriarch of the Orient’, ‘Servant of the Seat of Saint Thadae’ and ‘Servant of the Patriarchal Seat Which Is in the East’.39 While these patriarchs sometimes declined to apply the term Chaldean during the early decades of their conversion to the Catholic faith, non-converts who continued to follow the schismatic Nestorian doctrine of the Church of the East began petitioning for equal rights to the ‘Chaldean’ title given their geographical, and allegedly ethnic, proximity to ancient Babylon. Claims such as that Nestorians were the ‘real patriarchs’ of the

30

The Chaldeans

whole ‘Chaldean Church’ became not infrequent among non-convert patriarchs. The Catholic branch, who by now realized the prestige of the Chaldean title after having declined to apply it uniformly in the early phases of the conversion, usually dismissed such claims. Since the mid-nineteenth century, Western scholarship augmented the confusion of the terms ‘Chaldean’ and ‘Nestorian’. Onlookers trying to make sense of the appellation confusion invented titles like ‘Nestorian Chaldeans’, ‘Catholic Chaldeans’, ‘Papal Syrians’ and ‘Papal Nestorians’, among others, to distinguish between the Nestorians who began reuniting with the Catholic Church from 1552 onwards and those who did not.40 A key aspect distinguishes the discourse of the Catholic Church and nineteenth-century Europeans from the claims of descent that contemporary Chaldeans and Assyrians were making. The latter groups began to launch claims of exclusive and selective descent from the ancients, separating themselves and raising their status above each other. Sixteenth- to nineteenth-century ecclesiasts and Western scholars of Mesopotamia, in contrast, did not draw ethnic distinctions between the Mesopotamian groups they studied, such as the Uniate Chaldeans and the remaining Eastern Christian population that did not convert to Catholicism. They generalized the ‘national’ associations they assumed to exist between the contemporary locals and the ancient inhabitants of the area. For instance, Badger emphasized: If it be maintained, that the modern Nestorians are descendants of the ancient Chaldeans, and may therefore justly claim to the title, no valid objection can be urged against the assumption; but in this national acceptation of the term, the Nestorian proselytes to Rome, the Jacobites, Sabeans, Yezeedees, and many of the Coords [Kurds] of this district, may with equal right take to themselves the appellative, there being as much proof to establish their descent from the Chaldeans of old, or rather the Assyrians, as there is in the case of the Nestorians.41

While, generally, Rome held that the term ‘Chaldean’ predated the term ‘Nestorian’, non-Catholic European travellers, archaeologists and American missionaries presented a counterview. Those who visited the Nestorians in the nineteenth century resorted to romanticized historical sources to trace the origin of the appellation. The result was a host of hypotheses to that effect. In the early 1830s, American missionaries like Eli Smith, H.G.O. Dwight, Justin Perkins and Asahel Grant observed the Catholic Church’s recent coinage of the designation ‘Chaldean Church’. Grant argued the term ‘Chaldean’ was not applied to the Church of the East prior to the schism. In contradistinction, Horatio Southgate who also visited the region in the early 1830s noted that Eastern Christians call themselves Chaldeans and always have, stressing that ‘Chaldean’ was their ‘national name’.42 William Francis Ainsworth, the English engineer, geologist and doctor in charge of the expedition of the newly founded London-based Royal Geographic Society, and one of the first Englishmen to report about the Nestorians from a

1. The Making of the Modern Chaldeans

31

tour in the Middle East, wrote in 1840 that the Nestorians considered themselves Chaldeans and ‘descendants of the ancient Chaldeans of Assyria, Mesopotamia and Babylonia’ and that they only invented the term Nestorian in a 1681 schism to distinguish themselves from the converts to the Catholic faith.43 Austin Henry Layard, the pioneer archaeologist who excavated the ruins of Nineveh and was to write extensively about the Nestorians, also believed that the term Nestorian was a recent coinage. Like Ainsworth, Layard argued that the Roman Catholic missionaries of the sixteenth century applied it to the non-converts because they ‘found it necessary and politic to treat them as schismatic, and to bestow upon them a title which conveyed the stigma of a heresy’.44 Evidently, Layard and Ainsworth had not inspected the early documents of the Church of the East, which contain several references to the ‘Nestorian’ title since it was applied by way of a stigma in the fourth century. Layard himself sometimes distinguished between the ‘Chaldeans’, the ones who converted to Catholicism, and ‘Nestorian Chaldeans’, the ones who continued to observe the ancient faith.45 Hormuzd Rassam, a native of Mosul from a Chaldean family that converted to Anglicanism46 and Layard’s assistant-excavator, elaborated the same argument by adding that the title ‘Chaldean’ existed long before the Catholic conversion of Eastern Christians.47 In his conversations with a non-Catholic Eastern bishop, American missionary Perkins similarly noted how the bishop objected to being called Nestorian and demanded to be called Chaldean: I inquired if the Catholic Nestorians are not called Chaldeans. ‘They are’, he said, but added, ‘Shall a few Catholic converts from among our people arrogate to themselves the name of our whole nation? And must we surrender up our name to them?’ ‘Nestorius’, he continued, ‘we respect, as one of our bishops’, but we are under no particular obligation to be called by his name.’48

Averse to associations between their non-Catholic Eastern hosts and the Roman Catholics, Perkins and the other American missionaries often ‘forgot’ the bishop’s request and called him and his people Nestorians. Consistent in his dislike of the term, the bishop is reported to have ‘humorously’ remarked to Perkins, ‘We shall soon be at war if you do not cease calling us Nestorians.’49 This exchange attests to a tension between Western non-Catholics who disliked the term ‘Chaldean’ for the associations it evoked with Rome and the followers of Nestorius who disliked the term ‘Nestorian’ because it recalled a doctrinal heresy that separated them from the West. This tension might very well have been the impetus behind the selection of a third title that was acceptable to both groups. A few decades after the arrival of the Anglicans, the name ‘Assyrian’ was being fashioned for the non-Catholic Nestorians. In ‘Nestorian rituals’, noted Badger, the term ‘Chaldean’ appeared in contexts where the term did not bear reference to Christianity. Rather, it sometimes referred to ancient sects, also called ‘Sabeans’, or worshippers of the heavenly host. Patriarch Mar Abd Yeshua, for instance, used the term in this sense when he wrote: ‘Daniel, of Reish Aina, wrote poems against the Marcionites, Manichees, heretics,

32

The Chaldeans

and Chaldeans.’ 50 Grant of the American Presbyterian mission, on the other hand, conflated the unrelated terms ‘Nestorian’ and ‘Nazarean’, in the hope of advancing an argument about the ‘Hebrew’ descent of the Nestorians. ‘The word Nazarean or Nsâra [Arabic for Christians]’, he reasoned, ‘is specific in its application to the Nestorians, and is never applied to the Armenians or other Christian sects.’ Grant was promptly corrected by a rival Anglican missionary, the learned George Percy Badger, who pointed out that ‘Nasrâni […] is the common title for “a Christian” throughout the East,’ and clarified how Nestorians use the term Meshihayé [also meaning Christian]; literally, followers of the Messiah ‘when speaking of themselves, but generally add the word “Nestorayá”, when they wish to distinguish themselves from the Chaldeans who lay claim to the former title as their peculiar right, and never apply it to the Nestorians’.51 Joseph also argued against the notion of the coinage of the term Chaldean in the seventeenth century citing Pope Paul V (1605–21) who wrote to Patriarch Eliyya, ‘A great part of the East was infected by this heresy [Nestorianism], especially the Chaldeans, who for this reason have been called Nestorians.’52 Interpretations of the exact titles inscribed on tombs of patriarchs buried before the schism of the Eastern Church seem to have also varied considerably. While Layard, who excavated them, presented the inscription as ‘Patriarch of the Chaldeans of the East’, his contemporary Badger, after examining ‘all the epitaphs’ presented his counter-reading of ‘Patriarchs and Occupants of the Throne of Addai and Mari’.53 More recent reproductions of these epitaphs support neither of the two readings and present the titles as ‘Catholicos Patriarch of the East’, ‘Patriarch of the East’ or simply ‘Catholicos’.54 In sum, the perplexity and proliferation of titles within the context of the Church of the East and its followers played out along two different axes. The first is the nomenclature in use which belongs to more than one language and historical period, i.e. Old Syriac, Neo-Aramaic, Arabic and the transliterations of the pioneer archaeologists of the Assyrian cuneiform script. Added to that is how the liturgical and archaeological assignment of a particular name did not override people’s accustomed self-reference. The terms were interchangeable and remained so, and the contextual accuracy of each was more intelligible to their local users than to the Western visitors who tried to catalogue these ‘rediscovered’ communities.

From Nestorians to Assyrians In 2000, John Joseph republished his seminal 1961 study, The Nestorians and Their Muslim Neighbors. He chose to replace the original title with The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East, explaining that ‘the more controversial name “Modern Assyrians” is now used because of its greater unambiguity’. In the preface he elaborated that many of his modern readers were unaware that the ‘Nestorians’ of the original edition referred to the group of people who are more commonly known as modern ‘Assyrians’ today.55

1. The Making of the Modern Chaldeans

33

Contrary to the primordialist position of Assyrian nationalists today, who hold that the Assyrian nation has existed continuously since antiquity, modern historians of the Church of the East demarcate a much more recent recuperation of the title.56 The earliest appearance of the ‘Assyrian’ appellation took place in the late nineteenth century through the intervention of the Church of England and the American Presbyterian missions in Urmia. In looking at the ‘historicalonomastical’ origins of the term ‘Assyrian’, Wolfhart Heinrichs provides a morphological hypothesis for the transition from ‘Syrian’ to ‘Assyrian’. ‘Syrian’, or suryaye, was the most common self-designation for centuries, yet a degraded form, suraye (singular, suraya), was also common, and eventually enabled the link to Assyrian. The emergence of national consciousness among this population, coupled with the strong nationalist prerogative to link their heritage to monumental antiquity, conspired to promote the following rationale and disseminate it widely where it thrives among Assyrian nationalists today. Because Eastern Christians had referred to themselves as suraye, some modern nationalist Assyrians have tried to argue that suraye was an abbreviated form of asuraye, where the initial ‘a’ had simply dropped from the appellation at some point.57 Taking the form suraya to be a truncated asuraya prompted the appearance of an initial aliph letter under a cancellation line – ‘a common orthographic convention in Neo-Syriac’ – Heinrichs tells us ‘to indicate an etymological sound no longer spoken’. Becker and Heinrichs locate this practice in articles from the mid-1890s of the missionary publication Rays of Light by nationalist Assyrian writers.58 Other hypotheses for the origin of the modern name ‘Assyrian’ compete with the ‘lost-a’ hypothesis. One alternative is that the Greek language converted Attur (Assyria in Aramaic) to Asur, and that in turn became Sur and eventually Syria. Heinrichs notes that Attur/Athur, the Aramaic form of Assyria, was in use in the Middle Ages, referring to the area that surrounded the Assyrian capital of Nineveh. The Christians in this region were sometimes called by others atoraye in reference to their geographical proximity, but not in any sense of genealogical continuity with the ancient Assyrians. On account of this, the term Asori became the term for ‘Syrians’ in the Armenian language. It was used in reference to the East Syrians who settled in Tbilisi and other parts of the Russian Empire in the mid-nineteenth century. Possibly, it spread from there to Urmia, promoting the shift from suraya to asuraya and eventually aturaya.59 While the titular transformation from Syriac and Nestorian to ‘Assyrians’ was gradual, once these communities acknowledged themselves as Assyrian, the problematic Nestorian label was relegated to the folds of the past. Nestorianness in retrospect, to the modern Assyrians, was no more than a dim transitional link in a long chain, lying between a glorious ancient past and a revivable glory in the present, both of which are categorically Assyrian. The language of the AssyrianAmerican website, Nineveh on Line,60 for example, closely captures the way in which Assyrian communities construe their history today: The Assyrians, although representing but one single nation as the direct heirs of the ancient Assyrian Empire, are now doctrinally divided, inter

34

The Chaldeans sese, into five principle ecclesiastically designated religious sects with their corresponding hierarchies and distinct church governments, namely, Church of the East, Chaldean, Maronite, Syriac Orthodox and Syriac Catholic. These formal divisions had their origin in the 5th century of the Christian Era ….The Assyrians have been referred to as Aramaean, Aramaye, Ashuri, Ashureen, Ashuraya, Ashuroyo, Aturaya, Jacobite, Kaldany, Kaldu, Kasdu, Malabar, Maronite, Maronaya, Nestorian, Nestornaye, Oromoye, Suraya, Syrian, Syriani, Suryoye, Suryoyo and Telkeffee.61

One can find numerous comparable statements among contemporary Assyrians that emphasize continuity or Assyrian lastness. What is seldom acknowledged, however, is that modern Assyrians and their Assyrian Church only began to be widely known to the West as ‘Assyrians’ during the First World War. Before the Anglo-American missions they were known simply as ‘Syrians’62 or the ‘hardy mountaineers’ who occupied the region of Hakkari.63 In the nineteenth century European archaeologists called them ‘Nestorian’, arguing also that they should be called ‘Chaldean’ like their counterparts in Mosul and the surrounding villages of the Nineveh Plains.64 The early archaeologists and their associates interchangeably used the terms ‘Nestorian’ and ‘Chaldean’ to refer to Eastern Christians with the assumption that the distinction between the two was not ethnic but merely regional, referring to the residents of the plains versus the settlers of the mountains. Emil Botta and Henry Layard used the terms ‘Nestorian’ for the Christian mountaineer communities and ‘Chaldean’ for the communities of Mosul and the surrounding villages in reference to the local Christians whom they hired for the excavation work. For the two men and the lay Europeans in their environment, the term ‘Assyrian’ existed only in the context of the ancient kings and populations that once occupied the palaces they were unearthing in and around Nineveh. Something significant shifted towards the conclusion of the century to the extent that in 1881, when the ecclesiastical debate over who had the right to call his followers Chaldean and who did not was still ongoing, the mission that Archbishop of Canterbury sent to the region was named ‘Mission to Assyrian Christians’.65 In 1886 a second Canterbury mission reinforced the appellation. For the first time in its history, the Church of the East was formally associated with the ancient Mesopotamian Empire. By the end of the 1890s, a connection to ancient Assyria was made linguistically possible by the popular appeal of missionary and Western publications that suggested links between the names ‘Assyria’ and ‘Syria’. A 1895 article in the American mission periodical Rays of Light translated from Rubens Duval’s Traité de grammaire syriaque (Paris, 1881), and entitled ‘The Syrian Language’ begins, ‘The word “Suryaya” comes from the ancient language of the Greeks. It was taken from the name of the land, Syria, which comes from Assyria (Ator). This name was assigned to refer to the western part of the empire of the Assyrians [atoraye].’66 Another Rays of Light article from 1897 by prolific nationalist writer Mirza Mesroph Khan Karam advocated similar origins of the term. A 1904 Anglican mission published a Neo-Aramaic translation of the Histories of Herodotus, a text that erroneously draws a link between the Assyrians and the

1. The Making of the Modern Chaldeans

35

Syrians. These and further mission publications expressed ahistorical identitarian concepts that were soon taken up by local Eastern Syriac authors, who began to make explicit associations between themselves and the ancient Assyrians.67 By 1915, ‘Athuri’ was the Arabic term that referred to the Syriac-speaking refugees who entered Iraq in the aftermath of the Ottoman massacres during the First World War. Expelled from their former homes in present-day Turkey, several of the newly fashioned ‘Assyrians’ became refugees in Iraq under the protection of British authorities. There they contended with the somewhat pejorative Arabic homonym of this new appellation, ‘Athuri’, which the Iraqi government and citydwelling Chaldeans and Arabs used to refer to the newcomers.68 ‘Athur’ was the name that appeared in Aramaic sources in reference to the biblical Nineveh Plains. ‘Athuri’ was formerly used to denote the Christian inhabitants of the Mosul region,69 but with the introduction of the Assyrian label in the late nineteenth century by the Protestant missions to the Church of the East the meaning shifted to reference specifically the non-Chaldean Aramaic-speaking Christians of Northern Iraq. To be sure, the etymology and Church genealogy outlined above remained obscured to Iraqi authorities, and by extension modern Arabic-speaking Iraqis. The latter seldom equated the ‘Athuri’ refugees, whom the British officers settled in camps in the new nation state after the war, with the ancient ‘Ashuri’ palaces and winged bulls that dotted the northern plains. A different group of British ‘officers’, the pioneer excavators of Assyria, had brought these artefacts to Iraqis’ attention in the mid-eighteenth century and no natural association between the Christian inhabitants of the land and the ruins of their region presented itself at the time. The newly minted Iraqi government, in its turn, uniformly reinforced and used the term ‘Athuri’ instead of ‘Ashuri’ (Assyrian) in reference to the living people, maintaining a distinction between the incoming mountaineers and Assyrian antiquity. The modern group was considered foreign and a source of political unrest and bloodshed, while the ancient Assyrians were quickly becoming celebrated as part of Iraq’s national antiquity and one of its historical links to prototypical civilizations.70 The Nestorians-turned-Assyrians, as one might expect, strongly resented the title ‘Athuri’, and preferred instead to be identified as ‘Ashuri’. Ironically, the latter is an Arabic term that they themselves did not use in the private sphere, but that corresponded literally with the English designation ‘Assyrian’. In 1947, historian Albert Hourani wrote, ‘To-day the Assyrians of Iraq and Syria are all that is left of [the Nestorians].’ 71 Although Hourani designated the members of the Chaldean Catholic Church as former Nestorians, he held that the modern Assyrian Church, or Churches, represents the only doctrinal continuation of the Nestorian Church of the East. Virtually no living person, religious or secular, identifies as Nestorian today. Modern historians who try to deconstruct many nineteenth-century assumptions about the prevalence of the Nestorian identity among Eastern Christians now prefer the title ‘Church of the East’ to ‘Nestorian Church’. In contrast with the Nestorian identity, the Chaldean and Assyrian identities are thriving on many levels today. A proliferation of associations, publications and conferences came together to sustain these identities since the interwar period. This is especially the case in the Western

36

The Chaldeans

diaspora where Christian identities can be expressed more freely and where many Christians who trace their descent to the historical region of Mesopotamia can join their efforts to sustain the revived nomenclature and its pre-Islamic and preChristian associations.

Monumental Disputes: Assyrian or Chaldean Continuity? The heated appellation dispute among contemporary Chaldean and Assyrian nationalists does not revolve around the question of whether or not the ancient Assyrians and Chaldeans survived. There is no proof that the ancient Assyrian and Chaldean populations vanished after the fall of the Assyrian Empire in the seventh century BCE. The assumption that some indigenous population or populations continued is not in dispute. The survival of some versions of the Aramaic language attests to that, as does the fact that Mesopotamia continued to be populated throughout the centuries that followed the destruction of Nineveh. Rather, the current oppositional debates centre upon discourses of monumental history, a history which situates the present as the last link in a genealogical chain that unites blood-related humans across the millennia. Contemporary Chaldeans and Assyrians portray and preserve a monumental history that exhibits an ahistorical quality, a quality that compensates for the missing narrative of continuity in the community’s ethnic or national history through magnifying, inventing or distorting certain elements in the official version of the groups’ collective history. Contemporary Chaldean and Assyrian discourses that draw from monumental history appropriate the past in three terms. One is power: Was it the Chaldeans or the Assyrians who invented artefacts, ruled the other ethnic groups the longest, instated a particular doctrine, language or built certain monuments? The other is firstness: Was it the Chaldeans or the Assyrians who are racially older, had settled in the region first, had introduced certain features to the region and its people first, and were the predecessors of other ethnic or linguistic groups? The third is lastness: Was it the Assyrians or the Chaldeans who supplanted the other groups, survived the fall of the Assyrian Empire, and preserved a language, an ethnicity and a culture? Although textual records do not concretely attest to it, both Assyrians and Chaldeans were likely assimilated into mainstream Aramean culture after adopting the Aramaic language. There is a record of a recurring pattern of assimilation in Mesopotamia, before and after the Assyrians. The Sumerians, Babylonians, Hittites and Hurrians had all merged into the other dominating cultures when their empires declined. According to historian Georges Roux, the ancient Assyrians culturally ‘disappeared’ when they forgot their Akkadian mother tongue, which amounts to, in our modern parlance, a loss of ‘national identity’.72 The same can be said of the contemporaneous Chaldeans, and also of the other ethnic groups that populated the area during that period, including the Arameans whose culture and language were transformed by the adoptive ethnic groups. We can safely assume that a hybrid culture evolved in Mesopotamia after the fall of the Assyrian Empire. This culture retained certain Assyrian and Chaldean

1. The Making of the Modern Chaldeans

37

Figure 3  The current four major Chaldean/Assyrian identity debates. ‘All One People? Will – and Should – Chaldeans and Assyrians Unite?’

features from which modern Chaldeans and Assyrians are selectively drawing to craft distinct identity narratives of power, firstness and lastness. The selection process relies less on historical fact than on a preconceived notion of belonging at present. One of a handful of innovative ethno-racial interpretations of ancient Mesopotamian history today is that of Detroit-based historian Amer Fatuhi. In his self-published and Church-promoted book, Chaldeans since the Early Beginning of Time, Fatuhi argues that the modern Chaldeans are the only indigenous people of ancient Iraq, and hence its first inhabitants. Moreover, he argues that the Chaldean appellation ‘ethnically and nationally’ unified all the inhabitants of the region despite their racial differences, and therefore was the most prominent.73 Such construction of identity evades the arguments against the survival of a distinctly Chaldean identity. Chaldean identity per Fatuhi’s definition, which sets ‘Chaldean’ as the umbrella term that unified the original inhabitants of Mesopotamia despite variations in ethnicity or nationality, is the only identity that survived the blurring of racial lines and the collapse of the administrative units after the fall of the Assyrian Empire. As such, his argument relies on concepts of firstness and lastness of the Chaldean identity. In contrast with Fatuhi’s effort to elevate the status of Chaldeans to the rank of umbrella ethno-national identity encompassing all other racial groups, Assyrians have been numerically and ideologically more invested in singling out the Assyrian identity as a distinct, continuous, culturally superior and national identity. Edward Odisho selectively interprets Roux’s text in his publication The Sound System of Modern Assyrian (Neo-Aramaic). He cites Roux’s statement, ‘Assyria was literally resurrected’ during the Parthian period, c.129 BCE–224 CE. Odisho extracts this statement in order to elaborate how a ‘strong native Assyrian aristocracy’ carried out this resurrection by rebuilding Assyria anew. However, he mutes Roux’s overarching argument that no Assyrian involvement was noted

38

The Chaldeans

in the reoccupation and reconstruction of the towns and villages which, prior to the Parthian period, ‘had been lying in ruins for hundreds of years’. Odisho also dismisses Roux’s emphasis on the contrast between the revived settlements in the Nineveh Plains and their Assyrian and Babylonian antecedents.74 Arguments diverge and complicate one another as Chaldean and Assyrian nationalists seek to neutralize the discourses of power and firstness. Their aim is to consolidate the two appellations in hyphenated or hybrid new names, usually to create a larger unified lastness (i.e. the ancient line, our line, survived, irrespective of which historical group had come first or supplanted the other). This kind of argument is based on a discourse that I dub size-for-power – the assumption that the larger and more continuous the imagined community, the more likely it would be perceived as socially, culturally and politically powerful. While Fatuhi foregrounds Chaldean identity and Odisho the Assyrian one, Gassan Shathaya, who designates himself as the ‘General Secretary of the Chaldean National Congress’ from his California abode, argues that the origin of the Assyrians as a racial group is obscure. Alternatively, he argues that they were either an offshoot of the Semitic Babylonians, like the Chaldeans, or coexisted with them during the same period, thus undermining the possibility of Assyrian firstness.75 Although politically Shathaya argued for an autonomous Chaldean self-rule in Iraq, he creates a neutral zone of Chaldean and Assyrian power and lastness to ethnically consolidate the two groups in the American diaspora: The Chaldean as well as Assyrian names have been used by our people interchangeably to indicate the last native Mesopotamian Empire, that of the Chaldeans, as well as the longest running Empire, that of the Assyrians. We all should be proud of both those names.76

The examples of Shathaya, Fatuhi and Odisho, who are by no means the only advocates of ahistorical, primordialist readings of Assyrian and Chaldean identities, characterize three persistent trends in the contemporary Chaldean versus Assyrian appellation debates. Imminent political agendas mobilize the erratic appellation discourses among representative communities. Both Assyrian and Chaldean propagandists have exploited the ambiguity inherent in the ethnic continuity and contiguity of postAssyrian-Empire Mesopotamians. By so doing they accentuate the hybrid evolution of the Assyrians and the Chaldeans, their gradually diversified cultures and their adopted Aramaic language. Seven centuries after the fall of Nineveh, these ethnically hybrid Aramaic-speaking settlers of Mesopotamia who were beginning to intermingle culturally and politically were further unified by a common religion – Christianity.

ChaldoAssyrians/AsyroChaldeans: A Short-Lived Consolidation Attempt A consolidated term had been coined in the beginning of the twentieth century to unite the Chaldeans and the Assyrians, but without success. Petros Elias, commonly known as Agha Putrus (1880–1932), was an Ottoman citizen, Assyrian nationalist

1. The Making of the Modern Chaldeans

39

and military leader. He was the first to use the term ‘ChaldoAssyrian’. Against the will of his own Assyrian followers, Elias conjured the hyphenation to suggest the broad extent of his political authority (size-for-power) when he presented himself to the League of Nations in 1923 as the leader of all Assyrians and Chaldeans.77 The new coinage did not gain currency. It witnessed one brief appearance in a mid-1970s booklet that was entitled ChaldoAssyrians Yes, Arabs No, which was formulated to protest Ba‘thist Arabization policies in Iraq. The term did not reappear until 1996, when the Kurdistan Communist Party in Iraq appropriated the term despite the disapproval of the Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM). The ADM finally accepted the term in 2003, after the fall of the Ba‘thist state and a meeting with a delegation from the Chaldean Church in Michigan. Despite efforts to promote the hyphenated title, the ‘Assyrian’ appellation continued to dominate as an umbrella designation in various contexts. At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, where minority religious communities petitioned for a national homeland, ‘Assyrian’ was identified as an umbrella designation subsuming the following groups: ‘Nestorians, Chaldeans, Jacobites, a Maronite element, Persian Assyrians, Assyrians in Russia, and a Muslim Assyrian group that included Shakkaks and Yezidis’.78 In 1968, ‘One name [Assyrian] for one nation,

Figure 4  Map of ‘Assyro-Chaldee’ as proposed by Assyrian nationalist leader Petros Elias (Agha Petros) in a letter addressed to Percy Cox, High Commissioner to Mesopotamia. 28 December 1920.

40

The Chaldeans

one language for one nation, one leadership for one nation, and a homeland for our nation’ was the slogan with which the newly founded Assyrian Universal Alliance (AUA) summarized its nationalist ideology during its first congress convention in Pau, France.79 In 1994, the Assyrian and Chaldean Churches came together in the diaspora to express their desire for unification into one single Church. By then, the Nestorian title had become irrelevant, and other Assyrian Orthodox branches continued to function outside of this union. The solution seemed to lie in some form of consolidation of titles. In 1998, officials from the AUA and the Assyrian American National Federation (AANF) attended a meeting organized by the Chaldean Federation of America (CFA). During the meeting, diaspora Assyrian and Chaldean nationalists agreed that the former official US Census designation ‘Assyrian’ – which encompassed individuals and groups who otherwise identified with one or more of the aforesaid titles – be changed to ‘Chaldean-Assyrian’. Later in 2003 in Baghdad, the two biggest Christian political groups in Iraq, the ADM and the Assyrian Democratic Organization (ADO), organized a conference to reunite the various Eastern denominations in order to contend with the political challenges facing the Christian minority in Iraq. In its final declaration, the conference adopted the unifying title ‘ChaldoAssyrian’ for all the Syriac-speaking Christians in Iraq and demanded political, administrative and cultural rights for this group. Eventually, the Iraqi Transitional Administration Law issued on 8 March 2004 recognized the rights of the ChaldoAssyrians.80 During that same year, the patriarch of the Chaldean Church accepted ‘ChaldoAssyrian’ as a political designation, but his recognition lasted only a short time.81 Although satisfactory to the participating officials, these hyphenated appellations often generated unfavourable responses among some other groups of Chaldeans and Assyrians. Less than one month after the AUA proposed the title ‘Chaldean-Assyrian’ in 1998, the influential online Assyrian magazine Zinda responded in a provocative article that argued against the new name claiming that it excluded Assyrians who did not affiliate with the Chaldean Catholic Church, and that identifying Assyrians in the United States as Chaldean-Assyrian was ‘against our [Assyrian] century-old political and cultural progress made toward a decisive ethno-linguistic victory’. The article concluded by affirming that the ‘only initiative must be to enumerate nearly half a million Assyrians, both Chaldean and non-Chaldean, in the 2000 census’.82 Two problems with the terms ‘ChaldoAssyrian’ and ‘Chaldean-Assyrian’ erupted shortly after they gained momentum, causing their prompt downfall. First, since Syriac speakers go by the titles ‘Assyrian’ and ‘Syriac’ in Syria and Lebanon, the new terms would have assigned new identities in other parts of the Middle East without the consent of their users. Second, the Assyrians of Iraq continued to refer to themselves ethnically as Assyrians while reserving the hyphenated terms to serve political purposes exclusively. This caused the Chaldean Church to fear the loss of the Chaldean identity of its people, and so it rejected the ChaldoAssyrian label, insisting more on asserting its original Chaldean identity.

1. The Making of the Modern Chaldeans

41

In the context of the 2003 fall of the Ba‘thist regime in Iraq, the Chaldean National Congress (CNC) and the United Chaldean Democratic Party (UCDP) issued a joint press release protesting the lack of Chaldean representatives in the Temporary Iraqi Ruling Council. Gassan Shathaya promised a major campaign inside and outside Iraq to ‘protest the injustice against the Chaldeans’. With the claim that the Chaldeans constitute more than 80 per cent of the Christian population in Iraq, Shathaya categorically rejected any claims by any other group, including the Assyrians, to represent them. His conclusive demand was ‘Chaldeans must be represented by Chaldeans and no one else’.83 In the same year the California-based Chaldean bishop Sarhad Jammo joined the nationalist efforts of the CNC and the UCDP by formalizing a religiously coloured Chaldean separatist pronouncement. Meanwhile, the Chaldean Patriarchate and a group of Chaldean bishops sent a letter to Paul Bremer, the Civil Administrator of Iraq at that time. The letter petitioned for greater inclusion not only of the Chaldean people, but also of the Chaldean Church in the emerging Iraqi Council. It argued that the Chaldeans comprised 75 per cent of the Christians in Iraq and constituted a distinct ethnicity from the Assyrians. Subsuming the Chaldean people under the Assyrian category was, according to Bishop Jammo and his co-signers, ‘an injustice against our people, for which we protest here explicitly and insistently’.84 The 2005 permanent Iraqi Constitution opted for using the two terms separately, despite an earlier announcement that year to use the term ‘ChaldoAssyrian’ in the upcoming Iraqi Census. It vouched to guarantee ‘the administrative, political, cultural and educational rights for the various nationalities, such as Turkmen, Chaldeans, Assyrians and all other components’,85 thus differentiating between Chaldeans and Assyrians as two separate entities. Today, ‘ChaldoAssyrian’ is mainly alive in the discourse of the ADM, while most Chaldean and Assyrian political as well as religious organizations reject the label. In his 1874 essay, ‘On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life’, Friedrich Nietzsche distinguished between monumental, antiquarian and critical history.86 He argued that people who wish to preserve or sanction their cultures in the present or seek to accomplish something important revert to history as a monument, a reconstructed past that deceives by analogy and seduces through the similarities that inspire fanaticism. Few other groups find as pressing a need to preserve and sanction their ethno-religious identities today as the Assyrians and Chaldeans of modern Iraq. Since the US-led occupation of the country in 2003, they have been, along with other minorities, the subject of a relentless, escalating sectarian persecution and mass internal and external displacement. Beyond the conceptual threat to their identities under the Ba‘thist regime, which did not sanction ethnic identifications separate from the ‘Arab’ and ‘Kurd’ labels, Chaldeans and Assyrians have witnessed a veritable existential threat since the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) occupied Mosul in summer 2014. ISIS had redubbed them ‘Nasara’, or Nazarenes (hence the infamous red Arabic ‘nun’ letter that went viral on social media in an effort to express solidarity with Iraq’s persecuted Christians), to single out the Christian component of their identities, obliterating by so doing any trace of their ethnic or denominational particularity along with their long record of

42

The Chaldeans

national integration into modern Iraq as Iraqi citizens, which was coterminous with the creation of the nation state in 1921. Pre-Christian and early Christian contexts formed the conceptual backdrop against which nineteenth-century Christian missionaries and excavators of antiquity perceived the modern Chaldeans and Assyrians upon their arrival in Mesopotamia. Today, these ancient contexts are instrumental in fortifying identity discourses among contemporary Chaldeans and Assyrians, but also in waging sectarian wars against these Christian groups in Iraq as protégés of imperialist Western powers. This chapter highlighted some areas where the relationship between Iraq’s Christian groups and the Christian West could be viewed as complicit. The historical backdrop against which the perplexing evolution of the terms ‘Chaldean’ and ‘Assyrian’ took place reveals the recurrent patterns of dependency on the Christian West. The next chapter looks more closely at this strategic Orientalist exchange, staging and penchant to come to the aid of Eastern Christians during times of political adversity.

2 A R C HA E O L O G Y , P H I L O L O G Y A N D M I S SIO N : T H E M O D E R N H I ST O RY O F A N C I E N T C HA L D E A N H I ST O RY

‘Traditions’ which appear or claim to be old are often quite recent in origin and sometimes invented. Eric Hobsbawm, The Invention of Tradition1 In 1879, Yacoub and Mourassa Yavre, an Eastern Christian couple, embarked on a two-year tour of Victorian England. Travelling from Urmia to Tiflis, Odessa and then through the Austro-Hungarian Empire to Berlin and on to London with no major institutional backing or state sponsorship, the couple relied on the diasporic Eastern Christian communities who had settled in the Tsarist Empire, and on support from the British and American missions. Among the first graduates of the American Protestant Mission schools in Urmia, the couple made the arduous journey to perform as ‘orientals’ in England’s churches, missionary institutions and affiliated schools. They donned full traditional garb and posed as experts on oriental manners, languages and cultures. One of the high notes of their performance came when Yacoub spoke and prayed in Aramaic, his native language, while Mourassa, who had mastered the English language which she learned at Fiske Seminary, the American girl’s normal school, translated for an impressed Anglican audience. ‘I feel that I am hearing my savior speak, for He spoke in that language,’ reported one of their hosts in Manchester, who had introduced the couple to his guests saying, ‘If you wish to see Isaac and Rebecca, here they are,’ adding that Yacoub and Mourassa had received Christianity while the ancestors of the present English audience were still savages.2 Forty years have passed since Edward Said famously proclaimed that ‘all of Orientalism stands forth and away from the Orient’, making sense only as it relied on ‘Western techniques of representation that make the Orient visible, clear, “there” in discourse about it’.3 Although Orientalism nearly vitiated faith as an analytical concept for fear of discrediting Muslims’ actions as strictly faith based, the book’s foundational idea that Orientalism is a representational framework is seminal to understanding how Oriental Christian identities formed and functioned – as distinct from the notions of the monolithic ‘Islam’ that Said deconstructed – primarily by virtue of their Christianity.

44

The Chaldeans

Yacoub and Mourassa’s oriental tour was a novelty, but it was also far from one of a kind. Self-orientalizing appearances crowd the cultural accounts of mid-nineteenth-century European novels, missionary reports and travelogues, depicting these ‘rediscovered’ ancient Christians in their time-preserved oriental settings.4 They speak not only of Europe’s romantic appetite for a quixotic Orient, but also of the enamoured reception of customary framing of the ‘Nestorians’ and their Assyrian and Chaldean contemporary offshoots in these fin de siècle intellectual circles. There, these Eastern Christians featured not only as ‘primitive’ mountain Christians, ‘Lost Tribes’,5 ‘backward races’6 and ‘speakers of the language of Jesus’7 – but also as an important corollary, as modernized natives, ones whom the ‘advanced races’8 of the Protestant missions imagined to be racially and culturally distinct from, if not superior to, their Muslim Arab counterparts in Ottoman Mesopotamia.9 Although Catholic conversions in Mesopotamia had begun in the sixteenth century and continued well into the turn of the twentieth century, the transformations  in  collective Eastern Christian identities from Nestorian to Chaldean and Assyrian are to a large extent retraceable to two critical midnineteenth-century encounters with the West that were predicated on representation. These encounters were, at the same time, symbolic of European power over the Orient rather than a veridic discourse about it.10 They ushered in synergistic conceptual transformations that worked implicitly as civilizing missions and brought modern Chaldeans and Assyrians to occupy a hybrid cultural status (Eastern like the Muslim majority, but Christian like the West) at home and abroad. One encounter was with the new Christian missions of the Church of England and American Protestants. The second with the archaeological discoveries of the French and British excavation posts in various locations in Mesopotamia where the ruins of the ancient Assyrian Empire were unearthed and matched with the corresponding biblical accounts. These archaeological and missionary pursuits coincided with each other, thereby offering the nineteenth-century Chaldeans of the plains and the Assyrians of the mountains a multifaceted exposure to Western cultural and religious perceptions which they incorporated into their own narratives of self and Other that were to take shape in the following centuries. At a time when the Ottoman administrative millet system was dissolving, the missions were fostering new discursive associations between the enclaves of Christians among whom they evangelized and the ancient Chaldeans and Assyrians whom they knew through biblical accounts and encountered anew through excavation finds in Mesopotamia. More than a history of the Christian and archaeological missions in Mesopotamia, this chapter is a study of these missions’ power to foster the ancient–new Eastern Christian consciousness and to inflect it with numerous discriminatory identities. The story of Chaldeans and Assyrians was an externalized, public mobile narrative that developed en route first between Europe and Mesopotamia. It matured within a matrix of transforming power relations between Western colonialism and the Ottoman Empire. Yacoub and Mourassa’s story would not have seen the light of day had it not been for their

2. The Modern History of Ancient Chaldean History

45

great grandchild John Yohannan (1911–97), who, decades after fleeing the ethnic cleansing of Assyrians and other Christians from northwest Iran during the First World War, helped his mother translate and edit her parents’ travel notes from his diasporic stronghold in New York, where he spent his life as a scholar, editor and translator of Middle Eastern literature at City College of New York.11 The transmission of this narrative is an example of how later on in the nation-building era, the setting of the development of the Assyrian and Chaldean identities and their respective communities extended to include the United States, Iraq and transit countries like Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. Religious classification and representation of the Eastern Christians gave way to a development of a secularized nationalist identity by the end of the nineteenth century. As we saw, during the early encounters between Western visitors and Eastern Christians, the rhetoric of firstness, monumental antiquity and Christianity was in its formative stages. The idea of an inherent ‘East vs. West’ distinction was taking compelling shape simultaneously as the ‘Chaldean’ and ‘Assyrian’ labels were being successfully engineered. Within the imagined dichotomy the Eastern Christians were cast as the conduit between the ancient biblical roots of the Orient, and the culmination of modernity in Europe, whereby religion and nation, as Becker explains, became ‘not discontinuous from each other nor inherently linked […] but two related instances of the reifications of modernity’.12 The ‘true Christianity’ which the evangelical missions brought was steeped in the ideas, practices and affects of this European modernity such that it became the harbinger of secular reforms that resulted in crafting national identities. While Chaldeans, their predecessors (Nestorians) and co-converts (Assyrians) were inseparable constructs of this West-imagined, perpetually ancient yet in need of modernizing Orient, these groups and individuals also need to be examined as auto-orientalizing middlemen and culture-makers who sometimes defied or complicated the imagined East–West binary, and whose range of ethnic and religious identification and self-representations expanded, ramified and overlapped enormously towards the conclusion of the century as the Ottoman inter-religious hierarchies began collapsing.

A Land of Many Missions Eastern Christians’ conversion to Catholicism was a gradual and discursive process that spanned the course of several centuries and left many perplexing and overlapping titular distinctions in its wake which manifest in identity disputes between upholders of the Chaldean and Assyrian appellations to this day. Several missions joined the area in the nineteenth century, working side by side in a competitive atmosphere. The key aspect that distinguished the American and Anglican missions from the Catholic missions was that they did not aim to convert Eastern Christians. Instead, they aimed to spread the Christian Gospel to all, Christians and non-Christians. As evangelization among the Muslims was outlawed, the long-term plan was to reform the Eastern Churches and prime them

46

The Chaldeans

to evangelize the Muslims themselves. These ‘heretical’ Christians would be in a position to take the Christian message to non-Christians after rectifying and modernizing their beliefs through education.13 While the Catholics aimed to gain converts, the Anglicans sought to keep the same Eastern Christian populations from converting to Catholicism and becoming ‘Chaldeans’ by helping them maintain their ancient creed minus the heretical aspect of ‘Nestorianism’. The Anglican mission as a whole was premised upon preserving the old faith and order, which they believed Eastern Christians embodied but were, paradoxically, incapable of nurturing properly. When defining their mission, Anglicans asserted that it held an intermediate position between Roman Catholicism and Protestant teachings. Like Catholics, Anglican missionaries emphasized the value of external authority and sacramental grace, and like Protestants they sought to inculcate the notion of ‘man’s complete responsibility as an individual’.14 With this last aspect of their ideology, both Anglicans and Presbyterians drew the attention of Eastern Christians to an unprecedented notion of self-rule, which soon after combined with the political exigencies of the time to activate a modern Assyrian proclivity towards a discourse of national autonomy. As Anglicans and Catholics indulged their subjects in understanding their theological differences, American missionaries, mainly Congregationalists and Presbyterians, emphasized ‘reform’ and ‘revival’ through secular education that focused on literacy, autonomy, progress and cultivation of the private sphere of the self and the family. Reform came in the shape of a project of return to true knowledge, not simply intellectual but also intuitive knowledge that penetrates the hearts and establishes the ethical well-being of all humans. As such, the evangelical reforms were imbricated in a ‘moral narrative of modernity’, that set out to liberate humans from the ‘false beliefs and fetishisms’ that undermined their freedom.15 These teachings, which were influenced by the concept of a penitential return to ‘biblical Christianity’, converged to frame an explicit Christian theology of nations, disproportionately linking the ideological evolution of the various offshoots of the Church of the East to the American mission.16 In contrast with the Catholic Church’s supercilious attitude and lack of interest in the history and core beliefs of its Uniate Churches, the Protestant missions of the nineteenth century came armed with the Enlightenment critique of ecclesiastical authority, and shared the belief that Oriental churches lay dormant under the spell of heresy and were in desperate need of redemption. However, ‘rather than error in theological belief ’, the new missions attributed the calamity of the Nestorian Church and its communities to a ‘spiritual death’.17 What the Church needed, they believed, was not the abolishment of an old order and the imposition of a new creed as the Catholics did, but a spiritual awakening and a refocusing on the individual’s experience, conscience and self-reliance.18 Bringing a doctrine of salvation by faith, the evangelical projects presupposed ‘the independence of individual judgement and the primacy of individual will’.19 This discourse primed the ground for a rapid succession of effects from individual judgement to nationalism that has become

2. The Modern History of Ancient Chaldean History

47

the hallmark of recent studies of the contact between foreign missions and the modern Middle East.20 Together, the distinct agendas of each of the new missions to Mesopotamia reveal the various roles they played in bringing about ‘modernity’ to the local Christian communities. There are three levels at which European modernity was introduced to these populations by the missions of the nineteenth century: (1) materially, through improvement of living conditions and provisions of schools and places of workshop, but also, I argue, by turning Eastern Christians and their culture into cultural ‘deliverables’ in the West; (2) ideologically, through conjuring up ancient–new collective identities and introducing the concepts of progress and self-rule; and (3) linguistically, by implementing Aramaic language reforms in ways that contributed to the construction of a national consciousness to accompany the discourses of reformed and modernized Chaldeanness and Assyrianness. Being modern like the West and compliant with colonial regimes eventually earned these populations ‘minority’ status as Christian subjects in the Muslim-majority Arab states, a status that associated minority religions with the private sphere to which the new states claimed to be neutral but also placed these Christians on a global political grid that henceforth sutured their intelligibility to that of the Western powers that both framed and claimed the need to protect them.21 The plurality of Christian missions, their modernization efforts and the secularization trends of the scientific Victorian context worked synergistically not only to offset these communities in new ways from the overarching Muslim communities, but also to give shape to the bifurcated Chaldean and Assyrian identities that exist today. The clash between the robust bureaucracy and impersonal operations of the Catholic mission and the concepts of religious liberty and individualism which the Protestant missions fostered precipitated the often-overlooked proxy wars that gradually shaped local ‘minority’ identities. Paradoxically, the foreign missions whose competing orientations, offerings and demands caused the chronic splintering of the identity of Eastern Christian communities also created the context where new demands for national unity flourished. However, far from a reunification of the original melat, the emergent distinction between religion and nationality created the new Assyrian nationalist umbrella under which the various religious denominations would gather.22 After the exile and genocide of 1915, in an era where the new League of Nations presided over the transfer, settlement and protection of the Middle East’s minorities, this Assyrian national consciousness, coupled with the solidification of a writing system of the vernacular language constitutive of it, became the basis for a perennial Christian territorial claim for the Nineveh Plains region. These claims were to be restated with each of the episodes of sectarian violence to the present as the subsequent chapters will show. Chaldeans and their Eastern Syriac correlates featured in the early missionary proxy wars as actors with some ecclesial agency. Through their unmet territorial claims, sectarian targeting and increasingly precarious legal status as religious ‘minorities’ in the Arab world, they also feature as political pawns on the postcolonial demographic map of the Middle East.

48

The Chaldeans

Early Missions and the Power of Capital From the outset, the history of Catholic missions among the Eastern Christians showcased the financial and political pre-eminence of the Roman Church in Mesopotamia. These missions with their Jesuit, Dominican, Lazarist, Carmelite and Franciscan orders were consistently better funded than their competitor missions from the thirteenth century until the First World War. This fact alone could account for why the greater majority of modern Mesopotamian Christians profess the Catholic creed today and call themselves Chaldean. By extension, it also accounts for why it became so crucial for the relatively small Assyrian nationalist movement to conceptually encompass this Chaldean majority through claims of shared race, ethnicity, language and deep history in efforts to numerically augment the reach of Assyrianness as a national identity. More than eight centuries had lapsed between the exile of Nestorius in 435 and the first recorded contacts between the East Syriac Christians and the Roman Catholic Church in the thirteenth century. The two Christian institutions were so isolated from each other that the Catholic Church had not even kept an updated record of the Nestorian Church’s extensive missionary activity in China and India.23 The patriarchs of the Church of the East in the early phase of their dealings with Rome were generally more interested in winning papal commercial partnership (often misrepresented as ‘protection’ in later histories of the conversion) than adopting the Catholic faith.24 The initial Catholic conversion contracts were strictly between the Eastern patriarchs who accepted the offer and the pope himself, with the latter’s prerogative to breach these contracts at any time, as he sometimes did. Meanwhile, the other Eastern patriarchs reacted violently to these clandestine dealings with Rome, which entailed challenging their power and the proliferation of rival schismatic lines. The Ottoman Sublime Porte, the hereditary rival of the pope, likewise frowned upon the transfer of spiritual leadership to Rome from the Eastern patriarchs who were under his directive as Nestorians. As early as the thirteenth century, the various patriarch lines of the Church of the East discerned the viability of cooperating with the Catholic Church not only to gain the upper hand in their internal disputes, but also to facilitate the Church’s bureaucratic dealings with the Islamic state. Catholic missionaries often extended Franco-Papal funds to pay the exorbitant sums necessary for obtaining church-building permits and settling other logistics in return for Catholic conversions, and these conversions almost always took place under the auspices of the local Muslim rulers of the Persian and Ottoman Empires, rather than in opposition to them. During the reign of the last Safavid ruler Shah Abbas (1571–1629), for example, the first Catholic bishopric directly administered from Europe was created in Baghdad. Pope Urban VIII (1568–1644) decreed the creation of a Roman Catholic bishopric under a ‘Babylonian’ title distinct from the ‘Chaldean’ bishopric. The new bishopric ‘arose of a remarkable rapprochement between Shah Abbas and the Pope’, creating, according to common historical accounts, more ‘tolerable conditions’ for the Christian communities in the Persian Empire.25

2. The Modern History of Ancient Chaldean History

49

In addition to the lure of monetary remunerations, in the early phases of creating the Chaldean line the Catholic Church frequently promised the solicited Eastern patriarchs jurisdiction over all the Uniate Chaldeans.26 When these patriarchs succumbed to the temptation of monopolizing power, the antecedent Chaldean patriarchs were forced to step down from their office, which would have become redundant. When most of these indirectly superannuated patriarchs refused to relinquish their titles and posts, schismatic lines of patriarchy appeared. Since political prestige rather than doctrinal conviction was at the root of these conversions and reversed conversions, many of the Eastern Catholic patriarchs who could no longer secure the subsidy of the pope pursued the alternative of ceding power to the supremacy of the Sublime Porte of Constantinople, thus contributing to widening the broader historical schism between Eastern and Western Christianity. All in all, the thirteenth century witnessed sporadic Dominican and Franciscan missionary activity among the Christians of the Nineveh Plains, resulting in conversions of some Nestorian patriarchs and laity, but not in the establishment of a solid Catholic community in Mesopotamia. A first formal union and nominal conversion that ushered in the patriarch’s designation as ‘Chaldean’ took place in 1445, yet a collective conversion did not begin until 1552. In fact, in the early phases of the Catholic conversions, neither the Sublime Porte nor the bishops of the Church of the East fully recognized the Chaldean patriarchs.27 Despite the material rewards that accompanied each substantial conversion, the impetus behind the increased membership in the Catholic order, as we saw in the case of Yuhannan Sulaqa, was an internal schism from the hereditary line of Mar Shimun rather than a spiritual or doctrinal missionary success. As the Vatican was invited to deepen its involvement in the affairs of the Eastern patriarchs, the schismatic events became successively framed as a doctrinal struggle between the upholders of the Catholic faith and a Nestorian heresy in need of stemming out.28 Within this same matrix of power, foreign political and religious presence were inseparable in Ottoman Catholic Mesopotamia. Since the sixteenth century, France, ‘Eldest Daughter of the Church and enthusiastic participant in Ottoman commerce’, extended protective privileges to its Christian ra‘aya, under the pretext of mediating their relationship with the Sublime Porte. In addition to offering religious and diplomatic protection to the Latin missionaries and their local protégés, the Franco-Papal connection fortified the protection of the economic assets of the Catholic Church and France in the region.29 The advent of Latin missionaries to Aleppo and Sidon coincided with the establishment of a French consul and factory in these cities, reflecting how a strong European political presence created a relatively safe environment for the pioneer Christian missions. Before the end of the seventeenth century these missionaries, protected by the Catholic monarch’s consul and the French consul in Sidon, extended their operations to Damascus, Baghdad and Mosul.30 The French authorities, joined by the Catholic Austrian and Italian governments, eventually extended their protective privileges to include the indigenous Uniate Christians, mainly the Maronites in Lebanon and the Chaldeans in Iraq.

50

The Chaldeans

Catholic France dominated the Middle East economically and politically more than any other Western power of the time, to the extent that the Catholic mission remained far more resilient than the other Western missions in the region even when the Vatican interest in gaining new converts waned during the eighteenth century. Centuries of interacting with the Franco-Papal presence inculcated a style of profit-oriented dealings with foreign intervention in the land. Eastern Christians had accommodated themselves to a system of rewarded conversions. For the majority of their patriarchs, material and social benefits took precedence over doctrinal affiliation. For instance, Patriarch Eliya IX Shimun (1617–60) offered to make a Catholic confession of faith in return for the Vatican’s permission to build a Chaldean Church in Rome and leave the doctrine and discipline of the Church of the East intact.31 In the 1830s, the Presbyterians and Anglicans arrived to Mesopotamia to witness the Catholic followers of the Chaldean Church – and to a greater extent the followers of the Church of the East – in a deplorable state. They were persecuted by the Kurds and ravaged by plagues, taxation and governmental neglect. When none of these enthusiastic missionaries seemed to demand that they alter their daily religious practices or cultural customs as a prerequisite for attending their institutions, receiving their material gifts and reading their Bibles, it seemed perfectly practical to opt for collaboration. The new missionaries themselves, on the other hand, were revolted by the pragmatic culture they encountered among local Christians. The Catholic Church in Mesopotamia earned a reputation of opportunism and materialism among them. Presbyterian Justin Perkins (1805–69), founder of the American ‘Mission to the Nestorians’, and its director for thirty-five years, reported having once received a Chaldean deacon from the vicinity of Mosul who declared that he would ‘turn’ for money. ‘On being farther pressed, he repeated that he would not turn without money; but for ten tamons or some such consideration, he was ready to change his belief.’ Perkins reflected that no doubt this ‘poor Catholic’ was making his proposal in earnest, and that he would probably afterward seek to reconvert in return for more money.32 Perkins described to his audience at home in Massachusetts how in 1846 he chanced upon entire villages that had recently agreed to become Catholic on condition that the papal bishop would rebuild their churches. He quoted one of the village’s elders: ‘But he [the bishop] has not done so […] and if he fails, we will again become Syrians [Eastern Christian].’ He also described how entire districts were reported to have converted to Catholicism, such as that of Mezury in 1841, but only the priests accepted the new doctrines, while the populations ‘refused to renounce the ancient faith’.33 On many such occasions, drawing people into the Catholic faith involved tempting them with monetary compensation, a feature that led the Protestant missionaries to denigrate these Catholic conversions as titular, rather than doctrinal.34 There are many extant examples of individual attempts to garner a little profit from conversion, but what was effective on the broader collective level were the conversion actions taken by the heads of the Church. In pursuit of security subsequent to a number of Kurdish incursions, the Eastern patriarchs began to

2. The Modern History of Ancient Chaldean History

51

reach out to any potential source of help, irrespective of the repercussions on the relationship with the Catholic Church. At that time, the power of the British authorities in the region was increasing, to the extent that the Anglican Church held the sway over the administration of the southward migration of nonCatholic Christian refugees, rather than the Franco-Papal authorities who were discussing the prospect of settling the mountain Christians in the plains in and around Mosul.35 The British continued to be the main foreign authority to manage the affairs of the Assyrians after their mass exodus from Turkey during the First World War, a fact that shaped the divergence between the Chaldean branch, which remained religious in identity and derived its protection from Rome, and the Assyrian branch, which developed an ethnic and national identity under the auspices of the British colonial system. The nineteenth century, the golden age of Christian missionary activity in the Middle East, coincided not only with archaeological missions, but more broadly with the consolidation of colonial rule in the region. In 1863, fifty-three Eastern bishops and priests signed an appeal for help to the Queen of England, followed shortly by an appeal to the archbishop of Canterbury. For the first time in the history of the Church of the East, great hopes were placed on England rather than the Vatican. Explicit protests about the conditions of the Roman Church were passionately articulated, portraying it along with the pope as the ‘Muhammad of the West’. Shortly after these appeals, the ‘Assyrian Christian Aid Fund’ was founded in 1868.36 In addition to the funds designated for Assyrian aid, the Anglican Church sent envoys to investigate Assyrian conditions in the following decade. These investigations mark an important point because they resulted in the establishment of the archbishop of Canterbury’s ‘Mission to Assyrian Christians’ in 1881.37 For the first time in the history of the Church of the East, the name of the Church was formally attached to the ancient Mesopotamian Empire, the ruins of which were just recently being revealed to the world through a British excavation campaign. Conjuring up a Christian Assyrian identity, which was reinforced by additional missionary dispatches to these ‘abysmally ignorant mountain Nestorians’38 from 1886 until the First World War, is the ecclesial context that rendered the term ‘Nestorian’ obsolete. In its place, the name ‘Assyrian’ was fashioned for the nonCatholic Nestorians. This religious context coincided with the archaeological one that fortified the process of ‘Assyrianization’. Along with the revived title a new selfawareness began to stage the Assyrians as the oldest, largest and most doctrinally ‘pure’, autochthonous community in Mesopotamia.

A Victorian Backdrop: Archaeology, the Bible and the ‘Discovery’ of Eastern Christians Although Catholic missions had been at work among Eastern Christians since the sixteenth century, more than anything, the notion of ‘discovery’ defined AngloAmerican interactions with these communities in the nineteenth century. The Mission of the Church of England took interest in the Christian communities

52

The Chaldeans

after an English official ‘rediscovered’ them in 1820. Claudius James Rich, who worked for the East India Company stationed in Baghdad, aroused the interest of English and French authorities in excavating the mounds of Nineveh through his two-volume publication, Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan and on the Site of Ancient Nineveh (1836). The local Christian communities surrounding the excavation sites became noticed as a consequence. Further ‘discoveries’ of the Nestorian tribes that settled between the Euphrates and the Tigris Rivers took place in 1835 when the British government launched its steamboat ‘Euphrates Expedition’.39 The confirmed discoveries of an ‘ancient Christian community’ in the Hakkari Mountains caused a sensation among Anglican and Protestant missionaries. ‘Here were Christians speaking Syriac, a language closely akin to that spoken by our Lord Himself,’ Anglican historian Aubrey Vine reminisced in 1937, ‘Christians who had maintained their faith for over a thousand years as an island community in a sea of Islam.’ From the Anglican viewpoint, the Church’s ‘history went back far before the Reformation, which owed no allegiance to the Pope; a Christian Church which in some superficial ways might even be called an Eastern Protestantism.’40 The discovery of a ‘pure’ Christianity that predated Roman Catholicism was immensely joyful for the American Protestants, too, who came upon these isolated communities in the 1830s. Conceptually speaking, this was a discovery that paralleled the physical discovery of ancient Mesopotamian artefacts. Nor was it a coincidence that these missions brought the Eastern Christians of the mountains to the limelight and culturally showcased them to the Christian West as a group of pure Christians with close geographical, ethnic and linguistic ties to the first Christians, including Jesus himself, at the same time as the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia were being shipped for display in America’s and Europe’s finest museums. Missionaries and archaeologists stayed out of each other’s way for the most part. Yet both influenced the forging of an ‘ethnic selection’ myth by which the modern Chaldeans and Assyrians became associated with the ancient civilizations for the first time. It was amid a charged Victorian intellectual climate that derived its understanding of history from the Greek classics and biblical studies that the missions and pioneer European archaeologists carried out their work in and around the remains of Nineveh and Babylonia in the mid-nineteenth century. What makes the excavations key to the Protestant missionary contexts and to understanding the formative decades of modern Chaldean and Assyrian identities is the discourse the archaeological context sets off among secular as well as religious intellectual circles in Europe. At the time of the excavations, a heated debate within these circles, the kind of circles that were to feature cultural presentations from ‘oriental’ visitors like Yacoub and Mauressa and others, fortified the impression of a viable link between the biblical accounts of Assyria, Babylonia and Chaldea and the living Eastern Christian communities encountered in the same region. Prior to the archaeological campaigns in Mesopotamia, the Bible, Herodotus and Xenophon’s accounts were the main sources that confirmed the existence of cities such as Babylon and Nineveh but they did not align well and sometimes contradicted

2. The Modern History of Ancient Chaldean History

53

each other. Before the excavations at Nineveh revealed striking parallels between the biblical accounts of Assyria and the descriptions on the tablets, reliefs and palace walls, the general attitude of the Western intellectual community bordered on viewing the biblical accounts as mythical and legendary. Xenophon’s memoirs and Herodotus’ histories were presented and celebrated as a contrasting narrative in European salons whose literary and scientific interests were beginning to shift towards secular themes. The discovery of material evidence of the existence of Babylonia and Assyria in the 1830s tipped the existing ideological order in favour of the Bible once again. The archaeological discoveries took place during the same decades when the Anglican and American missions were establishing strongholds in Mesopotamia. They reduced the gap between the secular and the biblical accounts of history in an expanding civic society and a public sphere where American and European communities more frequently encountered representations of both living Easterners and monumental artefacts in the form of texts and museum exhibits. All of these deliverables came to be lumped together generically as ‘Assyrian’ at a time when Aramaic was beginning to occupy the status of the primordial language of God.41 The cuneiform texts that were found in Nineveh and Babylonia revealed proper names of kings and places that paralleled the accounts of the Old Testament rather than the Greek historians, to the frustrated surprise of the secularist European antiquarians who tried to decipher them according to their command of the Greek classics. In the end, using the erratic Greek histories to aid learned Englishmen with interpreting the Assyrian tablets discovered from 1842 onwards proved unreliable and counterproductive. The scholarly shifts in interpreting Greek and biblical sources in light of the new archaeological finds – the cuneiform reliefs that pioneer archaeologist Austen Henry Layard shipped to the British Museum in 1847 and later – were beginning to change the understanding not only of the historical roots of Christianity and its timelines, but also, consequently, of Mesopotamia itself and its peoples.

Victorian Chronology of Firstness When the Victorian age was preoccupied with a mission of ‘chronoligizing’ the Bible, Bible scholarship was still following a text created in 1650 by Archbishop James Ussher. Ussher’s was a precise chronology of all the events in the Bible, which at the time amounted to, and was celebrated as, a history of the entire world from the outset of Creation. According to this chronology, Creation was calculated to have taken place in 4004 BCE and Assyria would have been founded in 1770 BCE. The enormous prestige of this publication still held sway over mid-nineteenth-century England, and it was in the context of this biblical historicism that the pioneer excavators presented their paradigm changing Assyrian and Babylonian finds.42 For a while, Christian ideology and doctrine – which interpreted the Old Testament as the most accurate chronological and geographical history of the world – determined European archaeologists, antiquarians and clergymen’s

54

The Chaldeans

reception of Assyrian religious texts. Henry Rawlinson, who played an influential role in deciphering cuneiform writing, concluded in 1852 that ‘every new fact which is brought to light from the study of the Cuneiform inscriptions tends to confirm the scriptural account’.43 Meanwhile Henry’s brother, Anglican clergyman George Rawlinson, produced one of the most widely read histories of the Near East in nineteenth-century Anglophone Europe.44 The ‘scientific’ discoveries with religious undertones witnessed an enthusiastic reception from the European public, who was fascinated with Assyrian cuneiform stories because it could indulge in the recognition of semblance, especially as the sacred book of Genesis was poised as the reference point.45 Yet this semblance between cuneiform stories and biblical ones was not always stable. In general, the prospect of recovering more textual sources from ancient Mesopotamia was extremely controversial in relation to biblical studies during the first few decades of the Assyrian excavations. While some cuneiform tablets corroborated parts of the Bible, others challenged their originality. Inadvertently the controversy began to shed light on various aspects of Chaldean and Assyrian history, which in turn – thanks to the revived appellations that created the illusion of continuity – whetted the European publics’ curiosity about the Church of the East and its modern Chaldean and Assyrian offshoots. Around that period, Anglican and Presbyterian missions enhanced the colours of the debate through their rivalry to produce and distribute the finest vernacular Aramaic translations of the Bible, both in Europe and in Mesopotamia. Aramaic, which was commonly conflated with Hebrew46 or referred to as ‘Chaldean’ until the eighteenth century, emerged decisively as ‘the language of Jesus’ at the time when the new chronology of history was taking shape. In 1798, Raimunod Diosdado Caballero (1740–1829) had provided the first argument for the link between Jesus and Aramaic, which gave way in the following century to the systematic study and classification of Aramaic and its dialects. Gustaf Dalman’s 1894 study presented ‘scientific’ analysis of the specific dialect spoken by Jesus, followed by several treatises on the topic, including ones by Chaldean scholars who studied in Rome. During that century, several Chaldean clergy travelled to study at the Sacra congregation de propaganda fide (Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of Faith), founded in 1622, to promote Christianity among their newly ‘discovered’ Christians of the East.47 Two of these Chaldean priests, Joseph Guriel and Abba Jeremiah Maqdasi, drew connections between Jesus and Aramaic in their grammar publications. Both emphasized the crucial relationship between language and the nation and between the antiquity of this nation and their status as ‘first’. ‘All the wisdom of the other nations drew its origin from the Chaldeans, and all the sciences flow from the East into the remaining regions of the world,’ Guriel explained in 1861, ‘as the Latins from the Greeks, so the Greeks and the others received all the sciences which they later cultivated, first from the Chaldeans, or Assyrians, which means the same thing.’48 Shortly after Layard began his excavations in Nimrud, his finds began to contribute positively to the biblical context. By 1884, members of the American Oriental Society organized an expedition to Babylonia for the chief purpose of locating cuneiform tablets that would support the Old Testament.49 Potentially

2. The Modern History of Ancient Chaldean History

55

insurmountable arguments against the authenticity of the Bible never materialized, and, in fact, to the European Christians of the nineteenth century, the primary value of the newly discovered Assyrian artefacts became encoded in their reinforcement of the accuracy of the Old Testament.50 Yet the winged bulls that created a sensation in the British Museum of the late 1840s were soon associated with Assyrian tablets and monuments that to the English public began to resemble a weapon against biblical ‘Higher Criticism’51 which was also actively employed against the Old Testament in that period. Before the validation of the biblical accounts, proof that modern Chaldean and Assyrian communities still existed and were Christian created a conceptual illusion that worked to assuage the fears of some European and American religious circles that the Assyrian inscriptions would challenge the accuracy or antiquity of the Bible. In 1876, George Smith stirred England with his Chaldean Account of Genesis, in which he presented a tablet detailing a parallel account of the deluge in Genesis in addition to other tablets containing accounts of the origin of the world. The creation and fall of man and the original sin in these accounts bore striking resemblance to the accounts of the Old Testament, confirming the perceptions of the ancient roots of the modern Assyrians and Chaldeans. The discovered Assyrian documents also proved to the Victorian public that the ancient Hebrews, like others before them, were borrowing from much older neighbouring cultures.52 In addition to the biblical context, Victorian aesthetics were closely aligned with questions of antiquity and origins. Earlier when Layard first presented the result of his excavations at Nimrud to the French Académie in Paris he suggested that the Assyrian reliefs belonged to ‘the 11th or 12th century before Christ, 100 or 200 years before the Trojan War’.53 This dating was significant, least of all because it added to their value in the context of the history of art, allowing the consideration of the Assyrian reliefs as ‘the very earliest models for Greek Art’.54 The Victorian appetite for antiquity and origins, which augmented the aesthetic value of the artefacts that were unearthed, provided the local context for why the contemporaneous Anglican and Presbyterian discovery of isolated pockets of ‘primitive’ Christian communities fascinated the English public so much. The spatial and temporal contiguity of the modern Christians of Mesopotamia with these winged bulls, tablets and biblical debates prompted an association between their purportedly ‘pure Eastern Christianity’ and the newly excavated pre-Christian civilizations. The same Christian and increasingly nationalist European public that admired the finds of Assyria and Babylonia in the Louvre and the British Museum also developed a cultural appetite for the ‘oldest living Church’ and its followers who began to tour Europe not only as cultural informants and speakers of the language of Jesus, but also as ornamental embodiments of the orient itself. Interest in the isolated Nestorian mountaineers who had not been corrupted by Catholic conversion and civilized in the Protestant mission schools also spilled over to the city and village dwellers, the schismatic counterpart of the Eastern Rite Nestorians, the Catholic Chaldeans of the Nineveh Plains. Victorian appetite for Mesopotamian cultures readily conflated the ancient dwellers of this region with its modern dwellers. Layard’s publications present

56

The Chaldeans

prime examples of this conflation. In 1848, he found himself pressured to include a detailed account of the contemporary Nestorians in a publication that was supposed to scientifically illustrate the archaeological finds of ancient Nineveh. As a result, he published his sensational Nineveh and Its Remains: With an Account of a Visit to the Chaldean Christians of Kurdistan, and the Yezidis, or Devil-Worshippers, one of the greatest bestsellers of the nineteenth century and the first scholarly book on Assyriology to appear on the American market.55 While these living communities did not constitute Layard’s primary interest, he embellished his text with contemporary accounts of Mesopotamia because he was uncertain how an extensive analysis of the archaeological finds in the region would be received by the British public. With no such genre as archaeology texts yet, Nineveh and Its Remains included long sections on his exotic trips and adventures among peoples who were as little known at the time as the Nestorians and the Yezidis. Like other popular books appearing in London at the time, Layard’s first volume included detailed accounts of the daily life and costumes of these insular groups. His letter to Rawlinson revealed some of his qualms about this approach: I fear I am collecting together about as much rubbish as could well be put into a heap – however, my friends say that it is just what the public want & the public must, therefore, make the most of it.56

Layard’s friends were right: shortly after its appearance Nineveh and Its Remains was enthusiastically received by the public and furthermore was characterized as ‘the greatest achievement of our time’, by Lord Ellesmere, the president of the Royal Asiatic Society.57 That scientific evidence of a socio-historical continuity between modern and ancient Chaldeans was absent from the outset was not a public concern in Europe, nor did it become a concern when the triangular identity myth, Mesopotamian Antiquity–Bible–Contemporary Chaldeans/Assyrians, was later espoused by Assyrian ethno-nationalists and later the Chaldeans. A backdrop to these preoccupations was an eighteenth-century discourse of firstness that had been looming during excavations in southern Italy at the sites of the Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. These excavations created, among the early archaeologists in Mesopotamia and the institutions that subsidized their excavations, the impression that they were carrying out a comparable task in Assyria and Babylonia. A sequel to these Roman finds, nineteenth-century excavators had set out to hunt ‘for the very beginning of human history’, in Mesopotamia. Their religious and intellectual framework was ‘the appropriation of the ancient world to form the basis for the history of the West’.58 The older the Assyrian discoveries were, the more valuable they became. The Victorian context of the religious historicization of the world was fundamental to the development of a perception of firstness that became operative among Mesopotamia’s Christians. Through a discursive process of ‘Assyrianization’, by which the moderns imagined their link to the ancients, Chaldean and Assyrian communities began to shape their self-representational and self-Orientalizing

2. The Modern History of Ancient Chaldean History

57

discourses, which stemmed from a need to establish ‘their perceived antiquity with physical proofs’.59 The value of the Mesopotamian antiquities discovered in the mid-nineteenth century quickly became sutured to a romanticized notion of ‘the dawn of history’, whereby not only excavators and art critics, but also missionaries and their converts, deemed these archaeological finds a decisive part of humans’ search for their origins.60 For example, Thomas Audo, the Chaldean archbishop of Urmia who authored an influential grammar of Neo-Aramaic through the American mission’s press in 1905, argued that the Aramaic past must be retrieved from others who had appropriated it in later times, and that the Assyrian ‘nation’ (melta) was the first nation to become Christian, after which other peoples took up the faith thanks to their Church’s apostolic missions.61 The resultant ancient–modern associations that flooded the Neo-Aramaic publication of the American mission’s press, especially the Assyrian periodical Rays of Light (Zahrire d-bahra, est. 1849) and its sequel Catholic mission competitor Voice of Truth (Qala d-shara, est.1896), endured not only at home where they were incorporated into the discourse of Assyrian nationalism,62 but even more so in the Western diaspora where echoes of this type of identity narrative flood contemporary Chaldean and Assyrian media today. The following list of ‘firsts’ on a 2006 Chaldean pamphlet printed in Detroit is one example of how this discourse travelled with the communities that appropriated it and endured into the twentyfirst century:

Mesopotamian Achievements First to invent the wheel First to make glass First to observe and describe complex patterns in the motions of the heavens (astronomy) First to use writing By 2000 BC the definition of our modern day, month and year – as well as lunar and solar calendars with the year of 360 days, 12 months of 30 days each, with an extra month added in every 6 years or so to keep synchronized with astronomical observations.63

● ● ●

● ●

Contemporary articulations of cultural ‘firsts’ attest to the deep-rooted interpolation of the current communities in the imaginative constructs of their ancient–modern identities. The construct was pervasive. It was reinforced by contacts with European excavators, news of exhibits of their land or what quickly came to be known as ‘the cradle of civilization’ in Europe and also through contacts with the Christian missionaries who kept close relations with the communities’ clergymen and the school-age children whom they educated in their missionary schools. Significantly, the missions also provided the printing apparatus and multiple genres for articulating and disseminating the new notion of ancient–new selfhood among the local populations.

58

The Chaldeans

Missions and Texts To be sure, the Anglo-American missions constantly censured the Roman Catholic mission for, among other things, its corrupt tactics of converting through bribes. The other side of the matter, however, was that the Anglicans and Presbyterians navigated their way among the Eastern Christians in a very similar fashion, only they reverted to printed texts and the promise of education instead of money for bribing the impoverished communities. When Rev. George Percy Badger of the Church of England made his first visit to the Nestorian villages in 1844, he carried generous gifts of books and other documents to leave a favourable impression. His gesture was based on the recommendation of Christian Rassam, British Vice-Consul in Mosul, whose notable family had converted from Catholicism to Anglicanism briefly earlier. Rassam could better estimate the expectations of the community.64 One of the first enquiries the Protestant missionaries made upon acquainting themselves with their proselytizing environments was about the volume of the patriarchs’ libraries. The patriarchs themselves became so accustomed to the missionaries’ attention to religious texts that later reports dwelled on the readiness with which they would demand the book-presents when a Western missionary visited them.65 Accordingly, from the outset of the Protestant missions in Mesopotamia, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mission’s (ABCFM) instructions to the missionaries included enquiring about the cost of transporting paper and books and ‘whether the Bible and other books could be freely introduced and dispersed among the people’.66 To the recurrent disappointment of the missionaries, the textual inventory located a few translations of the Catholic catechism and scattered fragments of old Syriac prayer books with these patriarchs, but no exegeses or other up-to-date publications. Protestant missionaries construed Roman Catholicism as a producer of ‘indolent adherents’, and their mission as a harbinger of a religion fraught with superstitious idolatry. Yet through the very material Protestantism the Americans brought, they envisioned converting Catholic sacramentalism to Protestant industriousness. It was still material focused but sacralized in new ways.67 The old Catholic mission presses that had printed texts in Arabic and Classical Syriac with a liturgical and devotional focus gave way in the late nineteenth century to the new American press with its strong focus on history, biblical learning and philology.68 Protestant work on translating the Bible into modern Syriac had begun in earnest in 1837. A complete version of the scriptures existed in ancient Syriac but in the ‘Jacobite character’,69 which was ‘detested, and but very imperfectly understood’.70 The ‘Romanist’ aversion to the Bible was a fashionable topic in the Protestant publications at home. A New York pastor produced a catalogue of the many ways the Roman Catholic Church ‘threatened American liberty’, among which was discouraging Christians from depending on their interpretations of the Bible. Subsequently many Protestant groups encouraged Bible reading groups and private Gospel reading not only as a result of the revived interest in the Old Testament through the excavations in Mesopotamia, but also as a way of overcoming the hegemony of the pope.71 Together, these different contributors to

2. The Modern History of Ancient Chaldean History

59

the revival of biblical studies sparked interest in Bible translation, printing and dissemination as an integral part of the missionary enterprise abroad. The fertile ground of the Middle East – where Christianity was ancient, pure and eager to be revived from its long Oriental spiritual stupor and cleansed from its Roman Catholic ecclesial trappings – presented an exceptionally appealing case. Between 1880 and 1900 in particular, Protestant and Anglican interest veered away from esoteric scholarship on the Eastern Churches towards interest in the commercial and displayable value of their Syriac manuscripts. As their posts became more established in Mesopotamia, and interest in cuneiform was on the rise, Euro-American missions rediscovered and preserved dozens of East-Syrian manuscripts and exported them to Europe. By the time the winged bulls and Assyrian tablets were shipped from the Assyrian excavation sites, the American mission had established a small business of copying and selling manuscripts.72 Attesting to the success of Christianity in Late Antique Mesopotamia, these theological treaties and exegeses quickly spurred missionary interest in the linguistic revival of the theological and liturgical corpuses of the newly encountered Christian communities.

Protestant Missions: ‘The Modern Gift of Tongues’73 Aside from reports on how the early American missionaries consistently carried gifts of Syriac Bibles with them whenever they ventured into a Christian village for the first time, the principal material contribution they made to the Eastern Christians was the printing press. According to Becker, the ‘gift of tongues’, the multilingual reproduction of the Gospel at Pentecost in accordance with the Book of Acts (2:1–13), embarked in 1841 in Urmia in the form of a printing press, the first to effectively create the literature of modern Syriac.74 Although a project of the American Protestant mission, the effects of this first modern Syriac printing press permeated the lives of most Christian denominations in the region, especially the Chaldean majority. In modern Iraq, Syriac presses were mostly the offshoots of the Protestant missionary projects.75 During the early phase of its life in the US diaspora, the Chaldean Church too depended on the publications of these presses, which were then disseminated among the diasporic Chaldean community. Defining the Euro-American consolidation of the Aramaic language is of direct link to understanding the historical roots of the current diasporic Chaldean debates on the transmission and maintenance of the ‘language of heritage’, which developed hand in hand with the missions’ introduction of a new rhetoric of ‘progress’. If the Anglican mission coincided with the rise of museum culture in Victorian Europe, the concomitant American missions occurred while evangelism was transforming through the rise of modern publishing industry in the United States. Growing into what resembled a corporate bureaucracy, evangelical print culture created imagined textual communities through its publications, not only at home but also at its missionary posts worldwide.76 After five years of pleading

60

The Chaldeans

with ABCFM authorities in Massachusetts and Constantinople, the press of the American ‘Nestorian Mission’ arrived at Urmia and was immediately put to operation. With fonts obtained from the British and Foreign Bible Society, and to the sheer astonishment of the Eastern Christians, the modern dialect they spoke was ‘reduced to writing’,77 captured from its oral sources in a manageable material form and ready for dissemination within the community. Between 1841 and 1871, the press published about a hundred books on a wide variety of topics ranging from the Old and New Testaments, hymnals, commentaries, science, anti-Catholicism grammar and spelling books, theology and Christian narratives. Through an output volume of over a million pages a year and several hundred copies of each publication, the influence of these publications reached well beyond the non-Catholic segment of the Eastern Christian population.78 Through this literature, the mission effected a manifold change in the moral and epistemological framework which Eastern Christians upheld, irrespective of their denominations. The American mission set out to surpass not only the Catholic missions – whose doctrine and practices they exposed and refuted through parallel texts that ‘came point blank against the papal doctrines, like shooting at a mark’,79 such as the ‘Twenty-Two Plain Reasons for Not Being a Roman Catholic’80 – but all pre-existing missionary efforts with regard to the publication of Syriac literature. Although the Protestant solicited Anglicans’ assistance in matters of the press, they disapproved of the Anglicans’ publication of the 1829 version of the Four Gospels, whose language they considered ‘erroneously named Syro-Chaldaic […] being simply the text of the ancient Syriac version printed in the Nestorians character; and having no other connection with the modern vernacular language of that people’. They also objected to its alphabets, which had ‘a general resemblance to the Estrangela’, and its source, since it ‘was printed from manuscripts brought home by Mr. [Joseph] Wolff, the [converted] Jewish missionary’,81 questioning the authenticity of its Christian content. Dissatisfied with the high costs of Syriac type, which was imported from England, and critical of using the classical form of the Syriac script – the Estrangela82 – the American missionaries further consolidated their mission by hiring their own missionaries to prepare a new font for their press. The new font type soon came to be known as Madnhaya, which is more commonly known today as ‘Eastern Syriac Script’, ‘Assyrian’ or ‘Nestorian’, and replaced the old type in the ecclesiastical publications of the Assyrian and Chaldean Churches.83 The new press with its new type was beginning to make an impact approximately a year after its arrival in Urmia. A shift from the classical to the vernacular language in the liturgy became evident in that period. With delight the Presbyterians watched the ‘evangelical feelings’ take hold of the local community, for whom ‘prayer in the modern language’ was ‘a great novelty … like the day star from on high, breaking through the darkness of their dead language, and beginning to shine into their benighted minds’.84 The ‘modern language’ the missionary enterprise promoted was a consolidation of several mutually unintelligible dialects of the language spoken in the various Eastern Christian villages for centuries. The new consolidated version emancipated these dialects from their notoriety as ‘corrupted forms’ of classical Syriac and endowed them with a modern cultural

2. The Modern History of Ancient Chaldean History

61

value, associated closely with the modern education that the American mission administered to the members of the community. The mission’s interest in spoken Aramaic in the 1840s and beyond did not develop in isolation. It was one episode in a series of attempts within the framework of ‘understanding the Semitics’ which accompanied archaeological studies and cuneiform decipherments. Contemporaneous interest in the archaeological discoveries in Mesopotamia gave rise to the comparative study of Semitic languages and to interest in ‘Eastern Assyrians’, who dominated the European and American literatures that tried to distinguish Aramaic-speaking Christians from ‘Western Assyrians’, also known as ‘Syrian Orthodox’ or ‘Jacobites’.85 Around the time the Presbyterian press took to publishing in Urmia, English colonel Henry Creswick Rawlinson, credited for having laid out the foundation for the Assyrian cuneiform decipherment, embarked on deciphering the tablets recently shipped from Nineveh to his residence in Baghdad. Between 1843 and 1847, through the excavation projects of Layard and Botta respectively, the British Museum and the Louvre amassed a collection of ancient Syriac manuscripts. The typographical consequence of ‘the great acquisition of Syriac manuscripts by the British Museum in the years 1841–51’, wrote Coakley, was bringing the Estrangela script to prominence all at once.86 Interest in deciphering the meanings of the cuneiform texts prompted grammarians to pay close attention to the living dialects in the hope of finding the missing linguistic clues there. The simultaneous interest in Estrangela and cuneiform was coupled with the missionaries’ devotion to teaching the written vernacular to its illiterate native speakers as they held out ‘the pledge of a new era to this people’.87 Together the multi-layered interest in Assyrian textuality generated a prolific series of language learning publications, ranging from textbooks to primers, philological treatises, grammars and a wide range of dictionaries. Unsurprisingly, religious literature was of primary importance for the missionaries. The Eastern Christians were accordingly indulged in a series of publications that replaced not only their ancient Syriac with the more widely understood spoken variety, but also their handwritten manuscripts, until then only produced by clergymen, with neatly printed texts in the Eastern Syriac vernaculars.88 Previously these vernaculars constituted the language of oral communication only. The educated elders of the community could read and write ancient Syriac for liturgical purposes, but no one wrote the vernacular they spoke. The notables of the Church of the East, along with the school-age members of their community who attended various missionary schools, now had at their disposal theological treatises, biblical expositions, hymnals, manuals of doctrine and Presbyterian pamphlets. The modern patriarchs, unlike their forefathers, were equipped to grasp the history of their Church and made to discern the astonishing parallels between their beliefs and those of the American Protestants. They could, moreover, eloquently teach and preach a West-tempered brand of salvation in what was termed ‘neo-Syriac’ in nearly every Christian village. In addition to refutations of the Roman Catholic doctrine, literacy, textuality and materialism – industriousness – an aspect that staged Western missionaries and archaeologists before their Eastern Christian protégés as performers of

62

The Chaldeans

‘magic’  –  was introduced to the Christian communities through the rhetoric of decline and repair. Missionaries envisioned progress to take place in time, alongside biblical chronology and historicism, and to lead from a current state of Nestorian disrepair to a state of true Christian reform through education. In 1836, before the printing press arrived and less than two years after the mission’s establishment in Urmia, ‘the first English school’ had opened among the mountain Christians of the region with the hope that it would be ‘the harbinger of light and salvation to this long oppressed nation’.89 A system of language learning exchange was at work among the Eastern Christians and the missionaries from the start: Americans taught them English and consulted them on the correct usage of Classical Syriac and the various modern dialects.90 One of the missionaries’ pastimes was a bilingual group reading of the Bible: the Americans would read the English or Latin version, while the patriarch or bishop would read the Syriac.91 Focus on progress via industriousness concentrated much of the Presbyterian mission’s efforts on education. Emphasis on cultivating Eastern Christian self-reliance increased in the 1870s, linking it rhetorically to the notion of reform, which, since the 1860s, had factored into Protestant efforts to create an autonomous evangelical Eastern Church.92 Education was deemed the main platform for inculcating the principle of self-rule, an element that the Anglicans and Protestants determined to be wanting among the Eastern Christians, and a key flaw in the profit-driven Catholic missions. The Anglican Church held a similar perspective. The ‘superficial investigators’ who were sent to inspect the work of the Anglican mission to the Nestorians stressed to the missionary how the object he must keep in view was to ‘educate’ – ‘to draw out and develop the latent capacities of his pupils in order that the additional knowledge maybe correlated with their previous knowledge and with their methods of thinking’. Using the Catholic mission as a paradigm of how ‘missionary education tends to deprive converts of their hereditary virtues and to give them no others in their place’, the investigators admonished the missionaries that ‘the more anglicized in appearance and in methods of thought and action their pupils become the more complete has been their own failure’.93 Revival of a past glorious state channelled attention towards ‘ancient learning’, which became a symbol that justified the establishment of missionary schools and the ancient–modern trope of Assyrianism. Protestant missionaries stressed the notion that the predecessors of the living communities they worked among had developed the first institutions of higher learning in the Middle East, in Edessa and Nisibis. Outlining their erudite Christian past, they invited the Eastern Christians to reclaim the learning of antiquity to rectify their dormant spiritual status and doctrinal error, and to proceed along the Enlightenment and Protestant trajectory of progress. If someone should ask me why it is that this church of the Syrians is so fallen, why this people is so foolish and scorned and oppressed, I would speak of many reasons, but one notable reason is that the mothers in this people are not able to read the words of God. It was not thus in the past. When this church was

2. The Modern History of Ancient Chaldean History

63

pure and full of glory, they would send its sons to all of the lands as conquering soldiers, taking prisoners for Christ. Then mothers were able to read and they raised their children in the fear of God.94

Why is it no longer the case? The author asks, ‘because the Syrians have abandoned the customs of the nations of the Christians and sought the church of the pagans’. Catholicism, or ‘church of the pagans’, as well as Islam, were represented to Eastern Christians as two religions that have hitherto hampered their prosperity. The new Anglo-American missions’ rhetoric worked to override the Catholic identity as part of the narrative of decline and the revival they brought through modern education. Even symbols of learning that had been appropriated into the Chaldean pedigree were re-appropriated by the new missions as signs of protoProtestantism. The famous Nestorian Stele, for instance, a large stone inscribed in Chinese and Syriac found by the Jesuits in 1625, which had been since its discovery appropriated by the Catholics, was taken as a sign of the proto-Protestantism of the Eastern Church in China.95 The unique contribution of the American mission’s press to the transformation of the collective identity of Eastern Christians from Nestorians to ‘Assyrians’ could be summarized by the introduction of a revised system of thought with a new language to represent it. The labour of the mission forged unprecedented associations between the dialects the communities spoke, the religion they professed and the moral system of their daily life. The newly fashioned Assyrians were invited to arrive at many exalting self-discoveries. Their Christianity was retraceable to the genealogy of the early apostles and their communities were continuous with the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia. They were further provided with enticing arguments that suggested their direct linguistic link to Jesus and the Bible. Finally, the concept of religious and social autonomy, which the Anglicans enforced to discourage Eastern Christians from joining the Catholic Church, was further bolstered by the Presbyterians who introduced a more developed framework for implementing the ideology of progress. In the end, all missions strove to apply their ‘auxiliary sciences’, mainly in the form of elementary education and basic health care, for ‘divine ends’, in order to ‘impress not press’ the Eastern Christians as they competed for them.96 With the knowledge that they could not vie with Rome in capital and personnel, Anglican and American missions initially confined their activity to the communities that had not yet converted to Catholicism or had relapsed to the old fold of the Church of the East after unpropitious encounters with Rome. Scattered between Urmia and Mosul, the various missions vied with each other by setting up public institutions like hospitals, hospices and schools in their locales. Yet not all enjoyed the favourable connections with the local authorities like the Roman Catholic Church. In partial remedy to this problem, the non-Catholic missions introduced unprecedented proselytizing strategies and, in the process, an ethical framework that aimed to expose the Catholic conversion methods as immoral, materialistic and bribe oriented, lacking in doctrinal or spiritual authenticity and genuine investment in the well-being and salvation of the Eastern Christians.

64

The Chaldeans

The Case of Maria Theresa Asmar As the historical links between ancient and modern Mesopotamians were being forged through the excavation campaigns and the renewed interest in related sections of the Bible on the part of the missionaries, alarming information about the conditions of the Christians in the Kurdistan region were communicated in 1840 in reports from Mosul by the Rassam family and William Francis Ainsworth, the English engineer, geologist and doctor who was in charge of the expedition of the Royal Geographic Society. These reports, followed by Ainsworth’s 1842 twovolume publication Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Chaldea and Armenia, augmented the number and rigor of missionary dispatches from Canterbury, London and Boston, and created new cultural bridges by which the archaeological and museumizing trends of the time infused with the language crafted by Eastern Christian cultural ambassadors in their pleas for protection to the various missions. In 1844, less than two years after the excavations at the mounds of Nineveh had been initiated and the first neo-Syriac secular publications of the American press were disseminated, the first English version of a secular ‘Chaldean text’ also appeared in London. Its Telkeifi author, Maria Theresa Asmar, dubbed herself ‘Babylonian Princess’. Asmar’s Memoirs of a Babylonian Princess was published in two volumes ‘written by herself and translated [anonymously] into English’. Dedicated to the Queen of England, the original text never appeared in print, nor are we told whether it was written in Arabic, Aramaic or another language. The popularity of the English-language version of this autobiography of a modern Chaldean led to Asmar’s publication of a second book only one year later. Also appearing in London, Asmar’s Prophecy and Lamentation; or, A Voice from the East (1845), entreated the ‘women of Europe’ to intervene on behalf of the women of the Middle East to improve their living conditions. This publication was also dedicated to ‘Her Majesty, Queen Victoria’, who ‘graciously signified her desire to encourage and advance the success of this noble enterprise of the daughter of the Patriarch of Chaldea’, and received the book under her special patronage.97 A patron of the queen and endorsed by British media as a noblewoman from the newly discovered ancient civilization of ‘Chaldea’, Asmar continued to appeal to intellectual Western audiences in subsequent decades. In 1918, an excerpt from her Memoirs appeared in the American series ‘University Library of Autobiography’. In the same volume that included autobiographies of Cardinal John Newman, Victor Hugo, Hans Christian Anderson, John Stuart Mill and other prominent nineteenth-century authors, Asmar was featured as a ‘courageous little Babylonian princess’, whose ‘unpretentious book’ and ‘account of the scenes she witnessed is full of that oriental richness which by its very strangeness intrigues the Western mind’.98 Coupled with the intrigue of the Orient’s ‘strangeness’ was the appeal of the ‘primitive’, but also ‘authentic’ Christianity of its enclave native inhabitants to which Asmar belonged. Asmar traced her ancestry to a ‘family in the East’, who had ‘long professed the Christian religion in the church of Travancore’. This church

2. The Modern History of Ancient Chaldean History

65

‘according to history was originally planted by Saint Thomas, the apostle of our Lord in the Indies’.99 Two elements in Asmar’s genealogy should alert us to the composite ancient–new, Eastern–Western identities that would have appealed to the English readership of the period. First, Saint Thomas the apostle was a contemporary of Jesus; thus, by tracing her religious affiliations to his Church, Asmar was claiming affinity with one of the earliest establishments of Christianity. Second, when Asmar dedicated her book to ‘the Queen of England and the Indies’ in 1844, Travancore was still a princely state in British India. By claiming her descent to that region, Asmar also insinuated her status as a loyal British subject. These two elements in Asmar’s construction of her genealogy suggest her European readers’ positive reception of this religious association and the fraught linkage between Mesopotamian Christians and Europe. In the Memoirs, Asmar portrays her father’s character, whom she dubs ‘Amir’ (prince) and who ‘himself professed the Chaldaic rite in communion with the church of Rome’. True, he was a Catholic convert, Asmar had to admit to her already-informed British readers who may not have looked favourably at this particular information; nonetheless, ‘his house was … at all times an asylum for the unfortunate of every denomination’,100 a reference to the displaced Nestorians among whom the Anglican mission laboured at the time. Like Yacoub and Mourassa’s in-person performances, Asmar’s texts, endorsed by British royalty and addressed to ‘the British public’ strove to establish a link between her ‘Eastern’ identity and that of the ‘West’, mainly through Christianity.101 Once again, like the other events discussed in this chapter, Asmar’s texts appeared in the West at a time when excavations at the Assyrian sites were slowly revealing that the biblical accounts of the region and its people were more accurate than those of canonical Greek histories, a gesture that further enhanced the discourse on a continuity that associates the living Christian communities with the artefacts of the pre-Christian Empires that were being unearthed. Asmar’s texts appeared during the same period in which Anglican missionary George Percy Badger (1815– 88), known for his persistent efforts to influence the archbishop of Canterbury to send a mission to the Nestorians, spent one year among the Nestorians and ‘made it clear to them that the wish of the Church of England was simply to help them in all possible ways, but not to make them give up their old faith or order’.102 To ‘simply help’ was an understatement. Helping became a foremost undertaking for both Anglicans and Protestants, and a trope that texts such as Asmar’s had appropriated as the basis for a strident plea to a sympathetic, anti-Muslim West.

A ‘Christian’ Likeness Not unlike Asmar’s 1844 ‘Chaldea’, to which she ahistorically traced her origins, for centuries the Middle East had been imagined as an ancient land. In the nineteenth century specifically, ancient geographies featured more prominently in AngloEuropean discourse than the contemporary ones of Qajar Iran and the Ottoman Empire.103 Becker alerts us that pupils of the Protestant missionary schools learned

66

The Chaldeans

about the Chaldeans from the book of Daniel, about Nineveh before Mosul and about ‘Ashur, son of Noah … the first ruler of Assyria’104 through publications such as Peter Parley’s Universal History on the Basis of Geography (1837) and Lyman Coleman’s An Historical Text Book and Atlas of Biblical Geography (1854). The Victorian interest in understanding the ancient world as the basis for the history of the West is also why emphasis was placed over and again on how the archaeological remains of Mesopotamia were imagined to be irrelevant to the local Muslim Arabs who populated the area.105 Anthropometry, phylogeography and other forms of the physiognomic theories of racial segregation that intersected to privilege the ‘Aryan’ race were reaching a climax during the Victorian era. These overlapping ‘scientific’ forms of racism were concomitant with an ecclesial notion of ‘peoplehood’ that was borrowed from the Hebrew Bible and for many decades worked to shape the ‘ethno-religion’ of white Protestantism.106 A brand of Protestantism that demarcated the ethnic, racial and class boundaries of the normative mediated the Orientalist gaze on Mesopotamia. The coming together of class, religious and cultural distinctions between local Christian under the aegis of Western missions and the alienated Muslim populations came to aid the notion of a natural physical resemblance between ancient and modern Chaldeans and Assyrians, to the exclusion of the Arabs. Both conservative and liberal archaeologists and philologists developed this argument, often digressing to argue for the ‘social uniqueness’ of the Christian groups they found in Mesopotamia. ‘Many a mountaineer from the Assyrian districts of Tiari or Tkhoma looks, when viewed in profile, exactly as if he had stepped down from one of the slabs in the Assyrian galleries of the British Museum Anglican,’ Rev. W. A. Wigram ventured to assert in his 1929 popular history The Assyrians and Their Neighbors, adding that ‘the writer has more than once been guided to the carvings of Sennacherib’s day, which are still to be found on the rocks of their country, by a native guide who, to all appearance, had just descended from those rocks himself ’.107 Alongside this statement, Wigram included two images on the opposite page of this text. One image profiled a ‘modern Assyrian’ priest from 1910, ‘which we put for comparison’s sake side by side with the portrait of King Sargon of Assyria giving instructions to his Vizir, and leave them to speak for themselves’. The illustrations were not only supposed to speak for the physiognomic resemblance between ancient and modern Assyrians/Chaldeans, but also Wigram proceeded to point out their similar sartorial choices, contending that ‘even in matters of costume, the customs of old time held good’. More than religion, the separation between Muslim and Christian locals was dictated by the Western gaze along racial lines: the ancient empires were supposed to represent a link, a continuum, with the modern civilized world in Europe rather than the premodern societies of the Orient. In order to reconstruct the story of their civilization, the European excavators inadvertently constructed one for the modernized–premodern Christians, the Chaldeans and the Assyrians. The image of these Christian minorities was moulded in contrast with the uncivilized Other, the Muslim Arab of Mesopotamia. The dominant reasoning of the time, overwhelmed by the question of biblical chronology and the search for origins,

2. The Modern History of Ancient Chaldean History

67

Figure 5  Modern and ancient Assyrians as compared in W. A. Wigram The Assyrians and Their Neighbors (1929).

could not posit the Muslim Arabs of the Peninsula as the co-inheritors of this legacy. Yet the plethora of modern Semitic languages and the living people who spoke them strongly suggested that the ancient races left a progeny in or near their native lands. If the progeny were not the Muslim Arabs, the Victorian view point suggested, the isolated communities who spoke a Semitic language older than Arabic, and who, like the custodians of European civilization, were Christians, made the better contender. In fact, the retrieval of Assyrian and Chaldean identities that accomplished this ancient–modern link along a line of fallacious reasoning was no different than the other developments that dotted the newly nationalized colonies of the post-Ottoman world. A postcolonial Ottoman vision obsessed with purist racial categorization and linear chronologies associated Coptic Christians with Pharaonic Egypt, Catholic Maronites with ancient Phoenicia and Zionism and the Canaanite movement linked Jews directly to ancient Israel bypassing the centuries of diasporic life in Europe and elsewhere. Beyond the ex-Ottoman world, Iranian nationalism searched for its non-Arab roots by underlining Persia’s pre-Islamic past and Indian thinkers under British colonialism began to Aryanize India’s past.108 In addition to the resurgent religious preoccupation with the biblical land and its Christian inhabitants, French and British interests in Mesopotamian antiquities coincided with their observance of a newfound public appreciation of museum collections and the cultural fad of ‘Assyrian chic’, which predated the farther-reaching ‘Egyptomania’ of the early twentieth century.109

68

The Chaldeans

‘The 19th century’, according to Nélia Dias, was ‘incontestably the century of museums – of spaces designed for the exercise of the gaze.’110 It was a century during which the Louvre and the British Museum engaged in a heated rivalry over acquiring and exhibiting foreign, monumental and antiquated artefacts, which in turn reflected not only the national and political interests of the two world powers, but also the appetite of their publics. Interrogating the forms of commercial reasoning that justified Europeans’ investments in Mesopotamia situates Mesopotamia and its diverse inhabitants within this context of classification, cataloguing and museology as the object of European gaze as much as the Christian missions do. Europe’s culture-makers – the powerful persons and institutions who created the hierarchies of perception both in European and in Mesopotamia – synthetically arranged the artefacts and peoples that went into the continuity narrative of the nineteenth century. The representational value of the artefacts they arranged, the isolated Christians they studied and the taxonomies they created, and the artificial nation states they eventually drew around them were to a significant extent predetermined by Anglo-American publics’ ruling discourses – their dominant aesthetic appetite, religious frameworks and intellectual concerns. A consequence of this museumizing trend, second-order representation – through museum displays, cultural exhibits and philological treatises – came to be a formative component of the ancient–modern identities. If local Muslims were sceptical about Europeans, European institutions of high culture in turn perceived these locals, whom the Christian missions failed to touch spiritually or doctrinally, as emotionally detached and historically dissociated from the past of the land they occupied. By contrast, self-orientalizing Christian cultural ambassadors such as Yacoub, Mauressa, Asmar and Rassam served to reinforce the dominant European perceptions of the Orient. Their representations, became the medium through which ‘Chaldeanness’ and ‘Assyrianness’ both alive and in memorabilia form, were exported to the West as a displayable cultural commodity. The cultural gaze on Muslims, who did not represent themselves in the same capacity, was camouflaged within these same European institutions in a didactic parlance that assumed their ignorance of the land’s past and inherent dissociation from it. For example, the institutional assessment of the museums that hosted the Assyrian exhibits was that Muslim locals were to receive a lesson in history and art appreciation by observing how the civilized Europeans desired to acquire their antiquities. The British Museum’s contract with Layard dwelled on such condescending explanations, applying a rather convoluted logic: Nor can any thing have a more direct tendency to teach the natives some respect for the remains of the great works of art executed by the early occupiers of their country [the Assyrians] than leading them to believe, that Europeans desire to possess these remains, not because of any pecuniary value attaching to them, but because of their connexion with ancient nations and languages, and of the hope which the study of these affords of contributing to the more extended cultivation

2. The Modern History of Ancient Chaldean History

69

of learning and taste, and the prevalence of those principles of justice and benevolence, by which only, if by any means the general concord and prosperity of the human race is to be attained.111

To be sure, both Muslim and Christian locals were perceived to be heretical, ignorant and disrespectful of the past. The decisive difference in how the West approached these populations, however, was that they determined the ‘ancient nations and languages’ to predate the local Muslim populations and to be continuous with the Christian populations. When it came to all these locals themselves, it appears that their own understanding of the value of antiquity was culture- and class dependent. Differences between self-representations in the public and private spheres among the Eastern Christians existed due to the millet system and legal dhimmi status that had increasingly isolated ethno-religious minorities from the Muslim social mainstream. Long-standing cooperation with the Europeans, who racially and morally distinguished between their Muslim and Christian collaborators and who financially sponsored their ra‘aya, validated these class distinctions.112 By contrast with the Muslims of Mesopotamia, many of the Chaldeans, Nestorians and converts to Anglicanism employed by the archaeological missions were learned urban functionaries, or villagers who had received some education in missionary schools. These nineteenth-century Chaldeans and Assyrians had been the immediate recipients of a wide-encompassing Western ancient–modern gaze on their own world in Mesopotamia: their churches, languages, land and even self-worth as Chaldeans and Assyrians (now elevated to ‘preserved ancient races’) were the subject of Western scrutiny, if not construction. Contact with the West at home influenced certain Eastern Christian figures, who became in turn influential in their own communities and began striving to comport themselves in ways that suggest a cultural proximity to Europeans and Americans. Latinized first-names, to cite one palpable example, began to appear among Chaldeans and Assyrians113 in the last part of the nineteenth century: Maurice, Marie, Janette, Madeline, George, Georgette, Phillip, John and Michael are some of the popular ones. The relative ‘modernity’ of those local Christians, even as they racially associated them with Jesus, the Hebrews and the coarse Nestorian mountaineers, was perceived by the Europeans as the logical continuation of ancient Mesopotamian civilizations. Unlike the generally poor peasant Christians of the villages, urban Christians with political clout and connections with higher authorities were instrumental to the British since the outset of the excavations. A good example is the Rassam family, one of the wealthiest of Mosul’s Catholic families that had converted to Anglicanism as a result of contact with the missionary enterprise in Mosul. Before his younger brother Hormuzd Rassam was to be employed by the British Museum’s archaeological mission, Vice-Consul Christian Rassam was to clandestinely provide Layard’s crew with digging equipment to begin the excavations, which continued illegally until an official firman to excavate was obtained later through Rassam’s intercession, and to ensure the maintenance

70

The Chaldeans

of the excavations when the Muslim authorities frowned upon the intrusive Western presence.114 The general attitude of Eastern Christians towards Muslim communities is difficult to ascertain because of the dearth of documentation. However, vernacular sources attest to villagers’ antipathy towards Muslims, especially Muslim rulers, which were construed as a punishment from God.115 Eastern Christians’ newly found appreciation of their new Chaldean and Assyrian titles and their ostensible connection with the European-discovered ancient civilizations worked to broaden this divide. The result was that the local Christians of nineteenth-century Mesopotamia, who through Western acculturation were considered the conduits of ancient and new civilizations by the Europeans, perceived their affinity to these antiquities to be superior to that of the Muslim majority. Hormuzd Rassam (1826–1910), for example, who became Layard’s right arm and local authority on the subject of racial categories in Mesopotamia, and whose Oxford education translated into commendably Orientalist archaeological treatises, stressed to his learned British readership that ‘rural Chaldean Christians, whether Roman Catholics or Nestorians, come under the same category of physical superiority over the other nationalities’ in Mesopotamia.116 On a visit to England in 1848, Rassam passed himself off as a descendant of the ancient Assyrians,117 persisting with this logic later in his 1897 publication, Asshur and the Land of Nimrod, where he claimed that all Christians of the region, with the exception of some Armenians and Greek Orthodox, shared ‘the same Chaldean or Assyrian origin’.118 By stark contrast to this self-flattering narrative, Rassam was unsympathetic towards the Muslim ‘brick-diggers’ whom he hired for his excavations during the 1870s. To justify to the British authorities the lootings and the damage done to many of the articles by hired Muslims excavated under his supervision, he attributed the problem to the ‘Arab style of searching for antiquities’, which was ‘too rough to extricate fragile objects with care; and when they find them, in nine cases out of ten they break and lose a large part of them’. ‘Worse than all’ he complained, Muslim workers were disloyal to their European employers. They tried ‘to make a good capital by breaking the inscribed objects and dividing them amongst the clandestine purchasers’.119 For an educated, urban Eastern Christian addressing a European audience, these Arabs were rough, opportunistic and incapable of appreciating Mesopotamian ‘art’ for its aesthetic value. These class-dependent assignments of cultural perception were not arbitrary. In part, they evolved as a result of indigenous interactions between ethno-religious groups that lacked cultural integration in Mesopotamia, but they were further endorsed during the French and British archaeological campaigns in the Nineveh Plains, both of which favoured contracts with the Christian villages, such as Telkeif, over those with Muslim tribes.120 Local Christians were entrusted on the excavation sites in the Kuyunjik mound during Layard and Rassam’s absence in England. Some had been in charge of the excavations and even invented new methods of excavation. Chaldeans and Nestorians whose ‘strength and good sense Layard

2. The Modern History of Ancient Chaldean History

71

had more confidence in’ continued to supervise the project during Layard’s second expedition and carried out most of the digging. The workforce of Paul Emil Botta, the French consul of Mosul, who was commissioned by the Louvre, and of Layard, commissioned by the British Museum, consisted mainly of Chaldeans from the villages surrounding Mosul and Nestorians, soon after fashioned into Assyrians, from the northern mountains. These men were perceived as ‘the only ones who had the strength to loosen the hard surface’, whereas by contrast Muslim men, when employed, worked as carriers of the excavated earth.121

Figure 6  The reaction of Muslim workmen to the head of Nimrod as pictured in Layard’s Nineveh and Its Remains (1849).

72

The Chaldeans

Masked as religious or racial difference, class variations between local Christians who were educated in missionary schools and the overarching local Muslims population that was not played a crucial role in dissociating Islam from the ancient past and in associating Chaldeans and Assyrians with that same past. The examples Layard used in his book to illustrate the remoteness of Muslim Arab communities from the historical finds, such as his friend Abdu al-Rahman’s superstitious gaze at a colossal head that had been uncovered, dealt mostly with tribal figures whose cultural differences could not allow them to grasp the import of the excavations.122 This depiction is even more striking when compared with the 1851 dual portrait of Hormuzd Rassam as a cultivated Englishman and Ottoman dignitary,123 or the image of the cool and composed European visitors of the Nineveh Gallery at the British Museum, as on the 1851 wood engraving by Percy William Justyne.124 Materiality emerges as a central trope in the discussion of both excavation and missionary interventions in Mesopotamia. The processes of constituting continuity, preservation, conversion and racial difference, although primarily conceptual, were strongly linked to the ways they were visualized and materially constituted. It is crucial that the physical and societal characteristics which

Figure 7  The Nineveh Gallery, official stationery of the British Museum, in use 1851–83.

2. The Modern History of Ancient Chaldean History

73

the archaeologists privileged were conservable and displayable abroad. These travelling displays and the perceptions they generated transformed the group’s self-assessment and raised their historical significance, culminating as much in the monumental Mesopotamian displays at the Louvre and the British Museum as in the cultural, linguistic and textual performances of individuals like Yacoub, Maurissa and Asmar. The ancient and modern performances and displays of Chaldeanness and Assyrianness were so compelling and interlocked that by the turn of the century, as Wigram noted, these communities were already claiming ‘to be able to trace their own descent linearly from King Nebuchadnezzar’.125 In sum, the local Christians indirectly served the archaeological displays in two ways. First, they stood as intermediaries who could facilitate excavation work in a Muslim milieu that was growing increasingly sceptical about the motives of Western presence in the region. Second, they represented the living corollary of the pre-Christian past of the region, thus ancient and modern Chaldeans mutually enhanced their representational value. These favourable interactions between the local Christians and Western culture yielded one of the earliest orientalist identity narratives that framed these Christians distinctly from the Muslim majority as an ancient–modern specimen. Soon after contact through excavation and missionary schools, these interactions brought about first-hand exposure to the West through opportunities to tour and study abroad in Europe and the United States.

Conclusion: Rereading the Orientalist Binary As the only remnant of a great nation, every one must feel an interest in their [Chaldeans’ and Assyrians’] history and condition; and our sympathies cannot but be excited in favour of a long-persecuted people, who have merited the title of ‘the Protestants of Asia’.

Austen Henry Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, 1849126

This chapter treated a critical episode in the long life of the Church of the East and its followers, a nineteenth-century point during which they lived on the margins of two empires, and transitioned, in a complex, ambivalent manner, into becoming ethnoreligious minorities in the modern nation state of Iraq. It was a point of confluence of many interventions and transformations, during which ancient Mesopotamian history and colonial modernity mediated each other. This confluence gave rise to the crafting of Chaldeans and Assyrians as ancient but modernized peoples. ‘The opposition that the Protestant missionaries created between the nineteenth and pre-19th-century,’ wrote Murre-van Den Berg, ‘had its basis in a narrative of decline.’127 The construction of Eastern Christian modernity was as much a product of revival as rivalry. If by having no strong tradition of iconography, no auricular confession and no interest in images and Mariolatry staged the ‘Nestorians’ as ‘the Protestants of Asia’, the long conflict with Catholicism cast this diminished solitary Church as the proud victor against the Catholic incursion since antiquity.

74

The Chaldeans

Several connected waves of social and ideological transformations – including displacement, migrations, changing self-perceptions, employment opportunities, education, modes of relating to the West and nascent nationalism – took place among the Christian communities of Mesopotamia at a time when the Ottoman Empire was entering its final phase simultaneously while the missions took charge of the educational system and excavation posts furnished the earliest material evidence for the existence of ancient Assyria, Chaldea and Babylonia. The nineteenth-century history of this Church and its splintered converts is the product of several intersecting transformations, most of which took place in Europe and America first before unfolding in the Ottoman Empire. Embedded within post-Reformation and Victorian frameworks, the Catholic–Protestant proxy wars, the fervent search for origins, the fierce cultural rivalry that unfolded in an age of museumization of antiquity and the nationalization of identity all coincided with the discursive projects of creating the modern identities for the Eastern Christians. The evolution of Assyrian and Chaldean identities during that century was premised, much like Said’s concept of Orientalism, on exteriority, whose primary vehicle was representation.128 Together, missionary and archaeological scholarship reveal a threefold task with which the Victorian context entrusted the pioneer Orientalists in Mesopotamia: to search for the very beginning of history, or firstness; to establish a link between (European) modernity and the ancient civilizations represented by these ruins; and to dissociate the local Muslim Arabs – the majority of Mesopotamia’s inhabitants – from the land’s appropriated antiquity. The Orientalizing vision of the nineteenth century, according to Assyriologist Steven Holloway, was ‘rooted in universalizing Enlightenment attitudes toward eastern peoples’.129 A key outcome of this vision was the emergence of a Western ideological binary between a civilized Christian ‘West/Self ’ and a primitive Muslim ‘East/Other’, a binary the recognition of which Edward Said has irrevocably stamped on subsequent scholarship that tried to construe the foreign gaze on the Middle East. The circumstances of the emergence of the ancient–new ‘Chaldean’ and ‘Assyrian’ identities concurrently with this Orientalizing vision dispute the totality of this binary in a number of ways. Like Said’s Orientalism, the Christian Orientals were conjured through a ‘body of theory and practice in which, for many generations, there has been a considerable material investment’.130 The distinct intermediary identities of local Christian populations, as they were rearranged on a new grid of ancient– new/Eastern–Western intelligibility through museum displays, material investment by the Catholic Church, the Presbyterian printing press and the Anglican rescue missions, formed as a necessary correlate to the Victorian task. The Protestant missions with their focus on self-rule and critique of doctrinal conformity and ecclesial authority blurred the lines between Western domination and Oriental consent. Together with the archaeological missions they came to accentuate the status of these ‘reformed’ populations as Eastern Christians, speakers of a biblical language and heirs of an ancient monumental

2. The Modern History of Ancient Chaldean History

75

Figure 8  Baghdad-born Chaldean youth posing with the Assyrian winged bulls on a trip to Nimrod and Mosul, 1977.

legacy. They assigned the modern Chaldeans and Assyrians an intermediary role within this Orientalist binary, which eventually brought their communities physically and conceptually closer to the West than those of their modern Muslim counterpart, and created an enduring legal schism between ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ communities in the post-Ottoman Middle East.

76

The Chaldeans

The inter-confessional antagonism between Chaldeans and Assyrians on the one hand and between these communities and the overarching Arab and Kurdish societies on the other was fuelled not only by state-permitted violence at the turn of the century, but also, and more so perhaps, by proxy missionary wars and their desire to offer protection to the local Christian communities.131 The missions, coupled with the episodes of sectarian violence that punctuate their timelines, instigated a collective sense of insecurity for the Chaldeans and Assyrians around their identity as non-Muslim subjects, likening them to the Protestants in Europe and marking them as a perpetually ‘long-persecuted people’. The physical insecurity and social marginalization, coupled with a sense of conceptual affinity with the West rather than the East, and dependence on the vagaries of the modern state which relegated minority religion to the private sphere, continued under the various regimes of power well into the present and shaped along the way the relational dynamics between the temporal elite (the Patriarchs and Mar Shimuns), their Western protectors and the State.

3 A R A B / C HA L D E A N / A S SY R IA N D I ST I N C T IO N S : P O L I T IC A L S U RV I VA L I N T H E N EW N AT IO N S TAT E O F I R AQ

The name Chaldean does not represent an ethnicity. I personally feel once you lock a church into a single ethnicity, you end that church. My church and the church of the Assyrians are one church. If I come today and state that this is an Assyrian church or a Chaldean church, I am in effect terminating this church … we have to separate what is ethnicity and what is religion. This is very important. I myself, my religious sect is Chaldean, but ethnically, I am Assyrian. That does not mean I should mix everything. Chaldean Patriarch Rafael Bidawid, 20031 Whereas the birth of ethnic consciousness within the Church of the East was the product of the nineteenth century, ethnic identity became the signature feature of the twentieth century.2 A Chaldean-Assyrian distinction came into focus within this context. If the nineteenth century had featured the solidification of the Assyrian and Chaldean denominational identities in official discourse, the twentieth century was the site where – from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire and onto the successor Arab states – ‘Chaldeanness’ emerged as a religion while ‘Assyrianness’ emerged as an ethnicity. In the nascent Iraqi state of post–First World War, these designations demarcated the survival strategies of the respective groups. At the same time, as Chaldeans began to migrate westward to form visible clusters in the American diaspora, the gradual discursive shift from Chaldean as a religious identity to Chaldean as an ethnic identity became paramount for the maintenance of the group. Understanding Chaldeans in the political contexts of the previous two centuries hinges upon evaluating a set of events and relationships with non-Chaldeans. It entails, for one, considering the process of creating the internationally recognized ‘minority’ status for the Assyrian refugees, the derogation of the Assyrian identity and the parallel emergence of a new Arab identity in the nascent Iraqi nation state. The accounts in this chapter and the next unfold the story of how the livelihood of the Chaldean community and the maintenance of its identity depended on the right interplay between religion and politics – an interplay that stipulated upholding not just various identities (Arab, Iraqi, Chaldean, Assyrian, Assyro-Chaldean, Arab-

78

The Chaldeans

American, Chaldean-American) but at times different genres of identity (ethnic, racial, religious, national) within sight of multiple political formations.

The Twentieth Century before Iraq: From Millet to Minority Eastern Christians who interacted with foreign missions in the nineteenth century began to articulate their identities in secularized, nationalist terms against the backdrop of a collapsing millet system and a secularizing transformation of the notion of dhimma during the tanzimat period. There is a plethora of narratives that strongly implicate religion and an age-old ‘clash of civilizations’ that frames East–West relations as a Manichean struggle between an intolerant, religiously monolithic Muslim Arab world and a civilized, multicultural, tolerant ‘Judeo-Christian West’. These narratives overlook the diversity and multicultural character of the Ottoman Empire whose full operative capacity the initial Euro-American Christian missions failed to recognize. The binary East–West conception, moreover, undermines the redoubtable impact of Western political, economic, moral and ‘humanitarian’ intervention spearheaded by the many Christian missions on shaping Muslim majority–Christian minority dynamics during the years that preceded the mandate period in Iraq. Until recent decades, Western scholarship of the Ottoman period steered away from topics that differentiated the peoples of the empire along sectarian lines for fear of what was perceived as unwarranted focus on religious difference.3 Preoccupation with the study of post-Ottoman secular governance patterns and the structures of the modern liberal Arab state emanated from a belief that secularism was working to demolish religious hierarchies and replace them with a body politic emanating from Western Enlightenment principles and capable of disseminating law equitably among all citizens irrespective of their religious belonging. Looking in retrospect a century later, it appears, through the example of the Chaldeans and Assyrians in Iraq and the Copts in Egypt, among other Middle Eastern minorities, that the post-Ottoman order rearranged the relationship between the state and religion rather than did away with it.4 Avoiding to succumb to racial or religious categorizations comparable to the Ottoman ones being studied gave rise to a tendency to gloss over the ethno-racial problematic (as well as the history of children, humanitarian relief, genocide survivals and sexual violence).5 The result was misconstruing not only the Ottoman millet system, but also selective and celebratory readings of ex-Ottoman Arab nationalist historiographies and partial understanding of the religious context driving the collective desire to create linguistically based nationalisms. Just before the language-based Arab identity emerged to obfuscate religious and ethnic particularity in the twentieth century, throughout the Ottoman Empire one’s ethnicity and mother tongue were of little significance as long as one mastered the language of bureaucracy, Turkish. Religion, on the other hand, was the distinguishing feature that set communities in hierarchical contrast. Not only

3. Political Survival in Iraq

79

did religious demographics shift along with their hierarchical arrangements in a slow process, but also the concepts that identified them were re-signified. The Ottoman term millet changed meaning overtime from its primary sixteenth-century use as a reference to the Muslims of the empire to a drastically new usage with the passage of nineteenth-century reforms to signify non-Muslim communities that enjoyed state protection and autonomy in internal religious and communal matters.6 The re-signification of millet eventually put an end to the dhimma system with its hierarchy of Muslim supremacy and non-Muslim inferiority, an omission that rendered the millet synonymous with the secular concept of the nation (Syriac, melat).7 Despite the duplicity of religious and nationalist terminology and the constant shifts and reforms of the millet system, it is generally agreed that until 1800 only three non-Muslim millets existed: Jews, Armenians and Greek Orthodox.8 Under this system of classification, the Armenian millet that was recognized in 1461 politically absorbed the Chaldeans – along with the Copts, Jacobites, Nestorians and Meronites. A separate Uniate (Catholic) Armenian millet was created in 1831 to institutionalize the difference between Catholics and non-Catholics in the empire, to which the Chaldeans were joined. A Chaldean millet came to be recognized independently in 1846, followed by an Armenian Protestant millet in 1850, and a failed attempt to create a Nestorian millet in 1864.9 This proliferation from three millets to a plurality of millets led to the recognition of the various convert Christian groups as distinct administrative identities. A reflection of the competing missions in the late nineteenth century and power differential, these millets also represented a pluralism in which secularized national discourse was first incubated. This gave rise to ‘Assyrian’ as a distinct national identity, one that was imagined as separate from Eastern Christianity and encompassing of its various denominations, including the numerically larger Chaldean branch.10 The Ottoman Empire’s decrees of Hatti Serif (1839) and Hatti Humayun (1856) had brought great legal benefits to the empire’s Christians with the latter decree ending the millet system and implementation of Shari‘a law. However, although watershed events, these decrees had a counter effect on minorities’ social status, which gradually became more volatile as the communities contended with the disaffections of an Islamic judiciary and statuary systems that had lost their previous authority and operative paradigms.11 The term millet continued to be widely used by the local and imperial authorities as well as the communities themselves by the end of the century. Sultan Abd al-Hamed II’s reconsolidation of his power brought further destabilization of the millets’ affairs as he reinstituted the legitimacy of a more recognizably Sunni social paradigm within the empire. The result was that, despite the shedding of the millet and dhimma systems of ethno-religious segregation, and despite an institutionalized indifference among Ottoman Muslim elites towards non-Muslims,12 from the 1870s onwards the Chaldeans and Assyrians grew increasingly dependent on how the state perceived their status, a dependence that continued to characterize their identity and dealings with the local political hierarchy and their Western protectors throughout the twentieth century.13

80

The Chaldeans

While a new Arab national identity began fermenting towards the turn of the century, the leaders of the millets, the patriarch in the case of the Chaldeans and the Mar Shimun in the case of the Assyrians, were still holding semi-autonomous positions in the administration of their communities, both in religious and temporal matters. In fact, their responsibilities towards their communities redoubled when the Ottoman state discontinued basic civil protections, medical aid and food supplies to its non-Muslim communities during the First World War, in part resulting in what is widely documented as the ‘Armenian Genocide’, a section of which consisted of the Eastern Christians who populated the affected region.14 The gradual increase in the autonomy of the millets and decrease in governmental backing combined to create a broader invitation for Western powers to intervene on behalf of these vulnerable Christian communities. The discourse of this intervention morphed from one of ‘protection’ of its Christian subjects, or ra‘aya, during the Ottoman Empire, to advocacy for ‘religious liberty’ and ‘minority rights’, including removal and resettlement initiatives, on behalf of refugees, genocide survivors and unrepresented groups during the nationbuilding era. As recent scholarship broadens the controversy over the original understanding of the millet system, we begin to discern the connotation of ‘nation’ in most former millets. The ‘Greek Orthodox nation’, the Balkan ‘national states’ and the ‘Armenian national movement’ are examples of what emerged in the wake of the Ottoman millet classification of these groups.15 Nonetheless, we must also heed Adam Becker’s warning that the mid-nineteenth-century usage of melat, or ‘nation’, among the clergy of the Church of the East had a much narrower ecclesial reach – conjured in contexts of warding off the divisive threats of missionary activity – in contrast with the transformed twentieth-century concept of the ‘nation’, which broadened to include all Syriac Christians – predominantly under the umbrella appellation ‘Assyrian’ – as an ethnic group with several religious denominations.16 In the late Qajar and Ottoman contexts, these nations, or millets, not only became aware of themselves through the development of a public sphere, but also through a public– private sphere dichotomy that was in part initiated through the Mesopotamian museumizing and showcasing trends of the Victorian era and the internalization of religion as a private individual experience through the concomitant American Protestant missions. Whereas Assyrian nationalism emerged through the context of missionary Christian reforms, these reforms relegated the experience of religion itself to the private sphere, prompting a secularized particularity to the forefront. Rather than create religious liberty, the cultural imperialism and secularization that accompanied it permeated the Ottoman millet system through missionary enterprise and other political practices precipitated the establishment of a new hierarchy in the Middle East. Politics, the arbiter of minority–majority relations, came to occupy the public sphere, whereas minor religions became situated in the private sphere.17 The new public-politics versus private-religion order precluded for a length of time full conceptual engagement with the Ottoman and postOttoman discursive practices that resulted in the ill-defined ‘minor’ and marginal

3. Political Survival in Iraq

81

social arrangements we have today throughout the Arab world, Chaldean and Assyrian not an exception among them.

Assyrian Genocides/Chaldean Survival (1915–33) Ottoman entry into the First World War not only dissolved the millet system, but also brought with it a wave of one of the most brutal persecutions of religious minorities, the intensity of which Eastern Christians did not witness again until a century later, during the sectarian wars in the aftermath of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. The Young Turk movement’s shift from a pan-ethnic to an exclusive ethnic vision for the Ottoman Empire further compounded majoritarian (Arab and Kurd) treatment of the Christian minorities in their regions. Ethnic cleansing of the Christian populations of southern Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia loomed as a viable solution for dispersing their influence, which mirrored the influence of the Triple Entente powers in the region in the early part of the twentieth century. These events also coincided with the looming desire to realize an autonomous Kurdish region, which meant that for a short yet very intense period of time, the Christian groups in the northern region of Mesopotamia and southern Anatolia suffered the tremendous impact of joint Turkish and Kurdish-organized violence.18 In 1915, threatened by the advancing Russians, the Turkish authorities and their Kurdish auxiliaries attacked the Christian communities scattered in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire. Making no distinction between Armenians, Syrians and other Christian groups that allied themselves with the Russians, the Turks slaughtered several hundred thousand Chaldeans, Assyrians, Syrian Orthodox and Armenians. Emboldened by Russian support and intermittent victories, the Assyrians of the Hakkari region declared war on the Ottoman Empire, leading the Turks to immediately invade the region, drive them out and strip them of their citizenship rights. Russia’s withdrawal from the war in 1917 further tipped the balance in Turkey’s favour and exposed the region’s vulnerable minorities to unprecedented levels of state-administered violence. By 1918, thousands of Christian refugees from the Hakkari and Urmia regions fled southward to seek the protection of the advancing British forces in Hamadan.19 Between 1915 and 1918, the dispossessed Assyrian population of Urmia, Hakkari and elsewhere was estimated to have lost 40,000 of their 120,000 total population in what is more commonly known as the ‘Armenian Genocide’.20 The Chaldean communities west of the border in Amid, Seert, Mardin, Gazarta, van, Salmas and Urmia, where they lived alongside Armenians and Assyrian communities, were estimated to have lost 15,000 casualties out of a total pre-war population of 101,000. Like the Assyrian and Armenian religious strongholds, all the Chaldean dioceses of these regions were ruined and two of their metropolitans along with hundreds of priests were killed, prompting the Chaldean patriarch, Joseph Emmanuel II Thomas (1900–1947), to ‘bow his head to the storm’ and lead the community ‘cautiously and wisely’ into the safer shores of Arab nationhood

82

The Chaldeans

from the safe stronghold in Mosul.21 Of these Christian survivors, about 10,000 headed towards Russia with the retreating Russian forces, while the rest decided to march south towards the nearest British and French posts which eventually became Iraq and Syria. About 20,000 perished along the arduous journey to Mesopotamia that concluded in 1918. The survivors arrived emaciated, exhausted and terrified. The British at Hamadan promptly set up camp for them near the River Diyala in Baquba, 30 miles northeast of Baghdad,22 and later in Habbaniyya. In due time the Assyrian refugees formed isolated pockets of diaspora communities. By 1930 some returned to the Hakkari Mountains, some 6,000 crossed the Upper Khabur region and settled permanently in Syria, while others were absorbed into the Chaldean communities of the villages in northern Iraq.23 Even though British forces expressed the urgent need to resettle the Anatolian Christian refugees, practical measures did not materialize in the case of the Assyrians. The first Republic of Armenia declared its independence in eastern Armenia in 1918 and was reinforced during the 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, which further promised to attach the former territories of Ottoman Armenia to it. In contrast, petitions for an ‘Assyrian homeland’ in the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and after did not lead to the creation of a separate Assyrian nation in Iraq or anywhere else. Instead, post-war Assyrian refugees were politically stigmatized for both being ‘foreign’ to Iraq and for stalling the integrational model of the new Iraqi constitution. Critiquing the League’s failure to come up with an alternative autonomous settlement scheme, diasporic Assyrian nationalists dwelled on the theme of ‘racial extinction’, which, according to their numerous petitions to the United Nations, would not only result through direct physical violence like the one experienced in Anatolia and Urmia, but also if they accepted to live under secular constitutional governance in Iraq. This was because, they reasoned, ‘the minority through intermarriage and so-called equality, in a short time will be absorbed by the Muslim majority’, which would mean ‘the extinction of our language and national existence’.24 These claims complicated matters for the refugees in Iraq, and were quickly backed and echoed by the Euro-American missionary churches that had formerly worked among these populations, leading the World Alliance for International Friendship Through the Churches to pass a resolution in 1933 calling for Assyrian resettlement elsewhere.25 One year prior to this resolution, an Assyrian Officer Manifesto had outlined the formation of an autonomous region in the Nineveh Plains, an event that brought things to a head with the young Iraqi monarchy. Pursuing this kind of agenda placed the Assyrians in direct opposition with the monarch, British authorities and Arab population of Iraq. With the nation states of the new Middle East barely formed, such national aspirations on the part of a small, West-backed minority posed a serious threat to the integrity of the buffer zone with Turkey and Syria, which was only finalized during that same year. The situation was especially menacing with Turkey, which vied with Iraq to annex Mosul and its surroundings since the First World War. Concerns also came from the fact that the Assyrian independence movement coincided with agitation of Kurdish separatists that the Iraqi military was trying to quell in the same northern region.

3. Political Survival in Iraq

83

Unlike the Christian populations of southern Anatolia and Urmia, the Chaldean populations in northern Iraq had mostly not been touched during the war. These Chaldeans of the Nineveh Plains – lacking the refugee standing that would grant the Assyrians British protection but equally identifiable linguistically, regionally, religiously and culturally as Assyrians – had to articulate their new national alignments swiftly. Despite the incurred damage in the western region, casualties on the Chaldean side were significantly lower than the Assyrian side and mostly contained in one section of the extended region they populated. This fact meant that the Chaldean Church was finally to become larger than the Assyrian and Nestorian Churches combined since the beginning of the Catholic conversions and fierce competition three and a half centuries earlier. Aside from size, the other main feature that worked to set the Chaldeans and the Assyrians politically apart in the interwar period was the experience of uprootedness: the majority of the Assyrian survivors were dispossessed of their land; the majority of the Chaldeans, on the other hand, continued to occupy the same lands under a new system of governance. Life continued as normal for most Chaldeans even during the war. During the years of the large-scale Assyrian massacres, between 1915 and 1918, Wilmshurst writes, ‘manuscripts continued to be copied in Alqosh and the nearby monastery of Notre Dame des Semences,’ and Chaldean worship continued without disturbance in Mosul, Mengeshe, Erbil, Kirkuk, Baghdad, Basra and the villages between Zakho and ‘Aqra.26 If the Chaldean patriarch directed his community towards integration with Iraqi society, the patriarch of the Assyrian refugees that were settled in the first refugee camp in the northern village of Ba‘quba increasingly rallied his community to assert an ethnic and cultural link to the ancient Assyrian Empire and to claim national and ethnic autonomy. This assertion culminated in political action in the 1920s and 1930s as the displaced Assyrians campaigned internationally for an autonomous region. While this general direction may have drawn the Assyrian community together around a new collective cause independently of the ecclesial context, it also generated interdenominational divisions, with the Chaldeans and Jacobites quickly distancing themselves from the Assyrians and the Assyrian identity. Lacking the immediate experience of dispossession and displacement, Nineveh Plains’ Chaldeans’ initial – and selective – enthusiasm for a sovereign ethnic ‘Assyrian homeland’ quickly gave way to a perennial quest for integration with the rest of Iraq’s diverse population under the directive of their patriarch. And true enough, the figure of the Chaldean patriarch served for the rest of the century as the direct liaison with the successive Arab governing bodies in the country and as the main arbiter in all matters of universal concern. The failed promises of sovereign nationhood meant that the trajectory of the Assyrians during the revolutionary and post-revolutionary periods in Iraq was to take a different path, increasingly giving the impression to the Chaldeans, and more so to their Church, that it was the example to avoid rather than emulate. Despite significant internal differences, the public political profile of the two Christian communities resembled one another in many ways. Suspicion of Chaldean disloyalty to the state issued from conflating Chaldeans with the

84

The Chaldeans

Figure 9  Men’s and women’s church groups in northern Chaldean village of Tellesquf (Tisqopa), c. 1930. The bearded priest is seated in the center. (Issa family archive)

Assyrians in areas where they were dissimilar, but it also emanated from Chaldeans’ close political ties with French authorities and the ecclesial camaraderie with the French Dominican Catholic order in Mosul. One example that illustrates the political resemblance between the Assyrians and the Chaldeans in the early

3. Political Survival in Iraq

85

phase of nation-building is that of the charismatic leader Malik Kambar Warda of Jilu. Shortly before the establishment of the British mandate in Iraq in 1920 and the French mandate in Syria in 1923, through the conduit of the Chaldean Church, France encouraged Kambar to establish a militia and promised to help him establish a self-ruling protectorate in the Syrian Jazira region. In 1918, in a French-aided effort to steer the Assyrian and Chaldean populations away from British influence, Kambar revealed a settlement plan in Syria as an alternative to the British plan for the Assyrians in Iraq. These plans fell through following the ratification of the French mandate in Syria and the French dissolved Kambar’s Chaldo-Assyrian battalion.27 Kambar’s nationalist aspirations constitute a short-lived and isolated incident which received much less attention in the context of the tenacious and ongoing national struggle. Nonetheless, it is worth highlighting to emphasize that together the Chaldean and Assyrian Churches presented the new Iraqi monarchy with a palpable concern. They posed a minor yet valid theoretical threat to the security and unity of the fledgling Iraqi state through the separatist national aspirations of their members and the strong ties between their patriarchs and British and French colonial powers. Chaldeans swiftly forewent their perfunctory nationalist aspirations in exchange for a chance to maintain their stronghold in their ancestral land as Iraqi citizens, but the fact that the Assyrian nationalist discourse continuously tried to subsume all Syriac groups under the Assyrian label did not help matters. The leadership of the Chaldean Church was aware of repercussions of this misnomer. Unlike the short-lived nationalist splinter group under the leadership of Kambar, the Chaldean Church, still strongly missionary and communal in outlook and identity, had no illusions or stakes in sovereign nationhood. Instead, for the bulk of the twentieth century within the borders of the new Iraqi state, Chaldean religious leadership carefully strategized to remove itself from suspicions and associations with Assyrians’ political claims. It also worked to compensate for the notoriety of its complicity with the West by establishing its Arabness as assertively as possible. Chaldean and Assyrian affiliation with colonial powers never fully concluded, yet they diverged and mirrored Assyrians and Chaldeans’ distinct denominational alignments and their respective missions. By the same token, the leverage of the potential national identities closely reflected the precariousness of the Iraqi state and its apparatus of that period. Iraq’s sense of stability, for example, was shaken by the British creation of armed levies. After several name and composition changes, ranging from Arabs only in 1915 to Arabs and Kurds by 1919, the levy forces conducted a major Assyrian recruitment campaign. By 1921, Arabs were asked to transfer from the levies to the newly formed Iraqi army and the levies became composed mainly of numerically minor communities – predominantly the Assyrians. The reputation of the levies as the colonial police force for British authorities, and their function to quell anti-British uprisings in northern Iraq and elsewhere in the new nation strongly suggested a hierarchy of powers in which Western presence asserted its primacy over the Iraqi authorities. The composition of the

86

The Chaldeans

levies augmented the conflict between the Assyrians and the Iraqi authorities in two specific ways. First, it appeared to many Iraqis that the Assyrians were British collaborators, favoured by the British High Commissioner through links with their patriarch Mar Shimun XXIII. Second, Assyrian nationalists began to perceive their community’s position in the levies as a potential means towards their central goal of creating an autonomous Assyrian region. Infused with conflict between Iraq’s armed forces and the levies, the tense situation in nascent Iraq culminated in the well-documented governmentsanctioned Simele massacre in 1933. In the summer of that year, a group of several hundred armed Assyrian men crossed from Iraq into Syria to petition the French Mandate there for permission to enter and settle. Their request rejected, the men were sent back to Iraq only to encounter an agitated unit of the Iraqi army. The two armed factions clashed in Dayraboun where they both incurred casualties. Although the Assyrian fighters were defeated, they were accused of mutilating the bodies of the Iraqi soldiers they killed. These Assyrian men either re-entered the Syrian territory where they were interned by the French authorities, escaped into the mountains or were captured and shot by the Iraqi army. As news and exaggerated rumours of the Dayraboun skirmish spread through the country, a nationalist fervour rose in the Iraqi public sphere. Press releases, demonstrations and proclamations demanded retributions against the Assyrians. ‘Let all the Assyrian men be killed,’ Lt. Colonel R. S. Stafford, who was administrative inspector in Mosul during that summer, quoted Iraqi officials in his official report on the incident.28 In the days following Dayraboun, the Iraqi army, aided by Kurdish recruits, continued to search for Assyrian fugitives and shoot them. Meanwhile, the local Kurds and Arab tribesmen of Shammer and Jbour started looting Assyrian and Chaldean villages, prompting the frightened residents to take refuge in Dohuk or one of the larger Christian villages in the area, one of which was Simele. A large, though contested, number of Assyrian civilians were killed in and around this largest Assyrian village in the Dohuk region.29 The Iraqi army ordered the villagers to surrender their arms and then the massacre of the men proceeded systematically. Zubaida describes the event: Machine guns trained at the windows of the houses killing the men inside. Some men were then dragged out of the houses and shot in batches. A plea by one community leader that he was known for his loyalty to the government and that his nephew was a police officer was to no avail, he too was shot, as well as a priest who had taken refuge in the police station […] that night some of the women were raped by the police sergeant and the soldiers.30

This tragic event, which spilled over to nearby Chaldean villages as well,31 was handled as a telltale event in the nascent Iraqi state all the while attaining iconic value within Assyrian political discourse and historiography as a classic expression of British betrayal and anti-Christian sentiment in Iraqi society. Recent scholars like Husry, Zubaida and Murre-van Den Berg stress the difficulty of assigning exclusive accountability to one side for this event, given the complex circumstances

3. Political Survival in Iraq

87

that led to the massacre.32 The Simele massacre remained a controversial event with competing social narratives. While it is vividly linked to the Assyrian identity and collective memory in ways that are reminiscent of the prominence of the Holocaust to Jewish identity and collective memory, Chaldean accounts from the twentieth century have generally glossed over or blotted out the event. The 1915 Ottoman massacres were likewise marginalized and forgotten in Chaldean historiography, whereas they are showcased in every ethnography or history of the Assyrians, who still commemorate 1915 as the shanta d’sayfa ‘year of the sword’.33 This contrast speaks to the social and political formation of the Chaldeans under the Iraqi state, whereby selective forgetting became a strategic method of survival. All in all, the First Word War and the interwar period marked a turning point in Chaldean self-awareness. Poised as eyewitness of consecutive genocides of adjacent Christian communities and refugees – the Armenians, Persian and Anatolian Chaldeans and Assyrians with whom they shared state laws, millet categorizations, legal practices and ecclesial provisions for centuries – the Chaldean Church of the Nineveh Plains and its local followers had to abruptly readjust their ecclesiology as well as national and ethnic identity to meet the survival demands they projected ahead. A transformation of Chaldean identity was set off not so much with the creation of the state of Iraq or the heightened sense of Assyrian nationalism instilled by the American Protestant missions, but amid persistent waves of physical violence against adjacent Christian groups and the complete dissolution of the Ottoman imperial status quo.

Iraq: Chaldeans as a Religious Minority I do not wish to hear that this country has Muslim, Christian, or Jewish elements, since this is the land of nationalism, the land of the grand Arabs. Nationalism does not have anything to do with Muslims, Christians, or Jews, but with an entity called Iraq.

Faysal ibn al-Husayn, first king of Iraq, 192134

Although ‘Chaldean’ came to serve as a recognized religious identity by the turn of the century, the political events leading up to the formation of the state of Iraq in 1921 provided several reasons for the Chaldean Church to encourage its members to identify nationally as Iraqi and ethnically as Arab and to disavow associations with the Assyrian nationalist identity under the aegis of the new Hashemite Kingdom. Chaldean identity crystalized more clearly during the interwar period, with the Chaldean Church gaining a significant body of converts to Catholicism from the Church of the East, whose numbers – estimated to range between 70,000 and 150,00035 – by far exceeded those who received the ‘Assyrian’ designation from the Anglican and American Protestant missions who had been in fierce competition with the Catholic missions during the nineteenth century.36 According to data collected by Wilmshurst, the Chaldean Church had approximately 1 priest for

88

The Chaldeans

every 300 laity in 180 of the 199 Chaldean villages of the north, whereas the Church of the East had 1 priest for every 400 laity.37 The construction of the Assyrian identity (and briefly the Chaldean identity) during the interwar period as specifically ethnonational, rather than religious, reflected not only the nature and magnitude of the refugee populations’ experience of genocidal violence, but also the extent of the impact of bridges built between these Christian communities and the Western missionary and archaeological in the region, in as far back as the early nineteenth century. As Chapter 2 demonstrated, the American mission’s introduction of a printing press in Urmia, the large-scale use of newly consolidated forms of Aramaic and the promotion of modern notions of self-governance among the Assyrians of Urmia eventually opened a westward migration route for these minorities and fostered a sense of secular leadership among the educated professional class who no longer felt the need to submit exclusively to the hierarchy of the Church for the maintenance of a distinct collective identity. Young Assyrians, mostly men, and mostly in the Western diaspora, began to define themselves and their communities in terms of a shared ethnic identity that transcended denominational boundaries and schisms.38 This discourse was rerouted back to Mesopotamia via international humanitarian and political intervention during the ethnic cleansing years (1915–18).39 We must also take into account how the borders that formed around the new state of Iraq were arbitrarily drawn. The Syriac-speaking communities of the Ottoman and Qajar Empires had traditionally networked and moved back and forth between the various centres for centuries. This was certainly the case during the ‘mid-century crisis’, when many survivors of Bader Khan Beg’s massacres escape to the Nineveh Plains from Hakkari in the mid-1800s. There are other examples of movement in the other direction, from the Nineveh Plains to Urmia during the 1800s. It is also important to note that proximity between the districts was minimal, allowing for the movement and complicating the foreignizing category ‘refugee’ that later became superimposed on the Assyrian populations that were transferred into the state of Iraq from the adjacent borders. By the time of the fall of the Ottoman Empire, the area that was subsequently to become Iraq consisted of three provinces (wilayets): Basra, Baghdad and Mosul. Although sources suggest that up to 250,000 of the 700,000 pre-1914 Syriac Christian populations (Chaldean, Syrian Orthodox, Syrian Catholic and Assyrian) of the Ottoman Empire were killed in attacks by Turks and Kurds during the war,40 most Chaldean concentrations were south of Mosul, a safe distance from the sites of massacre. Furthermore, the Chaldeans in the two other major wilayets of Basra and Baghdad were protected by the British Imperial forces that had established themselves in Basra and by the wali of Baghdad, who banned the killing of Christians in his wilayet.41 This relative stability allowed the Chaldeans, like the Jews of Iraq, to quickly overcome the initial uncertainty about their future in an Arab (Sunni)dominated state. It also made it feasible for the Chaldean Patriarchate to establish itself more firmly in the new nation state. Until the creation of Iraq, Chaldeans held regional or transregional identities that linked back to their membership in the Chaldean Church. The creation of Iraq and the increased urbanization and

3. Political Survival in Iraq

89

secularization of Chaldeans during their tenure as Iraqi citizens considerably changed the way they viewed themselves as ‘Arab Christians’.42 From the outset, the project of Arab nationalism minimized religion’s social particularity and prompted religious minorities to reorient their identities to the new spatio-temporal forms of the nation state. Although a monolithic ‘Arab nationalism’ was as imaginary as the other identity projects that competed for legitimacy at the time, it nonetheless managed to assign Christianity and Judaism – for a limited time – a unifying, generic Semitic identity which ideologically equated these religions with Islam as the monotheistic basis for the newly envisioned, allencompassing Arab identity.43 If the Christian missions, excavation posts and violence against the Assyrians and Armenians under late Ottoman rule had brought about a qualitative and quantitative shift in the Chaldean conception of self and community during the nineteenth century, the political vacuum following the Ottoman defeat in the First World War, the rise of nationalism and the creation of the Iraqi state presented a firsttime opportunity for the Chaldean Church to assume the position of the dominant Christian presence in the region and the de facto state church of MesopotamiaIraq. The improving status of the Chaldean Church was also indirectly effected by the changing status of the foreign missions in the new country. The rapid rise of independent states, communism and nationalism throughout the Middle East shifted the nascent governments’ value perceptions of the missionary presence among their minorities. It was becoming evident to the foreign mission posts that the new ‘Third World’ was less tolerant of the accustomed evangelical approaches. Accordingly, the term ‘missionary’ gave way to ‘fraternal worker’ in the twentieth century and the accompanying ideologies shifted along. Ecumenical Roman Catholicism through the Chaldean Church, along with a small constituency of local Protestantism and Evangelical Fundamentalism, came to replace the old missionary orders.44 The old-order missionaries, along with the indigenous minorities among whom they laboured, began to be increasingly viewed as agents of imperialism and extensions of the colonial presence that sought to divide and weaken the national movements. In Iran, one of the places where proselytizing among the Eastern Christians was most successful during the nineteenth century, evangelical activity was severely curtailed. In 1956 a parliamentary bill established a death penalty for anyone who engaged in any educational activity against Islam.45 About forty-six American Protestant missionaries were asked to evacuate the country, leaving only four behind in 1959.46 Likewise Jesuit missionaries who had furnished Baghdad and its suburbs with prestigious schools and a university that accepted Iraqi youths of all religious backgrounds were asked to evacuate the country after the confiscation – or ‘Iraqization’ – of their schools by 1969.47 The structure of the relationship between the Chaldean patriarch and the state that previously dictated the affairs of the community through the millet system was preserved in the new Iraq through the patriarch’s membership in the first Senate, which lasted from the establishment of the monarchy in 1921 until its fall in 1958. During that period, the Chaldean community depended on the patriarch’s intercession on its behalf for most matters of collective concern. The

90

The Chaldeans

reverse was true too. The state deferred to the patriarch first for its interactions with the community. On the whole, the 1920s can be characterized as a period of monarchic openness during which the Chaldeans were eased into their social role within Iraqi society. By contrast, the changes within the government body during the 1930s and 1940s characterized the period by instability and the rise of the army as a guarantor of law and order. Since the Chaldean Church depended on the legitimacy of the monarchic state for its own legitimacy, it was crucial for it to become a strong supporter of the status quo, a deeply rooted tendency that we will continue to observe later in the community’s political alignments in the US diaspora. These conformist dynamics strongly fortified Chaldean ecclesiastical authority and shaped the profile of the Chaldean community as a religious community.48 Nor did the clergy’s dominance preclude the eventual involvement of lay Chaldeans in the state. Prominent public figures such as first Minister of Health Hanna Khayyat (1921–31), Minister of Finance Yusif Ghanima (1935– 47), Minister of Propaganda Rafael Butti (1953–5) and Ambassador to Lebanon Najib al-Sa’igh (1959–63) demonstrate how Christians were readily integrated into senior positions of state thanks in part to the governing body’s pragmatic approach, which capitalized on the cosmopolitan formation, Western liaisons and multilingualism of its minority populations.49 During that same period of Chaldean integration, several thousand Assyrians settled in Kirkuk, Erbil, Baghdad and Mosul, where they found more employment opportunities.50 Those who established their residence in the major cities quickly disconnected from the settlement problems in the north. The political conditions that intensified the appeal of Arab nationalism among the Iraqi population drove local Iraqi Muslim and Chaldean communities alike to stereotype the non-Arabicspeaking Assyrian newcomers as intransigent and culturally inferior mountaineers who initially could speak neither Sureth (a local variety of Neo-Aramaic) nor Arabic properly. This stereotype survived well into the twentieth century, alongside a vision of stoic superiority and higher ethnic consciousness through which the war-torn Assyrian communities viewed themselves. The political gap between Chaldeans and Assyrians widened as the latter group envisioned themselves to be the special protégés of the British Government, true representatives of the Assyrian ‘nation’ and the unifying force behind a denominationally fragmented Church of the East while deeming the Chaldeans as merely second-class citizens in the new Iraqi state. In sum, aspirations to reinforce Christian entry into Iraqi political life and to sustain influence at the elite level of the state necessitated a threefold quietist approach on the part of the Chaldeans: (1) encouraging political neutrality within the community, (2) integrating the Chaldean community into the new Iraqi society with an emphasis on the shared culture with the Iraqi mainstream rather than on underlining the painful sectarian violence against Christians in the recent Ottoman past and by the Iraqi Army in 1933 and (3) distancing the Chaldean community as demonstrably as possible from Assyrian nationalism, its discourse of genocidal victimhood and its claims for regional autonomy and independent national recognition.

3. Political Survival in Iraq

91

Assyrian Exiles: Outside and within Iraq One significant outcome of the 1933 Simele massacre was the removal of Mar Shimun XXIII and his family from Iraq during the same year. The other significant outcome was the increased interdenominational schism that spanned most of the century. Chaldeans and Assyrians conducted their religious and political affairs separately in the Iraqi monarchy and republic to the extent that the reconciliatory dialogues between the Chaldean and Assyrian Churches were not initiated again until the mid-1990s.51 The exile of the Assyrian patriarch to Cyprus and then Chicago and the abandonment of the Assyrian community in Iraq without the political intervention of their patriarch52 was the first of its kind in southwest Asia since the consolidation of the Church of the East in 424 CE. Broadly speaking, these events meant two seemingly paradoxical things for the Chaldean community remaining in Iraq: reinforcement of the popular assumption of their potential national disloyalty as Christians; and the opportunity, if they played their cards right, to fortify their position as the main Christian Church and community in the country. To combat the first perception and secure the future of the Chaldeans in Iraq, the Chaldean patriarch recognized his community’s need to commit to an Arab national identity, support the modernist ideology of separation of religion and state, and accept the political status quo so long as it did not interfere with ecclesial practices. These points typified the interactions of the Chaldean community with the state until its dissolution in 2003. They were further aided by the Church’s strong advocacy for educational and economic integration and depoliticization among its increasingly urbanized Chaldean membership. While most religious leaders adopted similar tactics in the 1920s and 1930s, the Assyrian community lacked the political engineering and organizational powers of their patriarch, now divested of his Iraqi citizenship and exiled from Iraq, and the linguistic and cultural assets to integrate to the same extent, being mostly recent Anatolian war refugees in the Arab country.53 Furthermore, Iraqi law throughout the bulk of the twentieth century required the head of religious communities to be an Iraqi citizen of good standing. This meant that the Assyrian patriarch was barred even from the long-distance administration of the affairs of his community in Iraq.54 Assyrian refugees at large were beginning to reconcile themselves to their new minority status and Iraqi ‘citizenship’, especially since Mar Shimun’s ‘Assyrian National Petition’ to the United Nations failed once again in 1945 to secure an autonomous status. Lacking administrative privileges, the Mar Shimun began exhorting his people in Iraq and elsewhere from his new settlement in the United States to ‘live as loyal subjects and citizens of the various countries, contributing their best as peace-loving Christian citizens, and receiving in return justice, freedom and equality of opportunities, from their respective governments’.55 However, Assyrian nationalists’ insistence on the international level on their status as a separate national identity set the community in Iraq further apart from the rest of society and from the other Christian communities in Iraq. The

92

The Chaldeans

nationalist approach also diverged significantly from the universalism of the Catholic faith and the limits it set on ethnic identification. These limits were practical measures set due to the incommensurability of ethnic identification with the missionary outlook that characterized both the Catholic Church and the Nestorian Church of the East for centuries. To invite newcomers into the Catholic or the Nestorian fold – similarly to Islam – meant to accept their various ethnic backgrounds and declare them insignificant or at least secondary to the religious identity. This seeming competition between ethnic Assyrianness and religious Chaldeanness prompted the Chaldean hierarchy’s disavowal of the Assyrian religious identity, as in Patriarch Bidawid’s 2003 statement with which this chapter opened. Finally, Assyrians’ new retreat to the northern region and pragmatic alliances with the Kurds in the 1970s, coupled with their attempts to control the appellation discourses by applying the term ‘Assyrian’ as an umbrella title for all of the Christians of Iraq to augment the size of the Assyrian constituency and give credence to the campaign for an independent Assyrian state intensified the rift between the Assyrians and the rest of Iraq’s Christian communities during the twentieth century and served to sideline the Assyrians rather than fortify their position.56 In effect, the 1920s–70s was an era during which the Assyrians witnessed gradual political and social marginalization in Iraq while the Chaldeans looked collectively ahead towards progress. While the generic ‘Christian identity’ that had provided privileges under the aegis of Western legal, religious and academic patronage during the previous centuries gradually declined, the quality of Chaldean life improved between 1921 and 1958 under the umbrella of Iraqi citizenship. As the overarching Iraqi society gradually grew more competitive economically and professionally, the state invested in public education to the benefit of most of its citizens. It is worthwhile to note that the involvement of the Roman Catholic Church in the affairs of the Chaldean community took a generic form during those decades, compared to the detailed intervention and management of the Chaldean community that was the hallmark of the period spanning the previous three centuries. Rather than relying solely on foreign and domestic religious intervention, the twentieth-century community conceptualized its progress in the shape of full integration into Iraqi society under the Arab national rubric and the mandate of British Imperial rule. This orientation also took precedence over looking retrospectively, in the fashion of the Assyrians, towards recognition and retributions as a formerly persecuted ethno-religious minority. Chaldeans’ initial hesitation to be incorporated into a Muslim-dominated kingdom under the rule of Hijazi king Faisal gave way to acceptance and even embracing of the status quo when it became apparent that the new Iraq was to become an economic vassal state to the British Empire rather than an independent Arab monarchy.57 This attitude of acquiescence to a co-opted monarchy under British supervision, coupled with a strong desire to distance themselves from Assyrian tragedies and discourses of victimhood and national autonomy, resulted

3. Political Survival in Iraq

93

in an irrevocable transformation of Chaldean identity where forgetting the past and suspending particularity became essential components of attaining equal social status and citizenship in a pluralistic Iraq. In return, the British powers bolstered their support of the docile Chaldeans by granting the Chaldean patriarch Emmanuel II Thomas a position on the advisory council of ministers in 1920, which was to transform one year later to full membership in the Senate when the Iraqi state was formed.58 Girling emphasizes that the transformation was so pervasive that by the 1960s the Chaldeans had no widespread recollections or associations with the violent events of the 1915–18 period. Those who did remember these massacres or the 1933 Simele massacre suppressed their memory or tried to downplay the antiChristian connotations of these tragic events.59 While the exact opposite attitude was transforming Assyrian discourse and identity internationally, the Chaldean community stopped recognizing the need to know or understand its Ottoman history and lacked interest in the Chaldean-specific historical or social experience under the new monarchy.60

Chaldeans, Assyrians and the Iraqi Communist Party Assyrian nationalists’ proclivity towards separatism led to fostering a distinct political profile in the new Iraqi nation state. However, the period during which the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) saw heightened activity and strong Christian membership in Iraq is also a period during which the denominational distinction between Chaldeans and Assyrians gave way to other factors that were more prevalent such as their socio-economic status and place within the political and cultural hierarchies of the period. With aspirations to form a culturally and politically autonomous region dashed, several Assyrian families left their home villages in the north and initial refugee camps in Ba‘quba and Habbaniyya together with dozens of Chaldean families aspiring for upward economic mobility. Together, they moved to the cities in large numbers during the 1950s, consolidating their resources to build a new neighbourhood on the outskirts of Baghdad. In addition to the movement to Baghdad, the discovery of a large oil field in 1927 in the multi-ethnic northern city of Kirkuk led several Assyrians and Chaldeans to relocate from the rural districts of the Nineveh Plains to this economically burgeoning urban centre in search of employment at the Britishowned Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC). The Assyrian and Chaldean employees of this British company, which was first formed in 1912 with the purpose of acquiring concessions from the Ottoman Empire to explore for oil in Mesopotamia, were quick to become politically engaged, forming workers’ unions, joining strikes and enlisting in the ICP. The shift away from Mosul’s surroundings and the countryside of the Nineveh Plains where Chaldean social identities had formed in the previous six hundred years necessitated a shift from agriculture to technical, artisanal and other skilled professions. From there urbanization and participation in civil society increased engagement in the political arena, with the result of

94

The Chaldeans

increased membership in the Communist and Ba‘thist parties. The ICP appealed to a significant number of Christians as a vehicle for radical change that would dissolve religious identitarian differences through the Marxist secular model. The ICP’s first General Secretary Yusuf Salman Yusuf (known as Fahd) and leading Chaldean communists George Telon and Elias Hanna exemplify this trend among the young generation of urbanized Christians at the time. According to Hanna Batatu, four out of the total twenty-eight members of the upper echelons of the party were Chaldeans and one was Assyrian between 1941 and 1949. Chaldeans and Assyrians also contributed 10 and 6 members respectively to the total number of 342 rank-and-file members of the ICP in the 1940s.61 The party’s emphasis on fighting socio-economic and ethno-sectarian injustice and securing minority rights particularly appealed to the disenfranchised segments of these minority groups. They saw in communism a new outlet for the protest against historical injustices and a more effective platform for national reforms. Alda Benjamen explains that from the 1940s to the 1960s Assyrians were drawn in disproportionate numbers to the ICP, with ties between the Assyrians and the ICP generating a series of court martials accusing Assyrians of anti-government activity.62 Unlike the political activity of the Chaldean members who joined the party as Iraqi nationals, the steady yet uneven integration of Assyrians into Iraqi society, coupled with their political aspirations for autonomy, framed them more easily as dissidents and enemies of the state. For instance, many Assyrians did not give up their initial aspirations of independence, forming the Assyrian leftist collective ‘Unity and Freedom’ (Kheith Kheith Allap II or Khuyada w Kheirutha Athorayta) in 1961. Although the collective was concerned with integrating Assyrian cultural and political rights within the Iraqi framework, and some of its members had cross-membership with other leftist Baghdadi clubs such as the well-known al-Ahali group, the Iraqi state denied the collective registration for fear of lingering Assyrian separatist ambitions.63 The collective’s organizers had to retreat northward to forge political alliances in the Kurdish region instead, further intensifying the image of the Assyrian community as a separatist rather than integral group to Iraqi society. Although heavily urbanized and mostly under the leadership of the ICP, the Assyrian communists continued to organize according to their communal affiliations, a fact that led the Ba‘th party, who began to fiercely target communists following the 1963 coup, to conflate Assyrian communities with the ICP in the northern region and punish them accordingly. The Assyrian effort to unite and come to the defence of their attacked villages against Ba‘thist persecution in the name of anti-communism plunged the community further into alienation within the Iraqi state. Rather than transcend their ethnic and religious associations by joining the ICP, party affiliation inadvertently amplified Assyrians’ communal and separatist ethnic identity and isolated them from the Iraqi mainstream.64 In contrast with Assyrian activists and the Chaldeans who joined their cause, the position of the Chaldean Church during that period typified its conservative, quietist political approach. The patriarch and the archbishop of Basra formally prohibited membership in the ICP, which they deemed greatly dangerous for the

3. Political Survival in Iraq

95

security of the Chaldean community.65 Most people complied with the dictate of the Church. Despite the political activity of some Assyrians and Chaldeans and the small Assyrian nationalist counterpart which insisted on political separation, the desire of the two communities to assimilate helped them integrate socially in the urban centres and the Arab mainstream. From the 1940s to the 1960s, Iraq saw the establishment of twenty-five new Chaldean parishes and the construction of a new seminary in Dora, a Christian neighbourhood on the outskirts of Baghdad that was created by an organized committee formed in the Habbaniyya refugee camp with the aim of resettling Assyrian refugees permanently. With the Chaldean patriarchal headquarters transfer from Mosul to Baghdad in 1950, Dora district attracted such a high concentration of Chaldeans, Syriacs and Assyrians that it came to be known as the ‘Vatican Quarter’.66 Dora was later incorporated into the city in 1962 to accommodate the new arrivals from the north. The rapid expansion of the Christian population, their desire to integrate with Iraqi society and their remarkable new demographic concentrations in major cities like Basra, Kirkuk and Baghdad suggest improved conditions of life for these communities, which between 1932 and 1957 had more than doubled in these cities.67 While Chaldean ecclesiastic power was further consolidated under the Britishaided monarchy, sustaining Chaldean livelihood in the new Iraq also necessitated a shift away from their ecclesiological identity. Although the ecclesial hierarchy was likely reluctant to cede influence to the laity after nearly 1,500 years of controlling East Syriac relations with the State, its direct influence on the lives of the Chaldean population became less central as it gave way to multivalent attachments to the new state, socio-economic opportunities or the successive national struggles. The result of this divergence of loyalties can be characterized in two general attitudes that persisted well into the next century and travelled with the community to the diasporic settlements: the Chaldean Church favoured the stability brought about by the retention of the operative government and maintenance of the status quo, while the lay community conformed with the popular demands for change through political movements. A third alignment was beginning to form during that period which we will return to in more detail later: a small Chaldean diaspora in America with financial remittances that helped Chaldeans at home extend roots into the commercial and business private sector of the Iraqi urban sphere. Amenable social and commercial networks with the Jewish and Shi‘i populations in the capital, instead of the mainly Kurdish and Sunni populations in northern Iraq, augmented Chaldeans’ sense of belonging in a cosmopolitan context where their position was reinforced and their cultural interventions in public social life were welcome and encouraged. Shortly later, Chaldeans also rose to fill the social and commercial gap the Jews had left after their forced departures in the wake of the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. Furthermore, the core Christian urban intelligentsia, which had formerly existed in Mosul, took to articulating Chaldean identity differently as more of these intellectuals were integrated into cosmopolitan life and came to direct contact with the political ideologies of the time and the novel notion of Arabization. Exposure to new identities and political affiliations

96

The Chaldeans

increased ascription to a secular Arab identity, which gradually took precedence over the Christian Chaldean identity.68 Changes in Chaldean collective identity during the early 1960s did not come solely from southbound migration from the countryside to the metropolitan centres. The establishment of the Iraqi Republic in 1958 barred all religious leaders from involvement in legislative affairs, which meant that the Chaldean patriarch was removed from the senate and his direct legislative influence was significantly curbed. Yet the adverse effect of this limit on Chaldean political involvement was offset by limits on the role of Shari‘a law that was introduced during the tenures of Abd al-Karim Qasim and Abd al-Salam Arif, who desired to establish a secular paradigm for the governance of the Iraqi state. In addition to the transformation of the state and the political alignments of a significant body of Chaldean urban intellectuals, transformations within the internal structure of the Catholic Church as a result of the Second Vatican Council (1962–5) had a significant impact on the way in which the Chaldean Church operated and expressed its identity and, in effect, on how the less politicized Chaldean majority conceived of their religious membership. For instance, the use of Syriac vernacular was introduced to the liturgy and major ecclesiastical reorganization took place, resulting in the establishment of the dioceses of Alqosh (1957–60) and of Erbil and Sulaymaniya (1966–8). These changes were noticeable during the time when Chaldeans were only allowed to express communal cohesion within a religious rather than ethnic framework. Unlike the Kurds, no formal framework allowed the Christian groups the expression of unity through ethnic identity. Furthermore, they had the detrimental Assyrian paradigm before them to

Figure 10  Urbanized siblings of a Basra-based Chaldean family, Basra, c.1963.

3. Political Survival in Iraq

97

steer away from. Therefore, despite the political mobilization of many Chaldeans who came to view their primary identity as Iraqi citizens, in the twentieth century the patriarch remained the sole figure who could represent the legal interests of the Chaldeans as a unified community. In practice this meant that religion was the only outlet for expressing Chaldean particularity, harkening back to the structures of the Ottoman millet system and Sassanid rule.

Chaldeans, Assyrians and the Ba‘th Party Saba Mahmood offered the compelling, though controversial,69 argument that modern systems of secular governance in the postcolonial Middle East, rather than abating interreligious tensions, hardened interfaith boundaries and polarized religious difference at the expense of religious liberty.70 Claims of religious neutrality under the banner of political secularism, she argued, have resulted in unprecedented state involvement in regulating, dictating and managing religious affairs both on the doctrinal scale and on the quotidian level of daily religious practices. Although Mahmood derived the material evidence for her argument mainly from the Coptic Christian example in postcolonial Egypt, the comparable history of Chaldeans under the rule of the Iraqi Ba‘th Party (IBP) serves as a paradigm of state regulation of religious difference taken to its modular conclusion of contributing more, rather than less, to the polarization of minority versus majority identities. The IBP’s military coups of 1963 and 1968 that overthrew the ICP unleashed an eventual shift from the overtly anti-religious socialism of Qassim’s rule towards the formal guarantee of the religious freedom of other minorities. The 1970 Ba‘thist Iraqi Constitution recognized ‘the legitimate rights of all minorities in the context of Iraqi unity’, a statement that enacted the legal recognition of the existence of five Christian communities (Chaldeans, Assyrians, Syrian Orthodox, Armenians and Latins) as religious minorities, while the various ethnicities these groups professed elsewhere (in diaspora or during other historical periods) were subsumed under the new unifying identity of ‘Iraqi citizen’.71 Non-Muslim religious identities were permitted but only if subsumed under the greater Arab identity and membership in the Arab Umma, with Islam remaining the state’s official religion. Even as the IBP captivated the masses with its message of pan-Arab unity, socialism and freedom from Western imperialism, and inspired hopes for a secular state through a religiously and ethnically mixed group of theorists72 – no social group besides the Arabs and Kurds was able to secure recognition as an ethnic entity under the new rule. National (Arab) identity first and religious identity second was one of the founding discourses of the IBP, and best exemplified by the party’s secularist ideologue and founding father (al-ab al-mu’assis) Michel Aflaq, who had declared his identity Arab first and Christian second.73 Nonetheless, public opinion about Christian identity remained conflicted under the banner of secular socialist unity to the extent that harsh criticism was dealt to the IBP. The party was not spared accusations of being led by a Christian ‘infidel’, ‘Crusader’, ‘missionary’ and ‘agent’

98

The Chaldeans

of Western colonialism in the person of the Greek Orthodox Aflaq, the driving intellectual force behind the establishment of secularist ideology of the IBP.74 More uniformly than the religious majorities, Iraq’s religious minorities embraced the Ba‘thists’ call for the creation of the ‘New Arab Man’, one who amounted to ‘a secular, modern and scientific Iraqi person for whom Islam would serve merely as historical inspiration’.75 Chaldeans in particular construed this call as an opportunity for integration and belonging. The Ba‘thist rhetoric harmonized with the Roman Catholic’s traditional attitude towards the legacy of the Arabic language and did not present a threat to their religious freedoms or quotidian practices.76 Accordingly, in the early phase of IBP rule, urbanized Chaldeans of the centre and southern cities willingly enlisted in the party. Their membership was mutually beneficial, as it guaranteed the religious minority equal rights under the rubric of Iraqi citizenship. At the same time, it was encouraged by the state because it contributed to increasing the popularity of the IBP by giving it the appearance of having a wider support base. The Assyrians, by contrast, needed more direct prompting to comply. Unlike the relative stability of the Chaldean Church and its politically compliant followers, matters within the Assyrian Church witnessed further destabilization when the Iraqi government allowed Mar Thoma Darmo, at the time ‘Nestorian Metropolitan of India’, to visit Iraq in 1968. The newly installed IBP preferred to communicate with a local leader of the Assyrian community rather than with the exiled Mar Shimun in the American diaspora. In 1968, exploiting an internal schism that was fomenting between the Assyrian tribes of Upper Tiyari and the hierarchy line of the Mar Shimun, they flew in an opponent of the hereditary line, Thomas Darmo of Trichur. In Baghdad, under IBP support, Darmo denounced the absent Mar Shimun and was promptly consecrated ‘Patriarch of the Ancient Church of the East’ in his stead. Upon Mar Darmo’s early death in 1969, Patriarch Mar Addai II was elected to succeed him. The loyalties of the Assyrian people vacillated between the two Patriarchs, Mar Addai II in Baghdad and Mar Shimun XXIII in California. Part of this instability was due to the Iraqi government’s infirm position with regard to the status of the two patriarchs. Noting the lack of popularity of Darmo’s line among the local Assyrians, the IBP transferred its support to the ousted Mar Shimun. Only a year after his deposition the Iraqi government invited the exiled Mar Shimun to communicate with his Assyrian community in Iraq in order to encourage their loyalty to the Iraqi state. Complying fully with the IBP, the Mar Shimun was formally recognized as the head of the country’s Assyrian community the following year and invited back to the country that had exiled him in 1933. Meanwhile the IBP annulled the agreement that had given Mar Darmo religious authority over Assyrians in Iraq, returning the Church that it had handed over to Darmo in 1968 to its original leader in 1970.77 Mar Shimun’s cooperation with the Iraqi government continued to take a public form in the following year. During that period, he appeared on the Iraqi television to denounce Mar Darmo and to speak of the privileges the Christian communities had historically enjoyed under Islam. The Iraqi Encyclopedia of

3. Political Survival in Iraq

99

Modern Iraq quoted him saying: ‘The Arabs have helped to serve humanity, and from Baghdad the rays of civilization illuminated the whole world at a time when Europe still lived in the Dark Ages.’78 The IBP published Mar Shimun’s letter in the state-controlled media, welcomed him in person, restored his Iraqi citizenship and recognized him as the official head of the Assyrian community. While the high hopes he raised among the Assyrians in Iraq gained Mar Shimun mounting popularity, Assyrian nationalists in diaspora – particularly members of the Assyrian Universal Alliance (AUA) – were becoming increasingly dismayed with the pro-Arab leanings of their patriarch. In 1975 the last patriarch of the Mar Shimun line was assassinated at his home in San Jose, California. That was three years after he had stepped down from his office and asked that a successor be elected because he wished to be married. The assassin was promptly identified as David Malek Ismael, an Assyrian acquaintance of the patriarch and a member of the AUA. The District Attorney in charge of the case identified ‘Assyrian Nationalism’ as one of the killing motives. Supporters of the late patriarch argued that the AUA wished the patriarch to manage the political as well as the religious affairs of his people, while the patriarch believed that the Church should remain clear of political activities. Mar Shimun was also not a supporter of the AUA because he believed it received little approval from the Assyrians of the Middle East.

Arabization and Chaldean Identity Formulating national identity was not a straightforward matter in the Iraqi nation that was newly unified administratively but remained diverse ethnically and religiously. Unlike the millets whose identity underpinnings were in religion, numerical marginalization and observance of their patriarch’s dictates, the Arabicspeaking Muslim majorities were left without a political source of unification when the Ottoman Empire began to disintegrate. To increase their disorientation and collective identity crisis, both the sultanate and the caliphate were abolished in 1922 and 1924 respectively, weakening the sense of centralized Islamic identity. When Kemal Atatürk further introduced secular reforms in Turkey between 1926 and 1930, not only were the Arabic-speaking Muslim populations deprived of the traditional national focus they had enjoyed as part of the religious majority of the empire, but also their religious identity had lost a significant part of its sociopolitical relevance.79 Within the context of eroding but also valorized religious and national identities, a new conception of Arab identity began to emerge in the interwar years, one that was to be grounded in the secular notion of the Arabic language rather than Islam and to guarantee equality among all the speakers of the language. Of the first major proponents of this concept were Sati‘ al-Husry (1879–1968) and Muhammad Kurd-‘Ali (1876–1953), each of whom separately formulated comprehensive ideologies of linguistically based Arab identity in the 1920s. Syrian ideologue Kurd-‘Ali’s unifying vision which appeared in his monumental

100

The Chaldeans

six-volume Khitat al-Sham (Maps of Greater Syria, 1925) recast Syria’s history to include all monotheistic traditions under the banner of Semitism and the Arab language. Syrian-born ex-Ottoman official al-Husry formulated a similar linguistically based Arab imaginary under King Faisal’s patronage in Iraq and disseminated it throughout the Iraqi educational system. After al-Husry and Kurd-‘Ali, secular pan-Arab movements began competing for hearts and minds throughout the newly outlined nation states of the Arab region. Most of these movements developed in Syria, such as Antun Sa‘ada’s Syrian Social Nationalist Party (Est. 1932), the Arab National Party (Est. 1939), the Arab Ba‘th (Est. 1940), the Arab Ba‘th Movement (Est. 1943) and the Arab Ba‘th Socialist Party (Est. 1953).80 Some based their ideologies on the French notion of patriotism that prioritized the territorial homeland, or la patrie. Rather than sectioning ‘historical’ Syria into smaller states, these parties and national imaginaries envisioned a ‘natural Syria’ nation state that would extend from the Turkish border to the Sinai Peninsula and from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates, encompassing both Cyprus and Iraq.81 The nascent Ba‘th (resurrection) Party envisioned a vast language-based, secular state extending ‘from the Arab Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean’. Once united, these different Arab regions and their peoples were pictured to cease to exist in discrete geopolitical units. One large and powerful crucible, the panArab amalgam, would encompass them all. At the heart of these totalizing secular ideologies was a promotion of the cause of all Arabic speakers irrespective of their religion, ethnicity and mother tongue. This flexible and inclusive definition of Arabness that delineated the boundaries of the imagined Arab nation gave rise to articulations of the integral role of Arabic-speaking religious minorities. George Antonius’s groundbreaking The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement (1938) had assigned a new definition of who was an ‘Arab’. His widely quoted, provocative definition of Arabness where ‘the criterion being not islamisation but the degree of arabisation’82 was frequently taken as the starting point for broadening the requisites of Arabness to include nonMuslims in the all-encompassing nationalism of the post-Ottoman Arab states.83 Unlike the Protestant paradigm to which the Assyrians ascribed, Catholicism elegantly complemented the new paradigm shift, further enabling the integration of its Chaldean followers. Catholicism worked to ease the way of Uniate communities like the Chaldeans and Maronites into the Arabic fold. For these converts and their missionaries Arabic had previously served for interregional and interdenominational long-distance correspondence and as a lingua franca that mediated between Western and Middle Eastern languages. By the time language-based nationalist movements began to form in the Arab world, the Catholic converts were already at an advantage compared to their Syriac-speaking non-Catholic counterparts.84 Decades later, Arabic-speaking Catholic clergy like Chaldean Louis Sako (b. 1948) and Maronite Jean Corbon (1924–2001) were writing to underscore the amicable Christian–Muslim historical interactions, emphasizing the importance of Arabic language and culture for the Christians and advocating for the development of Christian Arabic theology as a survival strategy in the Middle East.85

3. Political Survival in Iraq

101

Instead of vertically constructed sectarian communities, an anti-status-quo attitude prevailed above all else in the conception of the new Arab identity during the mandatory period. It painted the anticolonial struggle as an integral part of its mission. Therein lay the dual position of inclusion and exclusion of Christian minorities within the new secular states. Irrespective of how thoroughly they were linguistically and culturally Arabized and how forcibly they asserted their Arabness, Christians in these Arab states remained framed within an existential paradox: on the one hand, the operative ideologies of the national movements wanted to consider them equals since they envisioned secular states where religious identities were minimized or obliterated. On the other hand, the religious identities of these minorities continued to link them strongly to the Christian West as imperial accomplices, especially with the disproportionately high rates of westward migration among Middle Eastern Christian populations and their gradual adoption of European racial ‘whiteness’ in the United States.86 Although Arabism and Iraqi nationalism were not opposing ideologies in the 1920s, from the moment of its inception the Iraqi state faced two competing notions for framing its official identity, each with its set of complications. One option was to put the pan-Arab identity (hawiyya qawmiyya) in the forefront and the other was to valorize the local Mesopotamian identity (hawiyya wataniyya). The former option was the recipient of British support and those who sought union with other Arab peoples and nations but excluded the Kurds and other ethnically non-Arab constituents of the Iraqi state. The latter option unified the citizens of Iraq but questioned the legitimacy of a non-native monarchy. The fear, on the part of the British orchestrators of the new Iraqi political constituent, was that without the enforcement of an Arab monarchy, Mesopotamian pluralism would retreat into more regionally based political groupings. Thus, superimposing an overarching Arab (Sunni) government body seemed necessary for the unification process of the new state. Nowhere is this more evident than in Gertrude Bell’s often-quoted statement: I don’t for a moment doubt that the final authority [of Iraq] must be in the hands of the Sunnis, in spite of their numerical inferiority; otherwise you will have a mujtahid-run, theocratic state, which is the very devil […] If only we could manage to install a native head of the state. I agree with A.M. that Talib is out of the question and there’s no possible alternative but a son of the Sharif.87

The Arab identity prevailed in the early decades under the Hashemite rule. By mid-century, the Republican rule began to tip the scale in favour of the Iraqi identity until that identity achieved primacy over Arabness at the height of Ba‘thist power in Iraq. Not only the composition of the new Iraqi government and the new identity were contested in the early phase, but also the borders of the new nation state. Sara Pursley has pointed out in the opening of her seminal study of the political history of the borders of new Iraq, ‘It may be that no modern nation state has been called “artificial” more times than Iraq. While most scholars are quick to admit that

102

The Chaldeans

all nation states are artificial, in the sense that they are created by humans, Iraq, it would seem, is more artificial than most.’88 The borders of the Iraqi state were mobile for a considerable length of time before – but also after – they were drawn in 1916 by the infamous Sykes-Picot secret agreement between Britain and France that divvyed up the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire. In fact, there is no consensus as to when exactly these borders were finalized, with some claiming that Iraq’s borders were created not by the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 but at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the San Remo Agreement of 1920, the Cairo Conference of 1921 or the London civil servant in 1922, leading Pursley to conclude, ‘there is no originary moment in which Iraq’s borders were “drawn”.’89 Indeed, alternative map and identity proposals that would envelope what came to be Iraq were fermenting elsewhere for at least a decade following the First World War.90 The borders with Turkey were even more disputed than the other new borders of the Iraqi state. The 1923 Lausanne Treaty ended the Turkish War of Independence and established most of Turkey’s present-day borders except the one with Iraq because Turkey and Britain could not agree on the question of Mosul. It took eight years, between 1918 and 1926, for Iraqi and British officials to take the Mosul province away from Turkey. For the dispossessed Assyrian and Armenian refugees, many of whom wanted to return to their ancestral homes alliances were deeply divided between Turkey and Iraq. However, for the Chaldeans of Mosul and the surrounding villages of the Nineveh Plains, belonging to the new Arab Iraq presented a more logical alternative to Turkey after the genocide and expulsion of Christian communities elsewhere. Significantly for the Chaldeans, the 1925 border settlement agreement between Iraq and Turkey meant that their population concentrations in the villages around Zakho, Dohuk, Berwari, Nerwa, Raikan, ‘Amadiy, ‘Aqra, Mosul, Rawanduz, Erbil and Kirkuk districts that were not affected during the war were now consolidated in one nation state.91 For the first time in their history, the Chaldeans of Mesopotamia were to come under a single national identity. Alliances in northern Iraq were considerably different from the ones in the capital and south of the country, where Chaldeans lived side by side with the Kurds with whom the state had entered a chronic conflict. The region also harboured a large number of Assyrian and other Christian political exiles who agitated for Christian political autonomy as the sole guarantor of their security. While Chaldeans implicitly supported an Arab national identity, the Assyrians continued to campaign for their separate national identity after the monarchy. They attached themselves to the ICP or the Kurdish separatist struggle which they viewed as suitable parallel causes that would advance the cause of Assyrian nationalism. Those who aligned themselves with the Assyrian struggle also set themselves apart from the Iraqi identity, becoming target of the state’s harsh accusations of treachery under Communist and Ba‘thist rules alike. Together, several different Christian components in the north came under the leadership of the Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM, locally known as Zow‘a), which emerged in 1979 as the foremost advocate of independent Christian political and ethnic identity in Iraq. A significant part of the ADM’s ideology is subsuming

3. Political Survival in Iraq

103

the five Syriac Christian communities in Iraq under the Assyrian national and ecclesiastical label.92 Meanwhile, the position of the Chaldean Patriarchate, now securely settled in Baghdad and understandably not very enthused by the prospect of Assyrian appropriation, was characterized by indifference towards the ADM and lack of advocacy on behalf of the Chaldean communities in the north during times of military attacks. Some have attributed this attitude to the patriarch’s fear of compromising the security of the Chaldean majorities that resided in the central and southern urban centres and of marking the entire Church as a threat to the Ba‘th if opposition were voiced more uniformly. For similar reasons, and for a desire to avoid confrontations with the major powers that were in conflict with each other, Patriarch Bidawid strongly opposed Chaldeans’ expression of a particular ethnic identity and their association with the proposed Assyrian state. Ironically, the compliant, non-confrontational position of the Chaldean Church that dominated the twentieth century eventually brought detrimental consequences to its ecclesial identity. This was so because the Church was still strongly associated with the Christian north whose communities it politically repudiated during the years of the Arab–Kurd conflict.93 Under Ba‘thist rule, Arabization was multi-layered, discursive and discontinuous in places, not only on the ideological level, but also on the logistical level. While ideologically it required rewriting the genealogical history of Iraq, in practice, it also entailed the forced movement of populations and the nationalization of arable and pastoral lands. This meant re-engineering the societies of northern Iraq, which were either not Arab or not Muslim. For example, the Iraqi army’s pacification campaigns against the Kurds in the north involved installing Sunni Arabs from south and central Iraq in the northern villages of Kurdistan.94 The demographic manipulations that primarily targeted the Kurds drove larger numbers of Chaldeans and smaller Christian minorities to migrate from their northern villages to the central and southern cities in search after political stability.95 During the IBP’s campaign against the Kurds the state did not discriminate between the various social settlements of the north that lived within the Kurdish target zone, with the result that Iraqi minority populations such as the Chaldeans, Assyrians and Yezidis were all affected by the attacks on the Kurds irrespective of their political affiliations. Approximately 150 Christian and Yazidi villages and 24 churches and monastic properties were destroyed during the 1970s and 1980s.96 Despite these difficulties and the forced displacement of large segments of Chaldean population, the Chaldean residents of the capital were so shielded and disconnected from these experiences that they generally tended to discount them as exaggerations or construe them as reasonable consequences to anti-government activity perpetrated by radicalized segments of Assyrian and other Christian dissidents. The distinct Chaldean experience in different locations is reflected in Chaldeans’ retrospective views of the IBP. During interviews with Baghdadi Chaldean expatriates in London between 2012 and 2014, Girling observed that ‘a mentality prevailed that Husain in particular had been ‘good for us Christians’ implying that criticism of government actions or anti-Christian persecutions should be limited if voiced at all’.97 This attitude continued if not increased after the US invasion of

104

The Chaldeans

Iraq in 2003 as urbanized Christians began reminiscing about their former life during a period of extreme sectarian violence. In contrast with this perspective, Sharkey Haddad, whose Chaldean family was still occupying the northern villages when he left Iraq in the late 1970s, described their life under the IBP in an autobiographical essay as a bastion of religious discrimination. ‘While Saddam Hussein and his Baath Party ruled Iraq, Sharky’s father was arrested. Saddam Hussein supported Islam. For people such as Sharky’s family, who are not Muslim, Iraq was a dangerous place to be.’98 A critical event transformed the lives of the Chaldeans under the IBP: the 1974 nationalization of the school system. This initiative had a direct impact on the provisions for Catholic education, which came predominantly from foreign missionary establishments in the country.99 The private schools – mostly established and operated by Christian missions – were closed down and their foreign priest educators were deported.100 Moreover, for a period, the Iraqi government attempted to impose the study of Qur’an on all schools, including those in which Christian students were the majority. These developments were fairly rapid, taking place less than two years after a 1972 decree had granted the Syriac-speaking Churches – Chaldean, Assyrian and Syrian – the right to teach Syriac in schools with classrooms of a Christian attendance of 25 per cent or more.101 The latter decree was rarely implemented and official measures to place restrictions on religious activities in Iraq after 1974 were enacted through educational reforms as well as other political tactics. Established Chaldean and Assyrian civil society organizations and media venues were either closed down or came under the direct scrutiny of the state.102 The Ba‘thist regime outwardly professed secularism and the constitution endorsed

Figure 11  Chaldean schoolgirl entrusted with President Saddam Hussein’s portrait for the eighth-grade class picture. Al-Nahdha High School for girls, Dora District, Baghdad, 1980.

3. Political Survival in Iraq

105

Figure 12  First-Grade Syriac reading book, 20,000 copies issued by the Iraqi Ministry of Education, 1974.

106

The Chaldeans

religious freedom, but legal procedures shaping political life, mixed marriages, inheritance and property ownership remained highly influenced by Shari‘a law. For example, while Muslims could inherit property from Christians, the reverse was prohibited; children of Muslim–Christian marriages had to become Muslim and Christian men marrying Muslim women had to convert to Islam. The same went for the social, literary and pastoral activities of the Chaldean Church, all of which were closely watched and required prior authorization. In 1981, the Iraqi government wanted to nationalize all Christian places of worship through the Ministry of Waqfs (religious properties and endowments) and to control all the churches’ functions, transforming church dignitaries, including the bishops, into state employees. Although this plan did not formally materialize, the religious leaders at the top had to secure political authorization before the assignment of any new posts.103 In the same decade the National Assembly included 4 Christian representatives when parliament membership was 250 individuals. The proportionate representation for population size would have been 8.104 These unfavourable transformations in minority status and religious liberty in Iraq were occasionally criticized by Chaldean clergy in diaspora who were encouraged to take a stance by the Vatican and other advocates of Christianity in the West. The clergy at home, however, felt the need to maintain a quiescence demeanour. With the creation of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region following the 1991 Gulf War and the Kurdish uprising, the identity equation among Iraq’s Christians shifted again in response to the rising need for ethnic identification for all Iraqis and with Kurdish Regional Government regarding the Christian groups in the region as net contributors. Christian identity became more fluid and less denominationally bound during that period, especially with more generic or strategic identities beginning to emerge locally or get imported from the Western diaspora. ‘Iraqi Christian’ and ‘Assyrian Christian’ became more commonly used and even conflated with each other.105 Thus, towards the conclusion of the century, with Chaldeans falling between what were becoming two distinct administrative units, the Kurdish region and Iraq proper, it is not surprising that the Chaldean patriarch shifted his attitude from one of the Ba‘th’s subordinate to one of ecumenical leadership of a multi-regional community towards which he more readily expressed responsibility. Patriarch Bidawid also softened his position regarding ethnic belonging in ways that were current with the times but that may have endangered his position in front of the IBP. For instance, on a 1998 visit to the northern region, he was recorded saying: ‘[Christians and Kurds] are the sons of this land; we have a joint history. I can even say more than this: We have common blood.’106

Mesopotamian Antiquities and the Ba‘thist State Alongside the military campaigns in the north, the 1980s was a decade that witnessed Saddam Hussein’s obsession with an accelerated and blunt attempt to streamline Iraq’s ethnic plurality into a single identity, and to strategically link the past with the present. Cultural, ideological and administrative concessions

3. Political Survival in Iraq

107

to win over the support of the Kurds and other ethnic groups who were not attached to Barazani and his rebels were consistently implemented alongside the military campaigns through the IBP’s widely known policy of ‘targhib wa tarhib’ (enticement and terror). Examples of these concessions included appropriating Nawrouz, the Kurdish New Year, as an all-Iraqi national holiday; establishing a Kurdish Academy of Science, a Kurdish university, associations for Kurdish writers and inaugurating the Mosul Spring Festival.107 Arabization under the IBP rule transpired on a whole new, more vigorous scale. It involved offering the Iraqi people an integrative identity framed within a new conception of Sunni–Shi‘i ecumenism, similar to the one proposed by the Shi‘i rival Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Sadr, whom the IBP executed in 1980.108 It involved methods that were familiar and palatable to the Christian minorities. The IBP’s desire to resurrect the country’s ancient pre-Islamic past and create a sense of continuity and synthesis between ancient and new identities was met with notable enthusiasm by these minorities, who were already at home with a similar revival that linked them to these ancient civilizations via the conduit of the Church and the foreign missions in the previous century. The Iraqi national discourse generally did not explicitly sanction such associations between its living Christian communities and the nation state’s ‘antiquity treasures’. In fact, by the 1960s the archaeological finds were fully appropriated as ‘regalia for the secular state’, to use Anderson’s concept, under the supervision of the Ministry of Information. A 1975 publication, Treasures of the Iraq Museum, was prefaced by the Minister of Information who appropriated the finds as part of Iraq’s ‘Arab’ heritage: The Revolution in Iraq … wishes the heritage of the past to serve as a situation to preserve the Revolution’s originality, to crystallize our national character, and to characterize the part of the Arab lands in the history among the parts of other nations.109

Although strategic interest in tribal history and lineage dates back to the early decades of the Iraqi nation-state-building and is exemplified by major works on tribal history,110 the large-scale Ba‘thist project of rewriting Iraqi history (Mashru‘ i‘adat kitabat al-tarikh) took these efforts to a new level of orchestration and theorizing. The project had been at work since the mid-1970s within the public sector, and was officially articulated as a project (mashru‘) in 1979. It aimed to restructure collective historical memory in accordance with the dictates of Ba‘thist ideology.111 The subject of a considerable number of recent academic studies,112 this Ba‘thist project encompassed several sub-projects that sought to reconstruct public understanding of national heritage, most immanent of which was the production of a genealogy that purportedly traced the president’s lineage to Ali bin Abi Talib. Valorization of Mesopotamian heritage and association with the Babylonian monarch Nebuchadnezzar (who presented a banner ‘to his grandson, flagbearer of the Twin Rivers, Saddam Hussayn’ during the Babylon Festival in 1988) and Hammurabi (whose biography that was presented in a symposium

108

The Chaldeans

during the same festival strangely resembled that of Saddam Hussein), served the strategic role of casting Iraq as a unified nation state despite its contentious ethnic diversity. It aimed at creating a national imaginary that linked Iraq’s various ethnoreligious groups to one shared pre-modern, pre-Islamic past, all the while allowing Iraq to uphold its claims to pan-Arabist ideology because, after all, the national narrative upheld that ‘the Semites … were most certainly Arabs who spoke Arabic and immigrated from … the southern Peninsula … after Paleolithic times’.113 The basic rationale that a growing cohort of Ba‘thist culture-makers advanced was that all Semitic groups were Arab since they emerged from the Arab Peninsula. While the pre-Islam context projected a long, prestigious history for Iraq, it did not challenge its Arab identity. It did, however, reduce that identity to one of several contributors that shaped the modern Iraqi one.114 The Ba‘thist strategic rewriting of history aimed to encourage modern Iraqis to retrace their national identity to Mesopotamian antiquity on the one hand, and to see in the putatively secular regime of the tikriti Ba‘th the continuation of the pedigree of the Prophet of Islam, on the other hand. Although this rhetoric coloured the Iraqi media, arts and literary world which increasingly featured many public displays of the ancient–new Iraqi continuum from the late 1960s to the 1990s, the reception of this self-image was not even across all segments of Iraqi society. Despite the well-funded and prolonged historiographic efforts (approximately from 1974 to 2003), the state-sponsored genealogical imaginary did not resonate well with the populace. In part, Eric Davis notes, this was due to the fact that the educated and secular segment of the population found the discrepancy between the Ba‘th’s early secular policies and the increasing Islamic overtones of its later years problematic.115 The Ba‘thist state’s revival of Mesopotamian rhetoric no doubt had its influence on shaping the parallel discourses of Iraq’s Christian communities, who during that time were also immersed in articulating these links which they traced back to their own Mesopotamian identities that were crafted for them by Western missionary and archaeological intervention decades earlier. It did not change matters much that the elaborate argument conjured by the IBP to sustain these claims bypassed the Christian associations and entailed instead establishing the Arab pedigree of the great dead civilizations of the Akkadians, Babylonians, Sumerians and other ancient Mesopotamians. Intriguingly, despite efforts to integrate and conform, the Arabized Chaldean perspective on the ancients continued to align with the former missionary accounts of a specifically Christian line of pedigree that excludes Arabs from the picture. The Arabic-language Chaldean periodical Bayn al-Nahrayn, established in 1973, readily introduced the concept of ethnic unity between Iraqis and Mesopotamians as the same people (sha‘b wahid) while portraying Arabs as outliers who are as foreign as the Turks, Persians and Mongols to the Mesopotamian identity.116 Despite the favourable intersections between the IBP and the West-enabled evocations of antiquity, the Chaldeans frequently experienced the downplaying of religious identities and dimming down of public displays of religious practice in the form of suppression and even repression. Religious identities were the

3. Political Survival in Iraq

109

chief distinguishing markers for minorities in Iraq, and yet there was no space for expressing them in the public sphere. This mixed experience of integration and alienation eventually gave rise to alternative ways in which Chaldeans related to their homeland. It is here where the growing community in diaspora began to reclaim the ethnic label and reject the Arab one, reviving instead the conceptual affinity with the Christian West, to the extent that American sociologist Mary Sengstock, who encountered this community in Southeast Michigan in the 1970s, was prompted to characterize the Chaldeans as politically ‘marginal men’ under the IBP.117

Conclusion In speaking of the ‘tragic characteristics of the Christians of Iraq’, Eastern Christianity professor Herman Teule pinpoints their ‘extreme dividedness’ and asks how we should define their ethnic identity: Is it Assyrian or Syriac or Chaldean? Is it possible to speak of one common ethnic identity or the different communities, apart from the question which appellation (Assyrian, Chaldo-Assyrian, Syriac) is the most appropriate or practical one? Or are there different ethnic identities coinciding with the traditional ecclesiastical communities?118

Far from providing definitive answers to these questions, this chapter tried to address the new political pressures on these religious communities to delineate their ethnic identities during the nation-building era. The logic behind Patriarch Bidawid’s claim with which the chapter opened, that the Chaldeanness is a religious rather than an ethnic identity, rests on two assumptions about this identity: one, the Chaldean Church cannot uphold the image of a missionary-oriented institution if its community relied on an ethnic identification like the Assyrians – an identification that was alien to the Church’s missionary history; two, as the size of the Chaldean, Assyrian and other Syriac communities grew in diaspora during the twentieth century, ecumenical models of identity began to form there, which did not always parallel the ethnic conceptions of the respective religious identities. The second point, as the next chapter demonstrates, marks where the discussion of identities departs from the Church into the public sphere of civic society. The shift from religious to ethnic identification had already been instigated before the migratory waves to America. Although it may seem too common today, the emergence of the concept of ‘minority’, whether religious or ethnic or both, as Murre-van Den Berg argues, was ‘inextricably connected to twentiethcentury nationalism’. The legal framework, as the prototypical case of the Assyrian refugee camps demonstrated, even preceded the designation of these groups as minorities. In the Middle East, the derivation of the concept relied on the millet system, which, although was legally abolished by the twentieth century, its legal structures survived and its importance increased under colonial and postcolonial

110

The Chaldeans

bureaucratic demands and the Western powers’ continued assumption of the role of ‘protectors’ of numerically minor religious groups.119 Inconsistent recognition of ‘minorities’ with specific rights in the Arab world began within the fluid context of nation state formation and continued to transform as these ‘minorities’ moved to other continents and national contexts. We cannot understand the processes of minoritization without accounting for the processes of forming the identity of the majorities. While creating an ‘Arab’ Iraqi state presupposed the existence and even the predominance of an Arab ‘ethnicity’ (or ‘race’, to use the terminology of the time), what constituted this ‘Arabness’ was far from clear when the questions of language, ethnicity, region and religion persistently overlapped to preclude the clear demarcation of people. In the long process of defining who was Arab, identifying non-Arabs also became part of the debate – a debate that was never fully resolved and with it the Chaldean identity remained stranded between Arabness and whiteness in the diaspora. Within the complex backdrop of a discursive search for an Iraqi map, an Iraqi identity, a new name for this national imaginary (it is suggested that the name ‘Iraq’ was revived by Arnold Wilson, the British Civil Commissioner of Baghdad 1918–20 for the new state) and the successive phases of the Arabization of this identity, the nationally unified Chaldeans were affected along geographical lines: since Arabic became the state language and the main pillar of its identity, the Chaldean urban population that was exposed to the Arabic language at school and in the work place absorbed and embodied the new Iraqi identity more readily than the rural population that predominantly spoke Syriac.120 The significance of this distinction increased as early waves of Chaldean migration from rural regions to the West relied on assertions of their Mesopotamian identity, bypassing the Arab identity to which later waves of Chaldean immigrants had been thoroughly assimilated. What this entailed was that successive waves of Chaldean immigrants in the 1960s and 1990s were to encounter unfamiliar Chaldean identities, ideologically and linguistically distinct from their own, in the American diaspora.

4 F R OM R E L IG IOU S T O E T H N IC M I N O R I T Y : B E T W E E N I R AQ A N D A M E R IC A I N T H E T W E N T I E T H C E N T U RY

Arab Americans had no status, no entity, no consciousness, no existence whatsoever. We once were invited to a Lebanese home. Politically they had no consciousness whatsoever. They didn’t even bring the subject [of Palestine] up. Hisham Sharabi, 19831

This is how Palestinian intellectual Hisham Sharabi recalled his 1947 encounter, or rather conceptual clash, with the established Arab-American community in Illinois. He was an incoming MA student at the University of Chicago. His frustration captured a commonly voiced contrast between the political and cultural identities of the early Syrian immigrants of the late 1800s and their USborn offspring on the one hand, and the Arab immigrants who joined them in subsequent decades during the Arab nation-building period while Palestine was in the process of being excised from that nascent ‘Arab world’, on the other hand. It was amid this tension between old and new waves of immigration from Greater Syria (modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and Palestine) that Chaldeans began forming a migrant community in the New World. Much painstaking scholarship has been accomplished lately on the encounter between US culture and the Eastern Christian populations of Greater Syria.2 The account of Chaldean migration and the identities it generated in their wake is far less known by contrast. Predictably, the sectarian violence that accompanied the collapse of the Ottoman Empire meant that the earliest immigrants who arrived in the interwar period from the newly formed Iraq, like those from Greater Syria, were predominantly Christian. However, no one knows exactly when the first Chaldean entered America because the early immigrants entered as Ottoman nationals. Their race, on the other hand, was often marked as ‘Syrian’. Until 1899, Arabic-speaking immigrants from Greater Syria and other provinces of the Ottoman Empire fell under the category of ‘Asiatic’ and part of ‘Turkey in Asia’ on the US Census. The term ‘Turk’ equated with being Muslim according to the Orientalists conceptions of the region at that time. Mesopotamian and Syrian Christians continued to enter the United States in waves that trickled and flowed in the aftermath of the First World War.3 With

112

The Chaldeans

‘nearly ninety percent of all Arabic-speaking immigrants arriving here before 1924’ being ‘Syrian Christians from Mount Lebanon who were either Roman Catholics of Eastern rite or Syrian (Eastern) Orthodox’,4 the Syrian identity in the United States eventually equated with being Eastern Christian. In a nation that operated for a long time under the assumption that distinct races ‘constitute the true condition of the American population and can therefore provide the basis for law and public policy’,5 the main pathway to integrating with the majority for these Eastern Christians was to achieve whiteness. Added to the desire to distance themselves from Islam, the strong anti-Asian movements and legislation in the late nineteenth century, coupled with the Jim Crow laws and segregation between ‘whites’ and ‘blacks’ prompted the early immigrants not only to contest their Ottoman and Turkish identities, but also the Asiatic or black racial designations. As a result, their fight for citizenship rights culminated in a campaign to prove their ‘whiteness’ under the law.6 As Sarah Gualtieri compellingly demonstrates, early twentieth-century racial prerequisite court cases led to three Syrian men’s argument that they were Caucasian, Semitic, closer to Europeans and therefore ‘White’. This argument gained momentum and by the 1910 Census, Syria was added as a separate birthplace under the larger classification of ‘Ottoman Empire’ and soon Syrians were recognized as ‘foreign-born whites’. By 1915, a ‘Syrian’ ethnic identity separate from the Ottoman was established and its racial classification was confirmed as ‘white’.7 Classifications continued to shift with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire leading to the emergence of territorial national identities in the 1930 Census. These identities traced back to birthplaces such as ‘Lebanon’ instead of Greater Syria and ‘Iraq’ instead of Mesopotamia. Like the Syrians, to avoid exclusionary Asian laws, early Christian immigrants from Mesopotamia traced their ancestry to Arab heritage, which gave them Caucasian racial status and led to their classification as whites on the US Census along with Europeans.8 Conflation of Syrian and Eastern Christian identities is reminiscent of an earlier etymological confusion in the case of the Syriac appellation that Chapter 1 discussed. In the US diaspora, the confusion of ‘Syrian’ and ‘Syriac’ spilled over to Eastern Christians who did not fall geographically within greater Syria, but were from Mesopotamia. An illustrative case is that of George Bino, one of the first documented Chaldeans to enter America. Although Bino was born in ‘Tilkef, Turkey’ (present-day Iraq) his 1905 ‘Declaration of Intention’ document listed his nationality as ‘Turkish’, while his race as ‘Syrian’.9 Even as they identified as white along with most Arabs to protect interests and security, Middle Easterners’ cultural citizenship was often ‘white but not quite’,10 hampered by mounting negative associations with Islam and racial non-whiteness. Although since the inception of the US Census in 1790 racial categories were imposed on residents and citizens, religious identifications were not registered among official immigration statistics. The result was that formal racialization as white and greater religious integration as Christians did not necessarily bring with them belonging to the majority when these communities were culturally and visually assumed to be Arab, Turk or Muslim.11 In sum, political whiteness did not save the day for Christian immigrants whose language, accent, ways of life or skin colour reflected their non-Europeanness in day-to-day life.

4. From Religious to Ethnic Minority

113

Figure 13  George Bino’s ‘Declaration of Intention’ from 1905 showing his place of birth as ‘Tilkef, Turkey’, his race as ‘Syrian’ and his nationality as ‘Turkish’

Detroit: Among Arabs, Maronites and Assyrians Chaldeans, like Armenians and Assyrians, were not impelled to seek asylum outside of northern Mesopotamia until the sectarian violence of 1915–18 and the geopolitical reshuffling of the post-Ottoman era.12 While the Assyrian

114

The Chaldeans

immigrants congregated around the headquarters of the missionary groups they had previously collaborated with in Mesopotamia, Persia and Anatolia and around their exiled patriarch in Chicago and its precincts; a majority of Chaldeans, who first immigrated to multiple US destinations including Chicago, were soon to congregate in Detroit by the 1920s. Drawn to the stable wages and the low-skilled jobs made available by Ford’s automobile assembly line and other manufacturing industries’ growing need for skilled and unskilled labour, Detroit appealed to Chaldeans, Arabs and Middle Eastern migrants of various origins. In that milieu the Chaldeans eventually became themselves among the oldest and largest group to populate a city where most nationalities, religions and ethnicities from the Middle East were represented. They also suddenly found themselves situated in a social context that was the opposite of Iraq in two fundamental ways: it undermined their religious particularity and emphasized their Oriental and Arab otherness. In contrast with the ethno-religious nationalism of the Assyrian diaspora, the Maronites provided a community model that was comparably Uniate Catholic in denomination and Arab in character and language. Chaldeans located in this community the identity that was closest to theirs, especially as they awaited the arrival of the first Chaldean priest to Detroit in 1947 and the establishment of their first Chaldean parish in 1948.13 Lebanese Catholic Maronites were the first Arabic-speaking immigrants to establish an Eastern Church in the United States and thus extended considerable support to the Chaldeans when the latter group arrived to the scene. Unlike the Assyrians who emigrated from Iran, the Chaldean and Maronite communities did not have firmly established racial or ethnic identification prior to migration since their primary identities were framed in religious terms under the Ottoman rule. The gradually rising value of identifying as ‘white’ was first established by the Syrian Christian (later Lebanese) immigrants as they settled in the United States. Eventually, they transmitted this value to the Chaldeans to whom they also more broadly acted as successful models in liturgical, political and entrepreneurial matters.14 The fact that the Chaldeans eventually chose to congregate around the Arabic-speaking Catholic Maronites in Detroit rather than the Syriac- and Persian-speaking Assyrians in Chicago, with whom they shared liturgical and ecclesial language and territorial history, is a strong indication that the Chaldean immigrants were more at home with their Arab cultural and linguistic identity than their Syriac religious identity by the time they began forming a critical mass in the United States in the 1940s. The early multilingual publications of the Chaldean-American and Assyrian-American communities in the Midwest also reflect this divergence: Assyrian publications, such as the Assyrian-American Herald (1915–19) and the Assyrian Chronicle (1932–7), were published in Syriac and English. In contrast, Chaldean periodicals, like al-Mashriq (The Orient, est. 1949) and the Chaldean Detroit Times (Est. 1990), used Arabic and English only in the beginning, introducing a symbolic Syriac element later. From the outset, Chaldeans’ religious particularity in the United States was diluted by virtue of being ensconced within the Christian mainstream, an experience that was intensified by association with Assyrian immigrants from

4. From Religious to Ethnic Minority

115

Urmia and Maronite immigrants from Lebanon. Encounters with the Assyrian Syriac-speaking community helped discursively revive the concept of Chaldeans and Assyrians as ‘one people’, especially with the Assyrian nationalist tendency to subsume other Syriac groups under the Assyrian label. The proximity also facilitated Chaldeans’ borrowing of much of the ancient and nationalist identity rhetoric from diaspora Assyrians. Assyrian nationalists’ discourse cast their Assyrianness against the background of Turkish backwardness and barbarism, in statements such as ‘fertile lands lie sterile under the dead hand of the Turk, whereas Assyrians in their country are successful in every branch; they are an intelligent, industrious and prolific race’.15 Laura Robson notes that post-war diaspora Assyrians, alongside the Armenians, applied self-descriptions that ‘primarily reflected the anxieties and needs of a diaspora community trying to demonstrate its whiteness, Christianity and “civilization” in the context of an often xenophobic and hostile country’16 that regarded its Middle Eastern immigrants as undifferentiated Muslim barbarians. As prominent tropes of diaspora activism, expressing Assyrianness in terms of ancient Christian nationhood facilitated assimilation and lent legitimacy to claims for the legal category of ‘white’. With time, demographic proximities and overlapping with the Assyrian diaspora helped promote a Chaldean self-image of ‘ethnic’ minority and the appropriation of a similar mode of community representation. Despite the emergence of regional identities (Lebanon, Iraq) and resurfacing of ethno-sectarian ones (Assyrian, Maronite) in the American diaspora, it is crucial to factor in the mounting fervour for the new Arab identity at home. Antonius’s 1946 Arab Awakening petitioned to subsume ethnic minorities under a new, linguistically based Arab identity in a vast secular Arab territory. What is less often mentioned is that he had written his groundbreaking book in English and published it in London. Being ‘thoroughly implicated in the transnational playing field of the time’ meant that the reception of his work took place within a global network where diverse notions of collective identity were constantly trekking between home and diaspora.17 If the new Arab identity had its foundation in a new conception of modernity, then it makes sense, as Akram Khater deftly illustrated in his study of early Syrian migrations, that this identity was exported to and from America, where the newcomers strived to establish themselves as modern subjects in the new public sphere.18 The new Arab identity fermented slowly during the interwar period, before the influx of a new wave of geographically diverse immigrants who had been increasingly viewing themselves as Arab came to join the early immigrants in the mid-1960s. The global financial depression of the interwar years activated restrictive migration quotas in 1924, to the extent that only 8,253 immigrants from the Arab Middle East entered the United States between 1920 and 1930.19 The US-born Syrian population also consequently declined between 1930 and 1940, leading to the cultural isolation and political divergence – which Sharabi was quick to call out – between the first wave of Syrian immigrants and the later waves of those who viewed themselves as Arab. Unlike the early immigrants who were predominantly Christian, more than 60 per cent of the immigrants who entered the

116

The Chaldeans

Figure 14  Two issues of al-Mashriq ‘Iraqi’ weekly newspaper (est. Detroit, 1949). The 1972 issue (top) shows the original set-up of the front page with Arabic and English titles. The 1975 issue (bottom) shows the addition of the title in Syriac to indicate the Chaldean character of the paper.

country between 1947 and 1966 were Muslims.20 Demographics also shifted from peasant to urban and educated emigrants. As a result, the new Arab-American identity that began to form during those decades contrasted in significant ways with the regional and national social identities of the earlier immigrants, who had viewed themselves nationally as Ottoman subjects but tended to construct their primary identity around their Christian denominations.21

4. From Religious to Ethnic Minority

117

To complicate identifications further, the post-war departure from race science and eugenics towards federal standardization of race and ethnic classifications eventually created the recognition of the ‘Other’ category – groups that did not fall under the established race categories. This meant that the US Census was going to be in constant need of revisions, which proved to be the case with the classification of immigrants from the Sykes–Picot map, whose identities in the US diaspora continued to occasion revisions to this date. Migrant identity politics shifted once again in the mid-1960s with the loosening of US immigration restrictions in 1965. This coincided with the demoralizing panArab defeat against Israel in 1967. During that decade a large new influx of proPalestine Arab nationalists came face-to-face with the civil rights movement and the rise of multiculturalism and ethnic pride in the United States. The new wave of Arab migration, unsurprisingly, was paralleled by the largest wave of Chaldean immigration to the United States. These Chaldeans arrived at a moment when ethnic consciousness was also on the rise among second- and third-generation Syrian and Lebanese Americans – children of those who left the Ottoman Empire before the rise of Arab nationalism. These sentiments had intensified as a result of the mounting internecine conflicts in the Arab world. With the rising tide of Arab nationalism in the sending countries, the newcomers – whom Orfalea calls ‘Second Wave’ (1948–66) and ‘Third Wave’ (1967–2005) immigrants – combined with the old Syrian guard to form a hybrid ‘Arab-American’ identity that was the admixture of those who felt less white and more Arab, and those whose identification was with their non-Arab sect-based ethnicities.22 Posing as ‘Arab-American’, which began to generate collective interest only in the 1970s and did not become widely used until the mid-1990s,23 meant that new collisions and splits were to form along the lines of the state’s racial definitions. It prompted some factions to embrace the Census Bureau’s (CB) category ‘of Arab ancestry’ and others, like second-generation Chaldeans and Assyrians whose linguistic and geographical ties to the Iraqi homeland were weakened, to articulate a forceful rejection of it. While serving to bring strategic benefits and visibility to Assyrian, Chaldean, Maronite and other Christian immigrants from the Arab world, the Arab-American identity was not uniformly accepted by these groups. Their advocates consolidated their efforts in 1998 and contested their inclusion in the Arab ancestry group on the US Census. The wave of Maronite immigrants who had left Lebanon during the long civil war of 1975–90 arrived in the United States with right-wing Lebanese Christian alignments, rather than the umbrella Arab identity that had fermented earlier in the region, casting them in direct antagonism with the Arab-American and Palestinian-American communities they encountered in the US diaspora. Already in strong social, economic and political affinity with the Maronites, the Assyrians and Chaldeans were strongly influenced by the anti-Arab rhetoric of the Maronite newcomers to the extent that the three communities – with the Maronites in the lead – formulated transnational political initiatives, most notably the recent well-funded non-profit ‘In Defense of Christians’ (IDC). Founded in 2014 in Washington DC, the IDC set itself to work towards creating a narrative of a unified

118

The Chaldeans

body of ‘Middle Eastern Christians’ with common political goals at home and in diaspora. One of the main goals of the IDC is to promote the rhetoric of Christian victimhood and their need for Western protection in violent Arab/Muslim societies. These discourses are now in direct relationship with forging alignments with Zionist Jewish communities in the United States. There is an additional Iraqi backdrop to the shift of alliances away from the ArabAmerican mainstream. With ‘Assyrian’ emerging as a national identity for Iraq’s Chaldeans in the Kurdish region during the 1990s, the emphasis of the diaspora Chaldeans and Assyrians moved towards finding suitable ethnic identifications for their communities, both in the United States and for those remaining in Iraq. In 2000, mainly through the lobbying of the Assyrian Foundation of America and the Assyrian Universal Alliance, Chaldeans and Assyrians jointly secured a separate ethnic group classification. Aided by their investment in the antiArab and anti-Muslim rhetoric they went as far as lobbying the CB for a ‘Syriac’ ancestry category, based on a claim of primary linguistic attachment to the Syriac language, to avoid inclusion in the Arab aggregate. Unsurprisingly, this set them at odds with the Arab American Institute (AAI) and other official advocates of the Arab-American label. Representatives of the Syriac identity were determined to dissociate from the Arab-American population by requesting to be removed from the statistical calculations of the AAI, which subsumed the Syriac label under the Arab-American one. This led Helen Samhan, Executive Director of the AAI at that time, to issue the sobering reply that ‘identities that are carefully maintained within a group do not always correspond with how the group is perceived in the broader society’.24 Despite Christian minorities’ efforts to disaggregate from the Arab-American label, recent reports published by the CB continued to fuel the conflict by inconsistently including ‘Arab-only’ respondents sometimes and a mix of ‘Arab’ and ‘Arab with non-Arab ancestries’ respondents at other times. The threat of losing control over how and who they were perceived to be was augmented by the CB’s sweeping definition of who was included as an ‘American of Arab ancestry’. Kayyali observed that those who responded ‘Lebanese, Egyptian, Syrian, Iraqi, Jordanian, Moroccan, Arab, North African, Middle Eastern, Kuwaiti, Libyan, Berber, Emirati, Omani, Qatari, Bahraini, Alhuceman, Bedouin, Yemeni, Kurdish, Algerian, Saudi, Tunisian, or Rio de Oro’ to the ancestry question on the 2000 Census were categorized as ‘Arab’ by default.25 Resisting the Arab association is habitually intensified by the likelihood that Chaldeans would be perceived as Arab – not only on abstract classification tables but just as critically in day-to-day affairs – and by how likely it is for perceptions of Arabness to be conceived in pejorative terms in the United States. When it comes to the Arab-American life, one of the primary experiences is Islamophobia,26 the enduring discrimination experienced along religious lines. At the same time as their Christian identity was superseded by their seeming Arabness in the United States, whether because of their use of the Arabic language, Arabic names, appearance, cuisine or body language, Chaldeans found themselves being ethnically conflated with the Arabs, which directly led to being religiously misconstrued as Muslim by

4. From Religious to Ethnic Minority

119

the overarching society. Several comparative studies of Arab-Americans conclude that Christian immigrants from Arab countries are more easily able to enter the inner sanctum of American society than Muslim immigrants, especially as intermarriage with other Christian ethnic groups was becoming more common among men.27 However, a significant yet less recognized fact is that a powerful, durable Arab-Muslim ‘cognitive link’, exists in the United States, leading many of these Christians to be recipients of discriminatory treatment because they are assumed to be Muslim.28 This immediate Islamophobic atmosphere, more so than the non-Arab historical roots of the Eastern Christians, is the driving force behind Chaldeans’ quest for a separate ethnic identification in the United States. However, these Christian communities’ embrace of Islamophobia did nothing to protect them from the backlash as Chapter 7 will illustrate. Through her fieldwork among Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian Christian immigrants in the United States, Kayyali observed that the dissonance between presented self (Christian) and perceived self (Muslim) led Arab-Christians over time to adopt three main strategies to dissociate themselves from Islam and proactively avert Islamophobia: one, asserting Christianity more loudly through enactments of Christianity in the form of ‘lived religion’, that is, incorporating it into the manifestations of everyday social life. A common form of this has been literally ‘wearing’ one’s Christianity in the shape of a pendant or cross around the neck, inside the personal vehicle, on top of the main door of homes, in a massive Christian nativity on the front lawn during Christmas time, etc. This is a common practice across Christian Arab-American communities and a distinctive feature of Chaldeans in Michigan. The second tactic is asserting non-Arabness by mobilizing a discourse on pre-Arab and pre-Islamic Middle Eastern legacy (Mesopotamian in the case of the Chaldeans and Assyrians, ancient Egyptian in the case of the Copts, Phoenician in the case of the Maronites and so on). Kayyali noted that the segment of Christian Arab population that chose to materially display its Christianity is also one that tended to identify by sect and national labels over the Arab-American label, an observation that aligns with the common identification of Catholics from Iraq, who prefer the identity ‘Chaldean’, ‘Mesopotamian’ or ‘Iraqi’ to associations with the Arab-American label.29 The third tactic is expressing claims to ‘ancient Christianity’ to demonstrate how they have always been Christian; namely, that their Christianity is not a product of conversion from Islam upon relocating to the West as is widely assumed by outsiders. ‘We were Christians way before you were Christians,’ ‘We are first century Christians,’ ‘Our people were Christian when your people were burning wikka up in the moors of Wales,’ ‘My great great great grandmother in the first century while living in Bethlehem used to babysit for Jesus’ and ‘My ancestors were worshipping Christians when yours were in trees’ are some of the expressions that Kayyali recorded among her Christian interviewees. They reported using them to emphasize their Church’s long lineage that dates back to the time of Jesus, to reference the Holy Land in order to associate themselves with the cradle of Christianity, or to defend their community through humour and sarcasm against the general ignorance they endured regularly in the United States in the context of popular knowledge about Christianity in the Middle East.30

120

The Chaldeans

Conclusion Like all social identities, Chaldeanness transformed and ramified with the passage of time and the delocalization of the communities that expressed this identity. By juxtaposing the Iraqi context to that of Southeast Michigan, which became home to the largest concentration of Chaldeans and other Middle Eastern groups outside of the Middle East, the interplay between Chaldeans’ religious markedness in Iraq and their ethnic markedness in the United States during the twentieth century comes to the fore. The shift in the Chaldean identity was not in nomenclature this time, but in the very configuration of the label. Precisely because Eastern Christian identities were merging with and eroding within a Christian-majority country, Chaldeans found a need to assert a decisively ethnic identity in the American diaspora. The largest and oldest settled concentration of Chaldeans outside of the Middle East can be found in Southeast Michigan today, where at least 58 per cent of the Middle Eastern population was estimated to be Christian by 2004, and 35 per cent of the Arab-American (Christian and Muslim) to be from Iraq.31 These percentages stage the Chaldean community as one of the largest sections of the Middle Eastern population in the state. As a Christian group in Michigan, Chaldeans ostensibly belong to the religious majority, a feature that has always stood in stark contrast with their status in Iraq and formerly in the Ottoman Empire, where they belonged to a religious minority. One of the outcomes of the migration and reintegration processes for the various Christian groups from the Arab world, Chaldeans among them, was a reconfiguration of the actual and metaphoric space where debates over identity could take place. If modernization and secularization had started to override the importance of distinguishing between Muslims and non-Muslims in the Arab states of the twentieth century, this same modernization was paralleled by an influx of embittered refugees and immigrants from these states which started to underscore their ethnic particularity as much as their regional, linguistic, sartorial and class differences. At the intersection with the social transnational networks Chaldeans were forming, this sense of minoritization was imported back into the sending contexts in the form of religious difference, marking Chaldeans, yet again, as distinct and discontinuous with the Iraqi majority. The world-spanning conversation between the dwindling community at home and the growing communities in diaspora, the claim for a space within modern Western civilization but also within an ancient Mesopotamian civilization and a pre-Arab ‘native land’ in Iraq has given rise to a more nuanced configuration of ‘Chaldeanness’. This Chaldean identity is inextricable from the transnational formations of the twentieth century, where the exigencies of the Ottoman past, the emergence of Arab nation states, the conceptualization of a modern ‘ethnic minority’ status and the refocusing of the meaning of ‘whiteness’ and citizenship in the United States converge to give it the particular situational forms it embodies today.

5 F A M I LY , M A R R IAG E A N D E T H N IC E C O N OM Y : A T R A N SNAT IO NA L S O C IA L F I E L D P E R SP E C T I V E

Whether they reside in Iraq, the United States or other countries, the social lives of Chaldeans are complex. As the embroiled boundaries of religion, ethnicity and whiteness demonstrate, social formations cannot be adequately understood by looking only at what happens within the confines of a single region or a single nation state, especially when successive waves of Chaldean and other Middle Eastern migrations constantly stir the dynamics of settlement and perforate the contours of social identities. Understanding how multiple locations and affiliations have intersected to shape Chaldean identities calls for a methodology that transcends the standard focus on integration (or exclusion) in the country of settlement, which is in and of itself expressly complex – a methodology that does not dismiss the ways in which Chaldean ethnic, religious and political priorities are imbricated and at the same time can account for these priorities across national boundaries. US-based Chaldean diaspora and its political and religious institutions make more sense if viewed as ‘transnational social fields’ in which community spaces are constantly reconfigured by the transnational activities that transpire within them. Several factors necessitate analysing Chaldeans as a transnational diasporic community. For one, contemporary Chaldean immigrants in the United States cannot be called ‘transmigrants’ because most of them do not lead a daily life that ‘depends on multiple and constant interconnections across international borders’, nor do they frequently travel back and forth between a ‘sending’ nation state and a ‘receiving’ one.1 However, like the identities of transmigrants who maintain strong ties to their countries of origin, the public identities of Chaldean immigrants in Detroit are made in relation to two nation states, Iraq and the United States, and to the many stations along their way out of Iraq, where asylum seekers, refugees and migrants move towards preferred destinations. Moreover, in recent decades Chaldeans have been forging multifaceted cultural and economic relations between their society of origin and new settlements in the United States and elsewhere, a process that migration scholars identify as characteristic of ‘transnational migration’. Because the local lives of individuals are often penetrated by distant connections of received or transmitted information, this conception of social field

122

The Chaldeans

calls into question the local, national, transnational and global connections and the centre of subjective affiliations as participants experience it in a given social field. By conceptualizing the social field to be transnational, i.e. transcending the boundaries of the nation state of settlement, Levitt and Schiller allowed for an assessment of everyday activities and relationships that are influenced by multiple laws and social institutions which may exist across multiple physical locales, such as the kinship network, the Church and the family business. This approach also sanctions the argument that assimilation and transnational ties are not oppositional or incompatible, but rather that selective assimilation results in forming an ‘alternative site’ within the host nation ‘where the palimpsest of lost memories is reinvented, histories are fractured and retraced, and the unlike varieties of silence emerge into articulacy’.2 Using a transnational framework for the study of US-based Chaldeans implies capturing migrants’ simultaneous engagements in processes occurring in the United States, the originary country or host countries other than the United States.3 This framework requires methodological shifts (from migration, minority and diaspora studies to the transnational dimensions of the social phenomena they study) that focus on empirical illustrations of the intersections between social networks of Chaldeans in diaspora and Chaldeans remaining in the ancestral homeland, but also on instances in which a ‘transnational imaginary’, where certain transnational ties, identities and aspirations are imagined when not enacted, is at work among members of the migrant generations. Through the transnational nodes of the Chaldean family and the community’s institutional networks, this chapter will explore key homeland–newland connections that form and sustain social relations, economic status and collective identity.

The Transnational Family The articulation of family, gender, and class is […] embroiled in the project of ‘modernization.’ So, to be ‘modern’ is to be a ‘nuclear’ family, and a ‘nuclear’ family projects an air of ‘modernity.’ Akram Khater, Inventing Home, 2001.4 In the past two decades, Akram Khater’s paradigm-changing study of Lebanese migration/emigration, along with other contemporaneous studies of Middle Eastern diasporas, began questioning the old model in which individual Middle Eastern migrants were taken to be an extension of their families and the social lives of these families as coterminous with their tribes and societies. Instead, Khater critically assessed the role of gender, women and family as they pertained to a transnational process of ‘modernization’ during the second half of the nineteenth century. Building on the intersectionality between the public and private spheres of social life, and on the role of an economic network that straddled the Middle East, Europe and the United States, the Middle Eastern family and its social

5. Family, Marriage and Ethnic Economy

123

network emerged through this new framing as a formation far more complex than previously envisioned in former studies, as in Philip Kayal’s 1973 account: Since the Middle Easterner sees his family as an extension of himself, and his ‘religion’ or rite as a continuation of his family, social life rarely existed beyond the extended clan which more of less was religiously or ‘ritually’ homogenous.5

Even if Kayal’s simplification holds some relevance to the Chaldeans if we imagine them as close-knit ethno-religious communities inhabiting a single village or a collection of adjacent villages in the Nineveh Palins – we must at least attend to what happens with this family-based social life when the family begins to inhabit multiple, very distant locales, such as Baghdad, Jordan or Detroit. What happens when the members of this extended clan no longer carry the same ethnic and religious identities or speak the same language(s)? Are there transnational links that enable the family network and its former social identity to endure even as unmediated physical social ties become severed and the individuals become uprooted? Equally importantly, what happens to social identity when it is conceptualized along the imaginary Orientalist divide of a sending traditional ‘East’ and a receiving modern ‘West’? The Chaldean ‘family’ is a concept that typically lured the sociologists who tried to understand the community in the United States. ‘One cannot discuss Chaldean life without referring to the family,’ wrote Sengstock, who showcased the Michiganbased family as ‘a central focus to the Chaldean community’.6 Sociological studies that profiled the Chaldean community in the United States during the second half of the twentieth century7 uniformly agreed on the seminal position the family occupies in the life of the Chaldean individual and Chaldean community as a whole. It is a common story: Chaldean family ties form the nucleus of ethnic economy – an economy that is embedded in and dependent upon co-ethnic networks, often in diaspora when work options are more limited for a particular immigrant group – and the longest-standing forms of transnational remittances traditionally took place within kin networks, through contributions made by joint business ventures or through the absorption of new kin immigrants into established networks via business partnerships or marriage. ‘Family’ is also a trope that conveniently situates the Chaldeans at the cusp between traditional ‘tribes’ and modern ‘nuclear’ families, sustaining their intermediary status between East– West that is already assigned by virtue of being Middle Eastern Christians. Numerous community publications and video clips that aim to define ‘The Chaldeans’ to outsiders or affirm the group’s favourable distinctiveness to insiders illustrate how culture-makers from within the community also take great interest in emphasizing the importance of the family and ‘family values’ for Chaldean individuals. For example, a 2005 video entitled Chaldeans in America: Our Story8 opens with a wedding scene in the oldest Chaldean-American church, the Mother of God, followed by a brief commentary by the Michigan-based Bishop Ibrahim Ibrahim on how the Chaldean marriage is not only a personal contract between two individuals, but also a decision that involves the entire extended family. Bishop

124

The Chaldeans

Ibrahim’s definition of Chaldean marriage is followed by a statement from a secular community leader informing the viewer that ‘we [the Chaldeans] have continuity in our community because we have family relationships; we have community relationships; we have family values’. This video is but one of tens of community documents that emphasize the fundamental role of the Chaldean marriage, and by extension the ‘nuclear’ family, as a formative unit of the community. ‘It is a sacred ceremony, the union between a man and a woman, a celebration of love, shared by family and friends,’ proclaims the documentary’s opening commentary. The anonymous Midwestern male voice appears immediately after the image of a cross that initiates the documentary (the cross on top of the dome of Mother of God Church). Simultaneously with the voice, the observer follows the wedding scene as it takes place in the church altar (located under the dome with the cross). This audio-visual image serves as a direct expression of the community’s commitment to the Catholic faith through submission to the sanctity and primacy of the heteronormative conjugal bond. Charming as they may be to onlookers, these snippets from Chaldean family life do not directly demonstrate how the social space of the family plays out its importance in the transnational field. Seeing the Chaldean family through the requisite transnational prism entails rethinking several phenomena pertaining to family formation and cultural reproduction (of heritage, gender roles, language, identity and other components that parents or community desire to transmit to the new generation). These phenomena are familiar, but their multivalent interplay with the migration experience is not as readily recognized. I will use three phenomena to illustrate transnational ties within the family: generational remittances, marriage and ethnic economy. Generational Remittances Children form a central axis of family migrant life. Their economic prosperity, study or work opportunities, safety or what the Chaldeans I interviewed generally referred to as their children’s ‘future’ are often the main reasons why some Chaldean families opt to leave Iraq or to sustain particular transnational ties. Generally speaking, however, just as Khater alerted us to the absence of a genderbased understanding of the Lebanese migration/modernity experience,9 existing transnational scholarship tends to be adult-centred in its approach, focusing on the money- and decision-makers within the community and obscuring, therefore, the ways in which child-raising activities or modes of assistance shape families’ transition from the original home and their diasporic settlement. As we apply transnational research at a deeper level to differentiate between elderly and youngparents’ patterns of transnational activities, we gain more insight into the inner working of Chaldean families and, by extension, into the lives of Chaldean diaspora communities. A generational differentiation, for instance, brings to light that prior to the 1980s, before conditions worsened in Iraq, many elderly Chaldean migrants who had large families of adult children living in multiple locations went back and forth between Iraq and the United States. Once elderly Chaldean parents obtained

5. Family, Marriage and Ethnic Economy

125

legal status as US citizen or permanent resident they often led a transnational life that allowed them to maintain close ties with their kin, to transfer financial remittances between siblings in different locations (usually from the United States to Iraq and not the reverse) and to help children and their families remaining in Iraq to obtain legal immigration access to the United States as expediently as possible. For example, as early as 1927 Mr Jonna left Telkeif with his family to the United States through the aid of his father-in-law, who invited them to join him there.10 Warenah, 67, a Chaldean mother of four, summarized her personal transnational life in 2005 as follows: My daughter Fatin married one [a Chaldean] from Detroit and left Baghdad in 1981. She and her husband ran their own store in Detroit. After she became citizen, she applied for me, but I didn’t leave Iraq until 1991, right after the war. She was sending us money all these years, two or three hundred dollars a month, for her brothers and me. After 1991 I went to get my green card and stayed only 6 months in Fatin’s house. I had to go back because her brothers couldn’t leave Iraq. They were still in school and there was a ban on their travel from Saddam’s government. So, it went like this for 5 years. I go every 6 months so the green card doesn’t fall [expire]. Fatin and her husband took care of me, and gave me money to the brothers on the way back. Little by little the boys left Iraq through Jordan and I left to Detroit because now I have citizenship. It all happened because Fatin and her husband helped us. Now her little brother has a green card too.11

But Chaldean transnational family life is not confined to circuits of elderly parents and their adult children who belong to the categories of non-migrants or first-generation migrants.12 The notion of ‘migrant generations’ itself can be more fittingly conceptualized by rethinking diaspora community in transnational terms. What gives rise to the hyphenated identity ‘Chaldean-American’ among second-generation migrants is in part the transnational mode of life posited by the diasporic community as a collective. Positing migrant generation formation as a linear process implies, as Levitt and Schiller noted, envisioning a social field where migrants and non-migrants lead isolated modes of socialization.13 This paradigm is ineffectual in the case of the US Chaldean community, where intricate social networks are often inclusive of members of various generational experiences because of the high value Chaldeans place upon family and kin ties.14 To emphasize the workings of a conceptual transnational field within the familial sphere, it is important to consider the case of Chaldean parents who left Iraq with their young children or had them shortly after arriving in the United States before socio-economic conditions at the country of origin became entirely unfavourable. Such families usually brought up their children in households where impressions about Iraq or one of the Chaldean villages such as Telkeif, its people, values and goods were present on daily basis. These impressions provide what Levitt dubs ‘social remittances’, a set of ‘ideas, practices, identities and social capital that migrants remit home’,15 or, in this case, what migrants receive from or

126

The Chaldeans

posit in terms that are associated with home. Even today, when children raised in the United States never return to their parents’ home country, their generational experience is usually not territorially bounded; they are surrounded by all manner of music, foods, body language, events and utterances with roots in the originary country – objects and impressions that attain the status of memorabilia as they often receive particular attention from the Chaldean individuals exposed to them. And they attain this status because they empower these individuals to an identity that is more than local (‘Chaldean-American’ or ‘Chaldean from Detroit’), an identity that is transnational (Chaldean with veritable roots and counterparts in Iraq). The fictional stories of American-raised Chaldean writers such as Weam Namou and Deborah al-Najjar (Najor) are characteristic of this transnational imaginary, where many of the characters are first-generation immigrants or Chaldeans residing in Iraq or transitioning from there to the United States.16 More often than not the lives of non-migrant Chaldeans (born or raised) in the United States are situated in social networks that are transnational by virtue of the constant sharing of actual, reconstructed or imagined experiences that take place across national borders. A typical ‘Chaldean’ wedding in the United States is one frequently occurring example of hyphenated identification with the place of settlement and the land of origin. The March 2008 issue of the Chaldean News magazine provides an excellent illustration. In this issue, the magazine published the first ‘Annual Wedding Guide’, promising the readers pages of ‘the latest [wedding] trends and tips – with a nod to time-honored traditions’.17 While the tips consisted of insights into the latest American trends in fashion, hall decoration and etiquette at weddings, the ‘nod’ included an article on the phenomenon of the ‘halhole’ (the shrill ululation produced by Middle Eastern women on joyful or mournful occasions), suggestions on how to behave during the church ceremony and ‘Love Iraqi Style’, a collection of personal stories of Chaldean weddings in Iraq from the 1950s to the present. Navigating through social life between two or more languages is another instance of transnational hyphenation that is shaping the identities of US-based Chaldeans. More often than we expect, ‘transnational webs include relatively immobile persons and collectives’.18 One of the salient processes that integrate immobile, i.e. non-migrant, US-based Chaldeans into the transnational sphere is the extent to which they have been exposed to the migrant generation’s firstlanguage, in this case Arabic or Chaldean. If the Chaldean family is involved in a family business, second-generation youths who help their parents run the family business after school or on weekends often interact with kin or family acquaintances at the workplace. Many of these individuals are recent arrivals from Iraq, hired temporarily or permanently by relatives by way of helping them establish themselves in the new country. Since many of them only gradually develop their communicative skills in English, members of the different migrant generations are forced to interact more frequently in the family’s native language. The result is a pattern of language remittance by which Chaldeans born or raised in the United States acquire or improve their command of their ancestral language, while the Chaldean newcomers build up their English.19

5. Family, Marriage and Ethnic Economy

127

In addition to exposure through family business, involvement in Church life is another factor that strengthens second-generation Chaldeans’ investment in transnational networking. Different migrant generations of Chaldeans interact there and become exposed to the three languages (Aramaic, Arabic and English) of the Church’s Sunday service. (Since family ties are often strong, it is not uncommon that second-generation, English-speaking children would accompany their first-generation Arabic- or Chaldean-speaking parents and grandparents to the Sunday service in the language of the family elders.) Moreover, Chaldean churches in the United States aim to instil the urge to learn the Aramaic language and preserve the Chaldean heritage among their young parishioners through after-school programmes, Sunday activities, competitions and tournaments. Nonetheless, not all Chaldean-Americans are introduced in the same manner or extent into the informal, family-based transnational social filed. Not all Chaldean families attend a Chaldean church or participate in running a family business. The extent to which second-generation Chaldeans become involved in forging transnational connections later as adults depends strongly on such formative introductions. A transnational imaginary pervades the contemporary US-based Chaldean community, and the gap between transnational discourse and transnational action is not unusual. It is the task of formal Chaldean networks – Chaldean institutional circuits, transnational marriages and the Church – to channel that discourse into organizational frameworks to yield transnational action. Transnational Marriages Intricate family networks operate most effectively when their members share a perception of compatibility. For the early Chaldean migrants, this meant marriage should ideally take place between members of families who could cooperate within the confines of a tight network, socialize and operate joint business ventures, namely, between Chaldean kin. During the early decades of the twentieth century, the strong family ties the early Chaldean migrants continued to value upon departing from their originary villages in search of economic prosperity quickly gave rise to the notion of an ‘ideal marriage’ which they attempted to reproduce in the American diaspora. Chaldeans from the villages of northern Iraq who lived under the protection of their patriarch in patrilineal communities were structured in large extended families that strongly favoured endogamy.20 Early (1920s–50s) immigrations to the United States, usually undertaken by single young men, did not alter families’ expectations of their sons to marry within the kin network. It was usually assumed that marriage with a Chaldean immigrant from the United States would automatically result in the emigration of the Iraq-based partner. Thus, the earliest patterns of Chaldean migration – family-based ‘chain migration’21 – formed when young men returned to their home villages for the purpose of marriage, anytime within two to twenty years of living abroad.

128

The Chaldeans

Male migrants usually married a cousin or accepted a bride chosen by immediate or extended family members residing in the town or village of origin. While some wives lingered behind for a time and raised children in the village through remittances sent by the migrant husband, a more common scenario was to arrange for the young bride, typically twelve to eighteen years of age, to join her husband in the diasporic community as soon as the legal family-based migration process permitted. These patterns were witnessed as early as the 1920s and continued to this day, even as a large section of the Iraq-based community moved south to the urban centres.22 ‘Passport marriages’ – where one spouse is admitted to the United States based on the citizenship status of the other spouse – still take place among Chaldeans in the present. Studies conducted in the previous decade show that second- and third-generation Middle Eastern immigrants in Europe and the United States continue to return to the land of origin to find marriage partners.23 Several factors, however, have modified the traditional patterns of Chaldean transnational marriage over the decades. One of these factors is the growth in the size of the US-based Chaldean community. The result has been a decrease in the importance of gender and generational differences in determining spousal mobility. For instance, compared to the early decades of migration when Chaldean migrants were predominantly first-generation male bachelors, more and more female and second-generation migrants are now also returning from the United States to meet a suggested or selected spouse; hence, Chaldean men and women from different migrant generations engage in spousal mobility in multiple directions from and to the United States. Also, the expansion in size of the US-based Chaldean diaspora now allows young Chaldeans to meet and select their spouses from a local social network of kin and co-ethnics without leaving their country of residence. The size of a community and the duration of its settlement in one place are consequential factors that changed the incidence of Chaldean transnational marriage. The Chaldean migrant community has expanded significantly and so has the time span of the settlement in the United States, a fact that directs transnational patterns in multiple directions. That there are multiple migrant generations in the United States today – recent immigrants who are not yet comfortably incorporated into the legal or socio-economic system in the United States, USborn and educated Chaldeans who only speak English and who do not take part in the cultural life of the Chaldean community, first-generation immigrants who have spent several decades of their lives in the United States and so on. – are factors that have contributed to the rising incidence of intermarriage, which in turn has its effects on the incidence of kin marriage in its transnational form. The 2000–01 Chaldean Directory listed twenty-eight persons under non-Chaldean names.24 In its twentieth edition, the 2006–07 Chaldean Directory, that number more than tripled. Another indication of the rising incidence of intermarriage can be found on the congratulatory ‘Halhole!’ column of the Michigan-based monthly community magazine the Chaldean News, where out of the 106 marriages and engagements announced between February 2004 and July 2007, 24 were between couples one of whom did not have an Arabic or a Chaldean last name.

5. Family, Marriage and Ethnic Economy

129

Other factors that have shifted transnational marriage patterns are the travel restrictions imposed on migrants from within the sending country, Iraq. For the bulk of the 1980s when Iraq was engaged in war with Iran, many Chaldean migrants feared that they would be drafted into the army should they return to their land of origin. Prompted by the general unsafety of civilian life during the war, many Chaldean families remaining in Iraq also discouraged their migrant relatives from visiting during that eight-year period. The conclusion of the Iraq– Iran War in 1988 spurred many individual and group visits from the United States to Iraq, but those visits resulted in limited Chaldean marriage contracts because they lasted only briefly. Since the early 1990s, the advent of the first Gulf War made it less feasible to return to Iraq for the marriage selection process, but also more feasible to meet with the potential spouse in one of the temporary refugee stations, mainly Amman and Damascus. The main current shift in the demographics of transnational marriage is that fewer marriage-seekers go back to Iraq to meet or select a spouse. Instead, contact with other Chaldean diaspora communities, mainly ones in transit countries, is serving to alleviate some of the difficulties generated by the curtailed communications with Iraq. Marriage across diaspora communities guarantees the maintenance of existing kinship ties and also the establishment of new ones that could become instrumental for other family members at a future point. Awni, a Chaldean father from Southfield, Michigan, described how he took his son to visit his brother in Greece. During this visit, they attended various Chaldean functions. His brother’s family introduced them to a young Chaldean refugee who had arrived recently from Baghdad with her family. After spending two weeks in Greece, the ChaldeanAmerican son was engaged to the Chaldean woman in Greece. Six months later, the woman arrived in Detroit on a marriage visa. Five years later, after she obtained US citizenship through marriage, she was able to apply for permanent residency status for her parents. Upon obtaining their green cards, the parents were able to submit applications for the immigration of their other adult children to join them from their various locations in Iraq, Jordan and Australia.25 As is the case with the Assyrian community in London among whom Madawi Al-Rasheed conducted her anthropological fieldwork in the late 1990s, Chaldeans in different diasporic communities welcome marriages with US Chaldeans as propitious for their children and to other members in the family. ‘Having a new kinship link is always regarded as an asset,’ Madawi accurately perceived, ‘which could facilitate further migration if that is desired, and provide new contacts and information relating to the host country by the new individuals entering the circle of one’s kinsmen’.26 The steady persistence of Chaldean transnational co-ethnic marriages despite their shifting patterns also changes the ways in which Chaldeans who have not left Iraq construct their ideals for a successful marriage and suitable marriage partners. From the 1990s to the present, for example, young Chaldean women in Iraq or in temporary refuge in Jordan, Syria or Lebanon desired to marry Chaldean men who had migrated because they were considered the ideal breadwinners and the solution for transporting the entire family to a safer settlement.27 As more young Chaldean women left the country with their families to wait for permanent

130

The Chaldeans

resettlement solutions in transit countries, marriage arrangements with Chaldeans remaining in Iraq became less likely and ones with Chaldeans who were citizens of other countries became more desirable. In earlier decades, by contrast, when social life in Iraqi cities was relatively stable, young women or their families could afford to be more selective in their choice of marital partners. One of the factors upon which Chaldean families have traditionally placed considerable importance when assessing the social status of a migrant suitor is his or her profession abroad, and, as a significant correlate, the income they earned through their profession. The next section will look at the interplay between the institution of in-marriage and ethnic business as two intertwined dimensions of the Chaldean family in its function as a transnational social field. Ethnic Economy Marriage and enterprise have often shaped each other within the Chaldean diasporic community according to Sengstock’s 1960s and 1970s surveys. Chaldeans who engaged in allied family businesses were more likely to marry endogamously and to live near other Chaldeans than those who pursued other occupations. Engagement in family business ventures also showed higher tendency to participate in other community networks such as the Chaldean Church and the ChaldeanIraqi Association, and to speak Arabic or Chaldean with kin and co-ethnic peers.28 Family-owned businesses play a seminal role in Chaldean marriage choices also because they set the economic standards for a large segment of the immigrant community. Economists and sociologists concur that a high self-employment rate of a racial or ethnic group bear strong associations with a high average income for the group and that their descendants enjoy individual and family incomes higher than the national averages.29 Considering their longest-standing and primary mode of economic sustenance – the family business30 – US Chaldeans neatly fit the profile of ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’. This model has fascinated many social scientists as a social phenomenon where immigrants simultaneously own, manage and operate their businesses within a network of common cultural heritage or origin that constrains the interplay between individual behaviour, social relations and economic transactions.31 Estimates by Chaldean and other trade associations suggest that Chaldeans owned 6,050 businesses in Michigan alone by 2008. They also suggest that 2,500, or 80–90 per cent of, grocery and liquor stores in Metropolitan Detroit were owned and run independently by Chaldeans and their descendants that year.32 The 2007 ‘Chaldean Household Demographic Survey’ commissioned by the Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce (CACC) and carried out by the United Way and Walsh College, revealed that 61 per cent of Chaldean families in Southeast Michigan own at least one business and 39 per cent own two or more.33 The history of Chaldean store ownership in Detroit may date back to 1917, yet as a distinct ethnic group they only began to dominate the inner city’s market in the late 1960s, when both Syrian-Lebanese store owners and the larger chain

5. Family, Marriage and Ethnic Economy

131

grocery stores began to leave the area after the 1967 riots. While the willingness of Syrian and Lebanese shop owners to sell their stores to other Middle Eastern groups provided a market opening for Chaldeans to enter store ownership with a ready means of support, the other factor that helped boost these small family businesses was the major influx of new Chaldean immigrants during the 1960s and 1970s. This socio-economic climate provided the early Chaldean immigrants with the opportunity to pool kin resources, resulting in a rapid business boom by the early 1980s.34 As family-based migrations ensured a sufficient supply of coethnic workers to run the stores, the need to revert to business partnerships with non-Chaldeans was kept to a minimum. Conversations with Chaldean business owners and observation of the ‘success stories’ promoted in community literature reveal that the primary factor used to explain Chaldeans’ dominance in the liquor and grocery businesses is the kin network. In addition to the large labour pool that the extended family provides to cut costs and generate a higher profit margin, there is the obvious advantage of solidarity and enforceable trust, and the financial help often extended to newly arriving kin in need of start-up funds. The story of Ra‘ad, a Chaldean store owner in Ferndale, Michigan, links these points: I had many relatives already in Michigan when I came in ‘89. You know, we Chaldeans have big families, and we stay close together when we can. My old brother Imad opened this store five years before I came, and when I came I started working with him right away. He opened and I closed, seven days a week. I have a Masters in engineering from Baghdad, but the party store business is better because it’s for the entire family. You know they will back you. It’s not easy work, we work many hours, 68 each week, but you can trust your brothers more than anyone else. This is why we’re successful. Now Imad has another store in West Bloomfield, and my young brother Jawdat came from Jordan in ‘97 and he’s working with us too. We helped him out and got him into the business. He had nothing when he arrived, not even English. We gave him loans, no notes no interest, nothing. He just paid it back when he was ready. Now we’re all equal partners. When one goes on vacation we cover for him, and he covers for us when we go. It doesn’t mean we get paid less if we can’t work because of a special event. You have more freedom when you work with your relatives, and you also trust them on your shift.35

Although Ra‘ad’s assessment of his family business situation underscores the positive impact of transnational family ties on economic prosperity, his statement also suggests an exploitative use of kin networks where disparity in social and material capital mobilize class differentiation in which wealthier family members could extract labour from members defined as kin. However, it remains true that exploitation and aid balance each other out within these economic family networks as the family business often has an integrated cultural component whereby commonly accepted norms of reciprocity transcend monetary bonds and govern economic activities.36

132

The Chaldeans

That the Chaldean family is often large and its members support each other are features that have not been lost on outsiders, especially other store owners in the area and customers who frequent Chaldean stores. As sociologist Gary David observed, the close-knit nature of the Chaldean family has ‘created tension and animosity between store owners and their customers, who notice that very few non-Chaldeans are working in the stores’.37 However, as Barbara Aswad stressed, this type of kin cooperation among Detroit Iraqis in general is not rooted in racial discrimination but rather in the patrilineal nature of the Iraqi family. Nonetheless, the surrounding black population of Detroit, often economically exploited and marginalized, has traditionally experienced Chaldean store dynamics pejoratively.38 Ironically, business success which Chaldeans repeatedly attribute to the assistance of the family often comes at the expense of the family. Because of long work hours, family members who were often used as a labour force could not afford to spend much time together outside the store. As a result, parents and children spent little family time together and the family as a whole built its social life around the store hours.39 According to Sengstock, many of the Chaldeans she interviewed cited extensive work hours as the source of delinquent behaviour among their youth,40 yet, typically both parents and children viewed this separation as a necessary sacrifice, either for the immediate financial security of the family or for the future of the owners’ children. Many storeowners, however, also viewed their business as the gateway to providing their children with the opportunity to obtain education that would allow them upward economic mobility away from the family store: For the next twenty years things will remain the same. But after that, who knows. ‘Cause my kids probably would not choose to be in this business [family store], and I don’t want them to be in this business. I want them to be in the professional life. You know, doctor, attorney, engineer, whatever it takes.41

If the family store has been the young Chaldean generation’s means to quit the original family store business as many activities indicate, such as sending the kids to college instead of asking them to run the store, what, then, ensures the survival of this form of Chaldean entrepreneurship today? While the rapid upward social mobility of Chaldeans has often been attributed to the family business, sociologists and anthropologists who studied the community in the second half of the twentieth century often speculated as to whether or not entrepreneurs’ children, born and raised in Detroit and its suburbs, would follow in the footsteps of their parents in running the family store. Almost twenty-five years ago Sengstock observed that Chaldeans did not place a high importance on education since they were able to move up the socio-economic ladder through entrepreneurial activities which did not require much formal training.42 By the late 1990s, Gary David suggested a change in this pattern that paralleled the changes undergone by earlier Arab immigrants in the area. He claimed that more Chaldean youth were entering college and the ethnic community was shifting its economic

5. Family, Marriage and Ethnic Economy

133

emphasis from store ownership to professional occupations, especially ‘doctor, lawyer or engineer’.43 He further predicted that ‘as Chaldeans move away from store ownership, they are simultaneously moving away from a career that is linked to their ethnic identity … the departure from grocery and convenience stores may have the unintended result of weakening the Chaldean community as an ethnic group’.44 Contrary to these claims, my findings suggest that the ethno-economic ties among members of the Chaldean community in Metropolitan Detroit continue to be strong despite moving away from store ownership for many. These ties are becoming more structured through ethnicity-based umbrella organizations that look after their legal protection (e.g. against lawsuits, taxation issues) and provide for their networking and publicity. The survival of the Chaldean community as an entrepreneurial group bounded by co-ethnic social structures and locational clustering is due to the community’s adaptation to the changes in the market forces. The community is constantly finding new ways of incorporating itself into the economic mainstream without shedding the discourse of its ethnic distinctiveness. It is surviving qua a ‘Chaldean’ community, in other words, through consolidating ethnic ventures. Instead of the Detroit party store as the discrete representative of Chaldean business, now umbrella organizations such as the CACC, the Chaldean Justice League and the Chaldean Community Foundation (CCF) provide the consolidating discourse and legal façade that suggest to community members and outsiders alike the presence of an invisible power that connects and unifies all small Chaldean businesses in the Detroit area. Two crucial factors that have sustained Chaldean economy in Michigan while simultaneously altering its shape in recent years are the emergence of strong and elaborate networks of ethnic organization and the continuous influx of new Chaldean immigrants and refugees. Together these two factors reinforce the ethnic group’s control over the employment network, whereby members who share the same ethnicity can be channelled into co-ethnic and non-coethnic ventures and to the public sector of the encompassing labour market. Michigan has been the fourth largest destination state for refugees over the last decade, according to a 2017 study. In the wake of Donald Trump’s antiimmigration policies and deportation decrees that detained several Chaldeans with the intention of deportation, the CACC joined Samaritas, Catholic Charities of Southeast Michigan and Jewish Services of Washtenaw in contributing to a well-funded study of refugees’ contribution to US economy. The results noted that refugees to Southeast Michigan contribute up to $295 million to the region’s economy annually. It also established that 90 per cent of the 21,000 refugees in Michigan were from Iraq, more than half of whom come with sponsors rather than depend on government assistance. The study stressed that, even with a very conservative estimate, the refugees who settled in Macomb, Oakland, Wayne and Washtenaw Counties between 2007 and 2016 ‘own 438 businesses who collectively spend $70.1 million to $90.2 million in a given year and provide between $70.1

134

The Chaldeans

million and $90.2 million in economic benefits for Southeast Michigan, including between 319 and 410 local jobs’.45 In addition to contributing to Chaldean diaspora economy, the continuous entry of new Chaldeans to the United States is at the same time maintaining a transnational site of ethnic economic remittance. Chaldean newcomers’ economic success tends to be in part motivated by the desire to send money to family and kin in Iraq and transit countries to support them until they arrive and settle in the United States or elsewhere.46 Co-ethnic networking, one that takes the shared ethnicity as the basis for partnership in economic matters (irrespective of location, in the case of the Chaldean community), is best exemplified by the CACC. What prompted the emergence of such an umbrella organization in 2006 was the quest of small business owners to join resources or forge extensions of their businesses into the core of mainstream economy for the purpose of achieving socio-economic mobility, which, as David rightly observed, could no longer be achieved solely through operating convenience stores in Detroit. Store owners see the decline in the growth potential of small family businesses, the changing habits of American consumers and the dwindling customer base due to the changing demographics of Detroit. However, instead of abandoning these small businesses the way their Syrian and Lebanese predecessors did, Chaldean store owners are expanding them in multiple directions. As early as 1974, Sengstock noted that Chaldean businessmen began branching out into the wholesale food industry.47 Many businesses have also branched out to Detroit’s western suburbs, where now they dominate the wealthier, more densely populated towns of Farmington Hills, West Bloomfield and Bloomfield Hills, among others, in Oakland County. Sociologists observed that certain immigrant groups are more entrepreneurial and more likely than others to adopt family business ownership as a chief strategy in their quest for economic security and mobility.48 Chaldeans do not miss an opportunity to stylize themselves as such, linking prosperity to notions of belonging and American patriotism. ‘Here in metro-Detroit, the Chaldean community is an entrepreneurial community,’ commented Martin Manna, president and CEO of the CACC about the results of the 2017 economic study. ‘According to reports, Chaldeans contribute $10.7 billion annual to economy in Southeast Michigan, 65 per cent own at least one business and 39 per cent own two business. We are grateful to be in this country.’49 While Chaldeans continue to be politically compliant, in recent decades family businesses in rundown areas, such as the inner-city neighbourhoods of Detroit, have acquired a diverse profile and many of the new shop owners appear to have successfully sustained a positive ethnic distinctiveness in other entrepreneurial contexts.50 In addition to grocery and liquor stores, many Chaldeans now own and operate gas stations, marijuana dispensaries, cellular phone stores, video stores and other types of small businesses. The CACC website provided the following figures for businesses owned by Chaldeans in Michigan in 2008:51

5. Family, Marriage and Ethnic Economy Business Sector Food Stores Gas Stations Hotels Small Businesses (Cellular Stores, Dollar Stores, etc.) Professional Services Total Estimated Businesses Owned

135

No. of Stores 2,500   400   150 2,000 1,000 6,050

It is true, also as David pointed out, that more recent generations of ChaldeanAmericans are attaining socio-economic mobility through professional degrees and higher education. Nonetheless, an important trend that has ensured the survival of the family business among Chaldeans in Michigan while the younger generations shy away from operating the family store is the continuous influx of new immigrants and refugees willing to engage in virtually any financially secure enterprise to earn their keep in the United States. Interviews with Chaldean attorneys and businessmen in Michigan indicate that Chaldean families regularly help their immediate and extended family members to come to the United States. Upon arrival they also help them learn the specific skills required to run the family business in the new country. When legally viable, some Chaldean families have even opened a store for the specific purpose of assisting relatives to arrive as labour migrants.52 As sociologist Min Zhou suggests in her analysis of ethnic entrepreneurship in the United States, particular contexts of exit (from originary land) and reception (in the host country) can result in distinctive social environments and socio-economic conditions for the members of the immigrating group and their receiving diaspora community.53 Among Chaldeans, business success has often been linked to exploiting specific patterns of social networking to circumvent labour market and legal barriers. For instance, many Chaldeans shop owners favour hiring relatives because they can pay them a sum of money that is different from the amount declared by the business and the employee, and thus circumvent paying higher taxes. Moreover, Chaldean immigrants who entered the country illegally or continued to reside in the United States after the expiration of their legal residency status often found work with relatives or close co-ethnic acquaintances who were willing to employ them through informal work agreements that do not involve legal contracts or taxation. Munir, a Chaldean physician at Detroit Mercy Hospital, reported a similar development of events surrounding his migration as a medical school graduate from Iraq: My wife and I were both 28 when we arrived in Southfield in ‘97. We both graduated as doctors from the medical school of Saddam University. We took the USMLE qualifying exams in Jordan after 3 years, and waited in Amman until my wife’s green card application – her parents were in the US for a long time and they applied for her – went through so we can immigrate to the US legally. When

136

The Chaldeans

we arrived, we realized it takes a while to be accepted to a residency program in Michigan – this is where her parents lived and we stayed with them in the beginning. Residency programs are very competitive for immigrants, even if they score high on the USMLE. Anyway, I had to earn a living meanwhile to support the two of us. My father-in-law had a distant relative, also a physician, who owns gas stations. Through these connections I was hired to run one of his 3 gas stations in Southfield. I managed the station and the store alone at night, working a daily shift from 11pm to 7am for 5 months until I started going on interviews for residency programs. I was paid under the table, of course, because neither of us wanted to pay extra taxes. We trusted each other because of family ties, so it worked out perfectly.54

Chaldean immigrants’ success in operating the family business upon arrival to the United States is also connected with the work experience many of them brought from Iraq. In twentieth-century Iraq, where Islam forbade the handling and consumption of alcoholic beverages, their religious status served as key component in establishing a large segment of city-dwelling Chaldeans as a community of liquor store owners. While as Christians they were not constrained by religious conventions from obtaining licenses to operate liquor stores in Iraqi cities, Chaldeans benefitted from selling alcohol to a large body of Muslim clientele who could legally consume alcohol prior to the fall of the Ba‘thist state. Upon uniting with their families in Michigan, Chaldean liquor vendors were readily incorporated into the family grocery store business, a large component of which traditionally consisted of alcoholic beverages.55

Networks of Communal Elites Over time, US-based Chaldean institutional circuits became exponentially more intricate and wide-ranging in the ways they mobilized not only notions of Christian likeness, whiteness and non-Arabness, but also resources for specific community projects. These projects include, but are not limited to, the maintenance of religious identity, the preservation of the Chaldean language, ethnic solidarity and the provision of legal assistance in matters such as establishing a Christian settlement in Iraq and helping Chaldean refugees immigrate to America. The success of these networks is intimately tied to the successful promotion of the Chaldean community as white and Christian. Their success is also evident in extremely high levels of participation, with 64 per cent of Michigan-based Chaldeans identifying as belonging to some sort of community organization, a figure more than twice as high as the average participation level among non-Chaldean Americans.56 Organized, institutionally mobilized and sustained connections between US-based Chaldeans and the homeland require the involvement of political, economic and cultural elites who share a commitment to transnational projects. Exploring this emergent constituency of the US-based Chaldean elites who make up the leadership of these transnational networks demonstrates the weakening

5. Family, Marriage and Ethnic Economy

137

reliance on religious identity and the shift towards a secularized ethnic framing of political identity. Recent diaspora-initiated campaigns and projects, such as voting remotely in the Iraqi elections, lobbying for the Nineveh Plains autonomous administrative unit and Operation R-4 for special visa provisions57 signal the emergence of an elite echelon of Chaldean policy makers and culture-makers. They also indicate extending the boundaries of citizenship (both United States and Iraqi) and reorganizing Chaldeans in the United States to act on behalf of Chaldeans in Iraq or contribute financially to improve the circumstances under which Iraq’s Chaldeans are living. Questions of internal power are critical for understanding the transnational Chaldean diaspora. If, following Pnina Werbner’s model, the US-based Chaldeans are an example of a community of co-responsibility, wherein the advantaged are responsible for the disadvantaged, the rich and powerful for the poor and weak, then Chaldean cultural products and collective representations should be flowing from the stronger diasporic centre(s) to the weaker multinational peripheries.58 In the case of the Chaldean community in Michigan, these centres of power are formed around diasporic elites composed of clergymen, businessmen and wealthy philanthropists who, as Khachig Tölölyan puts it in his analogous study of the Armenian diaspora, ‘passionately share the conflicts that divide it’.59 The Chaldean elites in Michigan are predominantly second- and thirdgeneration individuals and families with ancestral ties to the village of Telkeif.60 The majority of their institutions are located in or near the city of West Bloomfield, Michigan – one of the five wealthiest suburbs in the United States. These elites and their institutions have always assumed responsibilities that are simultaneously philanthropic, cultural and political. Over time, by virtue of the diaspora community’s long-standing transnational activities through family, business and church involvements, the issues that animate elite politics, economy and aesthetics have shifted beyond the local to the transnational. To understand how a Chaldean ethno-geographic self-localization is emerging simultaneously with transnational political activity, we must see how these institutions and individuals have orchestrated their powers and channelled them into a single stream of action and publicity in the course of recent decades. With potentially more Chaldeans in the Western diaspora than ones remaining in Iraq, a public, collective, unifying, anonymous narrative of who all these Chaldeans are, how they differ from the Iraqi Muslim majority, what their sociopolitical needs and demands consist of and how they relate to the former and current political climate in Iraq and the United States is being fostered, updated and broadcast in American mainstream media and local community media by a local Chaldean elite and the institutions they represent in Oakland County, Michigan. Some of these institutions, their founding dates and the cities in which they are headquartered (all Michigan unless otherwise specified) include61: Chaldean Americans Reaching and Encouraging (CARE) (1997, West Bloomfield) Chaldean American Ladies of Charity (CALC) (1961, Southfield)

●

●

138



● ● ● ● ●



● ● ● ●

The Chaldeans

Shenandoah Country Club (2005, West Bloomfield) Chaldean Iraqi Association of Michigan (CIAM) (1943, Detroit) Chaldean Community Cultural Centre (CCC, 2017, West Bloomfield) Chaldean Federation of America (CFA) (1982, Farmington Hills) Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce (CACC) (2003, Farmington Hills) Chaldean News (magazine) (2004, Farmington Hills) Chaldean Assyrian Syriac Council of America (CASCA) (2007, Southfield) Chaldean Community Foundation (CCF) (2009, Farmington Hills) Nineveh Council of America (NCA) (2014, Farmington Hills)

There are numerous other Chaldean institutions in Southeast Michigan that coordinate efforts with those listed above to address local needs. Churches are central among them, but what I emphasize here is how these organizations operate symbiotically, and sometimes through vast family linkages, to mobilize transnational agendas that involve ethnicity, rather than religion in the strict sense, as their common denominator. Founded, funded and managed by diasporic elites, these institutions have been collaboratively shoring up the functions of cultural re/production, promoting the common goal of introducing to the American mainstream, and subsequently to international audiences, one legitimate Chaldean culture that extends beyond state boundaries. Moreover, together these institutions labour to construct a diasporic civil society that nurtures and sustains a Chaldean public sphere of cultural production maintained by a growing constituency of Chaldean teachers, activists, journalists, investors, professionals and performers who are associated with or dependent on these institutions. Here, briefly, is how the symbiotic circuit works.

A Symbiotic Circuit CARE was founded in 1997 by a group of young Chaldeans, both students and professionals, as a community-based organization with a commitment to ‘humanitarian needs’ and to ‘strengthening and preserving our culture’. Initially, a ‘mother’ institute, the Chaldean American Ladies of Charity (CALC), founded in 1961, sponsored CARE. As a non-profit, church-annexed organization, CALC works mainly through raising and distributing donations among Chaldean families in the area, with the chief objectives of ‘enhancing the lives of the people in our community […] and maintaining our culture within the diverse community in which we live’.62 In addition to working with Chaldeans in Oakland County’s public schools and senior citizen homes, both CARE and CALC regularly sponsor community events that held either at St Thomas Chaldean Catholic Church (West Bloomfield), Mother of God Church (Southfield), Southfield Manor Club (Southfield) or the neighbouring Shenandoah Country Club. CALC, which was founded through a clerical initiative, financially backed the Chaldean patriarch Emanuel III Delly, who in turn used some of the funds to sponsor the Chaldean

5. Family, Marriage and Ethnic Economy

139

church and seminaries in Iraq.63 More recently, CALC members have been involved in creating the Chaldean Community Cultural Centre in the neighbouring Shenandoah Country Club. Next on the list is the Shenandoah Country Club. It opened in 2005, but the idea of ‘building a community centre that would unite all Chaldeans’ had been in the making since the first major influx of Chaldeans to the Detroit area in the 1960s.64 Sami Kassab, a grocer for more than thirty years and a pioneer member of the Chaldean Iraqi Association of Michigan (CIAM, later CIAAM, Chaldean Iraqi American Association of Michigan), was one of the first Chaldeans to conceptualize a project for social consolidation. Kassab and a group of twenty-five Chaldean men first formed the Chaldean Youth Club with the idea of creating a gathering place, ‘especially for future generations’. Later in the 1970s, when the Chaldean diocese sponsored the building of the Mother of God Church, it sold the remaining lot to this group of Chaldeans, who sought to create a community centre. In 1979, the plan materialized as Southfield Manor, where most of the social events (such as wedding receptions, first communions and funerals) of the Chaldeans of Detroit’s western suburbs took place for the next two decades. Through Southfield Manor’s membership fees and other fund raising drives, CIAAM raised funds to purchase the Shenandoah property in 1989. Fifteen years later, the $25 million, 93,000-square-foot Shenandoah Club opened, featuring ‘one of Michigan’s largest ballrooms’, with the capacity to accommodate 1,300 people. It is worth stressing the exclusive socio-economic profile of Shenandoah. Club membership is limited to Chaldeans and their family members. Annual family membership fees started at a range between $2,500 and $2,600, with a $5,000 initiation fee and a minimum monthly spending fee of $300.65 Far from ‘uniting all Chaldeans’, less affluent Chaldeans from other parts of Michigan were excluded from this exclusive social scene by default from the outset. The sumptuous $5 million initial budget of the Chaldean Cultural Center (CCC) Museum complemented the high membership fees of the country club and indirectly proposed a select audience for the club’s cultural activities, initiatives, entrepreneurial forums and museum exhibits. The priorities of the members of the Chaldean community who are invested in the Shenandoah project can be discerned by a simple comparison of the space allotted to current social events at the Shenandoah Country Club and the space given to the museum of the CCC. While Shenandoah’s Grand Ballroom totals 11,336 square feet, the CCC has received a mere 2,500 square feet to display and narrate 6,000 years of Chaldean history. The dominant social entertainment feature of the Shenandoah Country Club is primarily an outcome of the profitdriven orientation of the club’s sponsors. Along with the CIAAM, overseeing and financing the activities of all of the above institutions is the responsibility of a business–professional partnership organization, the CACC, established in 2003 by a non-profit umbrella association initially called the Chaldean Federation of America (CFA) and the CCF since 2009. The coming together of nine major Chaldean organizations in metropolitan Detroit in 1982 resulted in the establishment of the CFA, which claimed to serve ‘as a catalyst for the assimilation of thousands of Chaldeans into the American

140

The Chaldeans

culture’ and to ‘represent’ more than 150,000 Chaldeans in Michigan.66 In 2005, Ibrahim Ibrahim, Chaldean’s first Bishop in the US diaspora, dismissed the CFA’s board of directors and put Michael George, the community’s secular multimillionaire patriarch, in charge.67 Despite former board members’ dissatisfaction with the violation of the organization’s bylaws and constitution, the CFA continued to serve a wide array of community functions. It regularly hosted the annual Chaldean Student Scholarship Commencement Program, whose aim was to single out the scholarly achievements of Chaldean high school and college students. In recent years, the CFA offered its office space on weekends for the meetings of members of the Chaldean American Student Association (CASA) to encourage programmes and projects organized by young Chaldean Americans across the state. On a transnational scale, the CFA dedicated considerable resources to the humanitarian relief of displaced Chaldeans in and outside Iraq. The organization’s efforts culminated in a post-2003 campaign to secure support from the United States and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for the resettlement of Chaldean refugees through Operation R-4.68 The CFA also partnered with organizations in Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, as well as with an international Jesuit organization that was formerly involved with Chaldeans in Iraq, to launch the Adopt-A-Refugee-Family initiative, whereby diasporic Chaldeans could extend financial assistance to Chaldeans transitioning from Iraq through officially recognized channels.69 Ample financial resources combined with legal expertise and political connections enhanced the success of the CFA’s transnational undertakings. Lavish private contributions had to compensate for the lack of governmental funding. The manner in which these funds were raised and allocated is a further example of how local Chaldean circuits in Michigan exude a political dimension on pre-existing church and family networks in order to achieve transnational goals and implement political goals. During 2006, for instance, the CFA held several fundraisers at the Shenandoah Country Club. Selling tickets for $250/person ensured that the gathering would include only established members of the elite clique. Less affluent contributors to the cause of Iraqi refugees could pledge their donations online. Meanwhile, the monthly periodical the Chaldean News made the efforts of the CFA public and called upon Chaldeans residing in the United States to make their contributions to ‘authorized resettlement agencies’. These were many, and they included the CACC, the CALC and Mother of God Church, among others. On Saturday afternoons the main office of the CFA welcomed individual volunteers from the Chaldean community along with groups such as CASA to carry out classifying, analysing and storing the confidential data submitted on behalf of the refugees by their Chaldean relatives in the United States. At various Chaldean churches in Michigan and at the Shenandoah Country Club, they provided free interpretation services to help relatives fill out the applications accurately. In terms of advocacy, lobbying and start-up funds to ignite these projects, few elite members of the community stand out. Michael George, former chairman of the CFA installed by the Bishop rather than elected by board members, was the millionaire owner and operator of such business ventures as Melody Farms,

5. Family, Marriage and Ethnic Economy

141

Champion Wholesale Foods, Spectrum Enterprises, L.L.C., Healthtreat, Inc., Michigan Data Storage, Midwest Wholesale Foods, Port Atwater Parking and several others. His successor, George Kassab, was the former president of the Chaldean National Congress and co-director of numerous Chaldean American humanitarian delegations to Iraqi Christian refugees. Steven Garmo, another chairman of the CFA, employed his expertise in US immigration law to assist Senator Carl Levin in drafting the Iraqi Christian Adjustment Act, which was signed into law by the then president George W. Bush in 2008. The aim of the legislation was to make immigration to the United States easier specifically for Chaldeans who fled Iraq after assisting the US military in the Gulf Wars.70 In 2011, the US State Department approved the CFA as Refugee Reception and Placement Agency, which focused the organization’s effort on serving Chaldean refugees arriving to the Detroit and San Diego areas. The individuals in charge, along with many other business partners of the CFA, participated in running the CACC, an organization that since its inception proved itself an influential market power capable of consolidating the wealth of individually owned Chaldean businesses and creating a powerful entrepreneurial, as well as political, voice for the Chaldean collective. Following the death of the CFA’s financial pillar businessman Michael George in 2014, the CACC transitioned its community service resources from the CFA to a relatively new CCF, a nonprofit organization founded in 2009 and defined as ‘the charitable arm of the Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce’. The core mission of the CCF consists of providing support to the influx of Chaldean refugees and immigrants through programmes that range from refugee acculturation and training, health services, ESL classes, naturalization and immigration services, low-interest loans, career planning and legal services.71 As a recipient of state funds for refugee training, the foundation has subcontracted hundreds of thousands of dollars to the CFA, CALC and CAAHP to fund mental health and other services to Chaldean refugees in the Metro Detroit area.72 In addition to marshalling funds and cultural projects in Oakland County, through state funding and two major annual events, the Gulf Outing and the Chaldean Festival, CACC and its non-profit affiliate CCF branch offer help to Chaldean investors who wish to establish or join businesses in Michigan and Iraq. Following 2003, the CACC invested in three community projects: the Chaldean museum in Shenandoah Country Club, a survey of Michigan’s Chaldeans that seeks to establish ‘Chaldeans’ contributions to their community’ and a Chaldo-Assyrian settlement project in the Nineveh Plains for the remaining Chaldo-Assyrian population in Iraq. The CACC sponsored the latter project through co-founding other influential umbrella organizations: the Chaldean Assyrian Syriac Council of America (CASCA) and later the Nineveh Council of America (NCA), the foremost organizations advocating for the Nineveh Plains Province outside the Middle East.73 While the CASCA was initiated ‘to educate US policymakers on the plight of Iraq’s Chaldean/Assyrian/Syriac Christian minorities and to advocate for policies that support stability, security, aid and reconstruction relief within Iraq and assistance and resettlement of the most vulnerable refugees of this fragile

142

The Chaldeans

population outside Iraq’,74 the NCA is a sequel CACC-affiliate founded in the following decade to advocate more forcefully US and international military intervention in Iraq and Syria on behalf of Christian minorities.75 The CASCA, like other Chaldean umbrella organizations in the US diaspora, was formed through the coming together of other influential organizations: the Assyrian American National Federation, the Assyrian National Council of Illinois, the CACC and the CFA. Martin Manna, who served as the executive director of the CACC, and George Kassab, who occupied a similar position at the CFA, were the co-founders and co-directors of CASCA.

The Local Emergence of Transnational Projects On the local level, the self-descriptions of Chaldean institutions and their publications demonstrate how they all boast an interest in preserving and promoting ‘heritage’ or ‘culture’, without clearly defining the meanings of these slippery terms. They operate under the assumption that members and recipients of this ‘heritage’ or ‘culture’ agree on a stable, communal version of Chaldeanness. This tacit agreement in turn suggests the presence of a discursive process that links these institutions in an internal, private sphere, a linkage that predates and mediates the exposure of collective Chaldeanness to the public sphere of the American mainstream. The tacit agreement at the same time suggests strong transnational ties between the diasporic community and a larger community from which they derive distinct moral and aesthetic values. As the ties extend beyond the US boundaries, they give rise to a ‘diasporic aesthetic’, material forms of culture that are expressed in the group’s aesthetic activity in diaspora, in its art, literature and myths. Diasporic attempts at real political mobilization occasionally materialize in ‘transnational moral gestures’76 in which Chaldean institutional circuits in the United States have begun to move politically, sometimes in opposing directions, on behalf of geographically remote Chaldean individuals and groups. We will consider two examples of such transnational moral gestures: the revival of Aramaic and the remote Iraqi vote.

Aramaic Revival In Iraq, I was taught that everyone was Arab, no matter what dialect they spoke or what religion they were … I still wasn’t sure if I should think of myself as a Chaldean or an Arab or an American … It wasn’t until I was eighteen and attended a social event held in the basement of the Southfield Mother of God Chaldean Church that I began to be curious about my heritage. Father Sarhad Jammo came up and put his arm around my shoulder and asked, ‘Do you speak Chaldean?’ When I told him that I did not, he asked, ‘Why not? What language did your grandfather speak?’ Sharky Haddad, 200077

5. Family, Marriage and Ethnic Economy

143

Language is one of the first components that come to mind when individuals try to enumerate what is exclusively Chaldean today. In 1976, Sharky Haddad immigrated from Baghdad to Detroit at age fifteen. His autobiography explains how at first he experienced a sense of disillusionment with the Chaldean scene in the United States. He characterized them by their racism, lack of interest in education and preoccupation with material gain.78 Later, however, the coercive power of the collective narrative destabilizes the protagonist’s sense of identity, prompting him to become an educator of both Chaldean and American values. Haddad explains that he found the prerogative to educate not only Chaldeans about how to live morally and follow the precepts of law and society in the United States, but also educate Americans on how to relate to Chaldeans.79 The transformational point in Haddad’s mode of relating to his Chaldean heritage was characterized by the encounter with the priest who questioned the protagonist’s inability to speak ‘Chaldean’ despite its being the language of his forefathers. The variety refurbished today among the US-based Chaldeans is a hybrid version that depends for its value on the associations with which representatives of Chaldeanness seek to imbue it – as, for instance, to associate Chaldeans more closely with the Jewish communities near Detroit. The revival of Aramaic in the US diaspora is a relatively modern phenomenon that parallels the emergence of other inflections of Chaldeanness. An ‘Aramaic Voice’ had begun ‘broadcasting Chaldean issues in Aramaic all over the world’ from a Detroit suburb as early as 1979.80 Numerous publications online and in print started featuring entries in Aramaic. After twenty-five years of publication in Arabic, the first Iraqi newspaper in the diasporic community, al-Mashriq (The Orient), began displaying the Aramaic title atop the Arabic one in the mid-1970s.81 Businesses and community institutions such as the CFA and the CACC began to feature Aramaic in their logos in the 1980s. Throughout the new century, country clubs, churches and youth organizations such as CARE began devising curricula for teaching the language to US-born or raised generations of Chaldeans. Chaldean churches and families in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities were reproved from Detroit for neglecting to speak the language of their heritage, for failing to ‘preserve’ it as they should have and for not ensuring that their children grew to speak it.82 It is crucial not only for US-based Chaldeans for demanding autonomous representation in the upcoming US Census, but also for transnational projects that involve asserting ethno-religious independence in the new Iraqi state. With the demise of the Ba‘thist regime, the US-based National Chaldean Congress began to demand that Chaldean children in Iraq should be taught their ‘native language’. In order ‘to be represented by Chaldeans and no one else’ in the Iraqi Governing Council, diaspora Chaldean nationalists envisioned their task to include representing Chaldeans to the world as ‘one people with one language’.83 The project of Aramaic revival and preservation has been around at least since the 1980s, but it assumed a more urgent tone with the rise of sectarian violence in Iraq after 2003, a tone that complemented the diaspora community’s discourse on ethnic persecution and extinction. In 2016, a group of Michigan-based educators

144

The Chaldeans

Figure 15  CFA logo with the Aramaic title on the inside circle.

Figure 16  CACC logo, featuring the title in Aramaic, the Ishtar Gate with designs of the lions of Babylon and the American flag.

5. Family, Marriage and Ethnic Economy

145

and funders began advocating the teaching of Aramaic to second- and thirdgeneration Chaldeans as a community priority. The CCF and other Chaldean organizations partnered with St Fabian Catholic School in Farmington Hills to pilot a new Aramaic language class through an after-school programme for third to eighth graders, and they commissioned the creation of an online Aramaic programme through Mango Languages which they made available free of charge at the local public library and the CCF’s language lab in Sterling Heights.84 ‘I believe it is imperative that every Chaldean speak Soureth,’ reflected Awrahem, a former teacher of Aramaic at Telkeif ’s religious school who now teaches the language at the University of Detroit Mercy.85 Many community leaders share Awrahem’s view that ‘preserving’ Chaldean culture and history requires reviving Aramaic and teaching it to the new generations of Chaldeans in the United States. Reviving words and linguistic constructs that are no longer in use, creating textbooks and promoting Aramaic learning among the younger American-born generations have strongly reinforced the notion that Chaldean identity is language based. As we saw in Chapter 2 the origins of the neo-dialects of Aramaic or Syriac (also known as Sureth in the native tongue) spoken today trace back to the archaeological and Christian missions of the nineteenth century. They trace back to Euro-American projects of reviving biblical Aramaic and consolidating the living dialects through providing a writing system, a printing press and new font types.

Figure 17  A volume of the series Chaldean for Kids (2008), by Margaret Shamoun and Melody Arabo.

146

The Chaldeans

The process by which asserting language uniqueness becomes possible is predicated by the emergence of a totalizing language ideology such as the one precipitated by the cultural imperialism of the late nineteenth century. When appropriated by the official narrative, a totalizing vision attains the power to institute the iconic value of Aramaic even when – today in America – only a fraction of the Chaldean community can speak it (mostly without the ability to read and write it), and only a select minority, predominantly clergymen, can read and write the biblical variety. The function of a language ideology is twofold: it facilitates the group’s assertion of a link between ethnicity and language, and it constructs a context of alterity conducive to describing linguistic difference that sets the group apart from the surrounding linguistic and socio-cultural context in Iraq. It also asserts English–Aramaic bilingualism on behalf of the Chaldeans of the United States, while suppressing the fact that many Chaldean immigrants are more at home with Arabic than any other language. Some counterviews stress this fact publicly, but their views are quickly rebuffed by supporters of the official version. For example, when Najor pointed out how many Chaldeans speak Arabic in her aforesaid presentation, her comment ‘infuriated [Chaldean] Mark Samano, bilingual coordinator for Hazel Park Schools, to the point where he believed she should be fired from her job’. Samano’s counterargument was that ‘when people [Chaldeans] speak Arabic it doesn’t mean they are Arab’, but rather a process of acculturation. ‘If I speak French’, he clarifies, ‘it doesn’t mean I am French’.86 Yet Aramaic-learning advocates like Samano do not extend the same acculturation argument to Aramaic itself, as a language that was in use for cross-cultural communication in a particular territory and time and only survives as a fragment with limited communicative value today. The fact that is often omitted from the official narrative is that the majority of US-based Chaldeans do not read and write Aramaic, but rather English and/or Arabic. In its scientific guise the Household Survey came out with a figure of 66.2 per cent for the speakers of the ‘Chaldean language’ among the Chaldeans of Southeast Michigan, with the assertion that ‘Chaldeans hold onto their traditions and many today still speak the Chaldean language’.87 This figure is problematic on two levels: (1) the Household Survey was administered in English only, thus possibly precluding the participation of recent Arabic-speaking Chaldean immigrants and refugees, whose proficiency in English is limited and (2) it omits mention of figures of those who speak Arabic instead of Aramaic or Arabic and Aramaic. Three years prior to this survey, the DAAS, which was administered in English and Arabic by bilingual interviewers, revealed that 36 per cent of Chaldeans who reported speaking Aramaic also reported speaking Arabic and that 15 per cent of Chaldeans speak Arabic but no Aramaic.88 As the central component in the language ideology of Chaldean culturemakers, Aramaic attains an iconic value even when it fails to retrieve its practical communicative value. It adorns institutions’ emblems, buildings, infants’ apparel and toys, among other objects. Part of the campaign to bolster the status of

5. Family, Marriage and Ethnic Economy

147

Aramaic within the US-based Chaldean community has resulted in widespread efforts to teach it to new generations of Chaldeans. In addition to the after-school programme and college courses, the CCC gallery project and the Babylon Museum envisioned their didactic role to encompass teaching the language. It is by ‘tidying up’ the linguistic picture in this fashion of cultural differentiation that the iconic value of language begins to emerge, after ‘facts that are inconsistent with the ideological scheme either go unnoticed or get explained away’.89 As symbolic of linguistic uniqueness, Aramaic assumes a central role in advancing political agendas of national autonomy. Because language ideology proceeds from a totalizing vision, the official narrative of Chaldeanness omits mention of elements that do not fit within its functional framework. Facts such as modern-day Aramaic is not the language ancient Babylonians and Assyrians spoke or wrote, and not even the one used in contemporary Chaldean liturgy, and that it is a version heavily influenced by Arabic and that at least half of the US-based Chaldeans feel at ease with Arabic90 are suppressed out of strategic necessity.

Casting the Iraqi Vote In January 2005, under a new Out-of-Country Voting Program that made voting possible for Iraqi expatriates in fourteen countries outside Iraq, US-based Chaldeans were allowed to register and vote in the National Assembly elections that were to shape the government of post-Saddam Iraq.91 Not only were Chaldeans born in Iraq eligible to cast a ballot, but also were those born abroad before 1987 to an Iraqi father.92 The range of Chaldean reactions to this event reveals contrasts between ‘transnational action’ and a ‘transnational imaginary’. The interim Iraqi government and the Bush administration sanctioned the right to vote from abroad as a way to implement policies that would reinforce Iraqi emigrants’ sense of enduring membership in both the United States and Iraq and hence to draw in their economic remittances to rebuild Iraq or retain their political loyalty in both countries. The participation of expatriates in political activities, however, whether symbolic or real (i.e. whether intended mainly for expressing particular preferences or for implementing change in the sociopolitical structures of the homeland) did not depend entirely on the decisions of the Iraqi and US governments. Institutions of diasporic civil society, including those of US-based Chaldeans, tend to provide material support for a public sphere that includes a wide range of political practices. This phenomenon has driven scholars of diasporas to suggest the existence of ‘stateless power’, a form of power that can be productive or prohibitive within a social formation ruled either by individual voluntarism or by communal compulsion.93 In the case of USbased Chaldeans, the Church, community organizations and culture-makers  – the active architects of the community’s transnational social fields – expected at least half of the 113,000 US-based Chaldean population of 2005 to vote in the Iraqi elections. The leadership of these institutions urged individuals to vote so

148

The Chaldeans

that Christians could maintain a foothold in Iraqi parliamentary politics. The importance of voting, according to Joseph Kassab, was twofold: one, it would prove that Chaldeans ‘understand and support democracy [because they live in a democratic country] for their homeland’, and two, their votes for a Christian representative were necessary ‘to reconfirm the Chaldean presence as a religious and national minority within Iraq’.94 Registration and polling stations were established in five metropolitan areas across the United States –Michigan, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Chicago and Tennessee. In Michigan, voting sites were set up in Sterling Heights, Southfield and Dearborn. The churches and the CFA, who publicly criticized the distance of these polling stations from concentrations of Chaldean residences, organized bus trips to take groups of Chaldean voters.95 The all-Christian Iraqi democratic slate, Al-Rafidayn, received 29 per cent of all the Iraqi expatriate votes in the January elections. Disillusioned by the results and a voting process they perceived to be intentionally cumbersome, fewer Chaldeans voted in subsequent parliamentary elections the following December, bringing the figure down to 26 per cent for the Rafidayn slate.96 Although not significant enough to have an impact on the overall results of the elections in Iraq, the victory of Al-Rafidayn, which took the top spot among US-based expatriates and narrowly defeated a Shi‘i Muslim religious bloc with Shi‘i supporters in Dearborn, Michigan, demonstrates how influential diasporic Chaldean networks can be in persuading members of the community to mobilize and act politically. There was a range of reactions to the expatriate vote among Arab and Chaldean diaspora leaders. Manna, president of the CACC, reasoned that, antagonized by media portrayals of Iraq as a country composed of Shi‘a, Sunnis and Kurds, diasporic Chaldeans and Assyrians would see voting in the elections as an opportunity to show that they represent 5 per cent of the Iraqi population, rather than the 1 per cent suggested in the media.97 While Manna was himself a proud Chaldean voter, Lebanese-American James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute and a pollster during the Iraqi elections, was troubled by the US balloting as a whole. Allowing US citizens to vote in another country’s elections, claimed Zogby, sent the message that Iraqi Americans were not full participants in US democracy. ‘We send a very conflicted message about the value of US citizenship,’ he reasoned. ‘It undervalues our American citizenship.’98 The conflict of which Zogby spoke, between local nationalism and transnationality, is emphasized in a growing body of scholarship on diasporic communities. Tölölyan stressed, ‘those who emerge as transnational leaders […] always remember to speak of their local community as simultaneously rooted in the host society and routing¸ a node of the transnational diasporic network’.99 As the following chapters show, the rooted–routing dual orientation of displaced minorities is complicated further by a conflicting institutional investment in helping Chaldeans leave Iraq and settle there at the same time. During the terror decade, diasporic Chaldean institutions were calling for Chaldean settlement in the ancestral land while enabling Chaldeans to leave Iraq as expediently as possible.

5. Family, Marriage and Ethnic Economy

149

Chaldean Transnation: Family, Marriage and Ethnic Economy US-based Chaldeans are currently engaged in cross-boundary activities that are best understood by examining institutional circuits as transnational social spaces. These spaces have the capacity to develop into overlapping transnational social fields in which diasporic Chaldeans can participate directly and indirectly in multistranded transnational activities. Currently, Southeast Michigan is at the centre of these social fields because the oldest and largest Chaldean community outside the Middle East resides there, giving rise to several of the critical transnational projects discussed in this book. More importantly, Southeast Michigan is home to a Chaldean elite whose powerful political and cultural influence has given shape and articulation to a modern collective Chaldean identity that resonates worldwide. Chaldean elites and their institutions have been successful in rallying Michigan’s Chaldeans to a transnational cause that they can relate to on a personal level: virtually everyone has a relative or a friend who wants help to migrate to the United States. While diasporic Chaldean institutions pursue a transnational path increasingly independent from the traditional Church network to foster group interest in broader collective issues, individual migrants concomitantly create networks across state boundaries to achieve personal goals through kinship ties, such as transnational marriages, financial remittances and the build-up of an ethnic economy. Persons living within the borders of a Western state as legal or potential (white) citizens, such as the US-based Chaldeans, may not make transnational claims or feel the urge to create transnational social fields until a peculiar event or crisis occurs. The 2005 Iraqi vote campaign and, as we shall see in Chapter 7, Operation R-4 and the Nineveh Plains settlement project are campaigns provoked by the serious humanitarian crises that have beset Chaldeans in Iraq during the post-2003 decades. The common denominator they share is that they are all diaspora-driven (i.e. local) projects aimed at making a transnational impact during the decades of intensified Islamophobia and War on Terror. Indeed, the rising anti-Muslim sentiment in the West, the War on Terror and the US occupation of Iraq have fed and facilitated these diasporic initiatives, that needed to assert their Christian identity more forcefully. Ironically, such assertions posed higher existential threats to Chaldeans living in Iraq even as they bolster the institutional capacity of the Chaldean diaspora in greater Detroit. Some Chaldeans participate in transnational networks more effectively than others. It is not easy to chart passive levels of participation in transnational life; everyone, as a member of the community, is embedded in a transnational social field and is participating in it, directly or indirectly, by contributing money to a CFA project, running a store in Detroit, marrying an acquaintance from an Iraqi village or a transit country or engaging in countless activities with a possible transnational effect. However, few persons and organizations have the power to become nodes that actively direct the trajectory of transnational activities. Through the symbiotic workings of community organizations, a small cohort of

150

The Chaldeans

affluent Chaldeans presides over most of the formal transnational projects that involve multiple institutions. This small cohort also works to ensure an effective publicity of these projects within the larger public domain in order to elicit the desired level of participation from other, less involved members of the immigrant community and to obtain recognition from the broader, non-Chaldean society in which Chaldean networks are embedded. Identifying transnational activity among US-based Chaldeans brings into view the inner unity, durability and power of the diasporic collective, but also poses a set of unresolved challenges. When seen as a set of multiple, interlocking networks, the diasporic social fields seem to overlap or recombine to support activities, such as well-organized fundraising campaigns to assist Chaldean refugees, that are clearly beneficial to the community and its individual families in Michigan. However, it is equally evident that some of these broad-scale transnational projects are not complementary and are, in fact, subverting each other, such as the simultaneous desire to pose as patriotic US citizens and Iraqi citizens, or the call for an enclave for Iraqi Christians in Nineveh and a comprehensive migration plan to help the remaining families reunite with their relatives in the United States and elsewhere as we shall see soon. What is the future of Chaldean transnational life? In light of the mass exit of Iraqi Christians from their ancestral land, aided by the relocation efforts of diaspora Chaldeans, and the rapid explosion of the US-based Chaldean diaspora, it is unclear which transnational ties are likely to endure in the coming decades. When their territorial sites or boundaries cannot be taken for granted, the contours of Chaldean communities must constantly be rethought, along with their interethnic and intra-ethnic alliances, ethno-religious affiliations and colour politics.

6 T H E M O D E R N C HA L D E A N C H U R C H : G L O BA L C I R C U I T S O F E C C L E SIA L P OW E R

In September 2006, at the height of sectarian violence that followed the USled invasion of Iraq in 2003, Pope Benedict XVI made controversial remarks about Islam in a lecture he delivered at the University of Regensburg, Germany, provoking an outrage in parts of the Muslim world. The Pope quoted a fourteenthcentury remark about Islam made by Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaiologos. The Vatican-published English translation of the anti-Muslim quote was, ‘Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.’1 Almost immediately following that incident, a Chaldean Catholic priest, Father Basel Yaldo, 36, received death threats and was kidnapped for three days from his home in Baghdad. The security situation seemed so dismal that he was transferred upon his release to a parish in Michigan, where his victimization received ample coverage in local and international media. A year later, in November 2007, the same pope elevated Chaldean Patriarch Emmanuel-Karim III Delly to the rank of Cardinal Bishop, a status that placed Delly among the most prestigious prelates of the Catholic Church. In Pope Benedict’s own words, this gesture was made by way of ‘concretely expressing my spiritual closeness and my affection’ for Iraq’s Christian minorities.2 This ‘closeness’ and ‘affection’ are not a newfound, top-down compassion from a powerful institution for the weak and plighted Christians of Iraq. It has a long and spirited history that is not only hierarchical, but also reciprocal and transnational. The connection between the Roman Catholic Church and the Chaldean Church dates back at least to 1445 CE, as we saw, when the first official union between the Church of the East and the Catholic Church in Rome took place during the Council of Florence. Ever since, the appellation ‘Chaldean’, revived then by Pope Eugene IV, has come to refer to the Eastern Christians who entered the communion with Rome.3 Four centuries later, the remainder of the followers of the Church of the East, the smaller segments who did not convert to Catholicism, were to receive the equally antiquated appellation ‘Assyrian’. This time it came from the Anglican Church.4 The West-activated transformation of the Chaldean Church, and the Assyrian Church four centuries later, forged enduring associations between their

152

The Chaldeans

followers and ancient Mesopotamian symbolism, racial alterity and nativism and a sense of entitlement to the land and presiding over its current affairs even as the majority of Chaldeans reside outside of Iraq today. The circuit of the Catholic Church is part of an important modern transnational history whose significance permeates not only religious life in Iraq and elsewhere, but just as prominently the secular modes of Chaldean life in diaspora. It also pinpoints the intermediary position of the Chaldean Church within the Orientalist conceptual divide between ‘East’ and ‘West’. In recent decades, the Chaldean Church has also been an active political mouthpiece on behalf of the endangered Chaldean community in Iraq and a trusted source of data for international aid organizations interested in helping Iraq’s religious minorities. Today it continues to extend a multifaceted, conflicting influence from its American stronghold, challenging the authority of the Patriarch in Baghdad and networking with other secular community organizations and with its religious branches in other parts of the world. The Chaldean Church currently consists of eight dioceses in Iraq. There are several additional dioceses and Eparchies outside of Iraq (India, Lebanon, Australia, United States, Egypt, Turkey and Iran) and a continuously expanding diasporic population that is at minimum twice the size of the Chaldean population remaining in Iraq.5 The salience of religious institutions, as a set of doctrines, practices and cohort of personnel, lies particularly in that they are not coincident with the borders of the nation states that contain their followers. Yet it is precisely because of this absence of physical fixity, which allows for delineating a sending nation and a receiving one, that migration theory for a long time ignored the social impact and power of migrants’ religion. Despite the transnational networks upon whose dynamism and durability religious institutions – certainly the Chaldean Church among them – have consistently relied, scholars have only in recent decades begun to explore the relationship between religion and transnational migration.6 Instead, early migration scholarship focused on the assimilation patterns in the host country alone. For instance, in the 1970s Philip and Joseph Kayal set out to conduct the first large-scale methodical study of the assimilation patterns among Arabic-speaking Catholic communities in the United States. Focusing on the ‘Syrian communities’ in America (which they defined as Syrian Orthodox, Maronite or Melkite Catholic) they predicted that the future of the survival of these communities and their churches was ‘in serious doubt’.7 If the ethnic communities disappeared, which is apt to happen in the near future due to the communities’ ethnic assimilation tendencies, they reasoned, then the churches which are a part of and support these communities are likely to disappear too.8 Half a century later, these predictions proved to be fairly inaccurate. Middle Eastern Catholic (and other Christian) communities and their churches are still as vibrant, culturally distinct and socially relevant to their members as they were during the times of the pioneer immigrants. Moreover, their membership has expanded, their assets increased and their real estate holdings multiplied in number and size.9 For example, by the beginning of the First World War,

6. The Modern Chaldean Church

153

twenty-two Maronite parishes existed in the United States. In the 1920s, seven more churches were added, and in the 1930s, two more were added. This number exploded over the decades to the point where currently there are more than eighty Maronite parishes and missions in the United States, two eparchies instead of one and a Maronite seminary that has produced more than fifty-seven priests over the course of its existence as the only diocesan Maronite seminary outside of Lebanon.10 By the same token, the Antiochian Syrian Orthodox Church, which makes up the largest community of Christians in the United States, has enjoyed a significant expansion. Matthew Stiffler, whose 2010 analysis presented the political profile and contributions of the Antiochian Church in the United States, described this growth thus: The Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese is a vast institution. Headquartered in Englewood, NJ, the Church runs a large summer camp and conference center, the Antiochian Village, in the mountains of Western Pennsylvania, in addition to the 250 parishes throughout the U.S. and Canada. The Antiochian Village also contains a library that caters to Orthodox seminary students, and has a professionally-maintained museum that documents both the history of the faith as well as the history of Arab immigration to the U.S. Possibly the most visible marker of the vitality of the archdiocese are the annual regional and bi-annual national ‘Parish Life Conventions’. 11

One reason behind the Kayal brothers and other early misprediction about the longevity and relevance of Christian Middle Eastern identities is that the salience and resilience of the transnational aspects of religion were mostly overlooked in those studies. Another significant factor that contributed to erroneous forecasts in studies conducted during the 1960s and 1970s centres around the timeline of recent migration waves to the United States. It is common knowledge among scholars of Detroit’s Middle Eastern communities today that war and crisis in the region, especially Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Palestine, have repeatedly resulted in surges of immigration to the Detroit area. Theorizing in the first half of the 1970s decade and earlier, the Kayals and other pioneer Arab-American community scholars could not have factored in the civil war in Lebanon from 1975 to 1990 and its aftermath, which produced a large wave of Lebanese migration to the United States and many other countries. Similarly, unforeseeable was the surge in migration from Iraq from the 1980s onwards, in the wake of the Iraq–Iran war, the first and second Gulf Wars and the ISIS infiltration of the northern region meant that the Church in the United States has been simultaneously assimilating and forced to respond to the demands of newcomers for several decades. Immigrants are often expected to develop religious institutions in the host country as part of the process of incorporation – which the Chaldeans did as early as 1947 in Detroit, Michigan12 – however, these institutions were also expected to lose their force over time with the assimilation of subsequent migrant generations.13 This prediction did not coincide with the development of Chaldean

154

The Chaldeans

religious institution in America, mainly because the Chaldean Church operated from the outset within a transnational social field suitable for replenishing its force; namely, within a human network that is organized through the decisions that transnationally circulate between diaspora bishops, ancestral land archbishops and prelates, and the Rome-based pope. There are a number of histories of the Chaldean Catholic Church that describe it as a locale with specific events that fall along the linear line of its evolution and transformation. Looked at more closely, the modern Chaldean Church, especially since the mass exit or internal displacement of the majority of its Iraq-based followers since 2003, is predominantly a dynamic process that is more effectively understood when explored as an arena for expressing membership in multiple polities – hence a transnational conceptual social field. Although it is not coincident with the borders of the nation states where its followers reside, the Church may coexist with them or create new spaces for belonging within these nation states. It may even endure as its subscribers’ identities undergo a shift from prioritizing religion to prioritizing ethnicity, transforming the function of its social capital, in the process, from political participation into symbolic representation. As such, the religious Chaldean social field transcends the territorial and political boundaries of Iraq and the United States, among other nation states, and forges in the process an alternative, region-flexible site for the expression of loyalties and a substantive global network of social and economic support.

Transnational Foundations: The Chaldean Patriarchate since the Creation of Iraq Far from being geographically tied to one place as its name suggests, the Chaldean Patriarchate – dubbed ‘Patriarchate of Babylon’ after its Catholic conversion – moved the seat of its Patriarch in multiple directions within and outside of Asia over the centuries. It did not establish a measure of stability in modern times until the settlement in Mosul in 1830. During that century, members of the Church engaged in a sustained multicultural exchange with the West through contacts with religious and archaeological missions. This happened at home, just as the originary land of the newly fashioned ‘Chaldeans’ was transforming from Mesopotamia, Persia and Anatolia into the modern states of Iraq, Iran and Turkey, respectively. During that era and well into the mid-twentieth century, Euro-American missions enabled several Chaldean individuals to engage in a multi-regional lifestyle through which they served as conduits of cultural perceptions between ‘East’ and ‘West’. We cannot fully grasp the current profile of the Chaldeans as a social group without understanding the foundations of the Church’s modern transnational networks. As a set of new circumstances evolved in the twentieth century, the role of the clergy was transformed, changing the ways the community identified itself both at home and in diaspora. The distinct approaches of the Chaldean patriarchs who have ruled since the creation of the Iraqi state punctuate the widely varied political exigencies of their times.

6. The Modern Chaldean Church

155

After settling in Mosul, it took 120 years for the need to relocate to present itself again. If Patriarch Emanuel II Thomas’s rule (1900–47) from his Mosul stronghold mostly lacked scrutiny and reflected the political aloofness of the Church alongside the increased community’s social integration, acquiescence to the elite ruling class and reliance on Jesuit influence in matters of education and upward social mobility, the rule of his successors from their stronghold in Baghdad was marked by the significant feature of the start of Chaldean immigration from the countryside to the city and from the Middle East to the West. In 1950, the Patriarchate’s transfer to Baghdad under Joseph VII Ghanima’s rule (1947–58) coincided with large waves of migration of Chaldeans from the northern villages to the capital city, and also with the consolidation of the Iraqi petroleum industry, which was to have significant repercussions on the presence and impact of the foreign missions and their school systems and on the associated Christian advantage in Iraq. Ghanima’s premature death coincided with the overthrow of the monarchy. Both events abruptly ushered in a dramatic change in the position of the Chaldean community within Iraqi society. For the first time the Christian ‘protected’ class was to sever its educational and overt ideological ties with the missionary oversight. Moreover, the election of the new Alqosh-born Patriarch, Paul Cheikho (1958–89), who was transferred from his post as a Bishop in Aleppo to his new position as Patriarch in Baghdad, marked the beginning a new era of transnational relations and inflected the Chaldean Church and its followers with a renewed awareness of their diasporic character.

Circuit Pioneers: Patriarchs Paul Cheikho and Rouphael Bidawid The political milieu of Paul Cheikho’s tenure as a Patriarch, which was contiguous with the Ba‘thist rule, provides the formative context for the modern transnational profile of the Chaldean Church. While in office for over thirty years, Cheikho navigated the Chaldean Church and its followers through a rapidly transforming Iraq, where many were taking up a new ideology of Arabism that was later to conflict with the ethnic filiations envisioned through Assyrian nationalism and its Chaldean adherents. At the time also, an oil-driven economy was emerging, three different regimes usurped power (Monarchic, Communist and Ba‘thist), three national revolutions took place (1958, 1963 and 1968) and an eight-year war with Iran (1980–88) transformed the socio-economic infrastructure of the country. By the early 1970s, Western missions had relinquished their posts in the socialist Iraqi state, a process that coincided with the emergence of stable forms of Chaldean settlement in America. Besides the oil boom in Iraq, the restructuring of the educational system and the Kurdish revolts that implicated the Assyrians in the north and the Iraq–Iran War, a significant ecclesiological reform reshaped the transnational dynamics of the Chaldean Church and influenced Patriarch Cheikho’s recasting of Chaldean social, political and economic life during the Ba‘thist era. The Second Vatican

156

The Chaldeans

Council (1962–5) facilitated a new kind of Eastern Catholic union with the Holy See. In what constituted a seismic shift in Roman Catholic identity, all Catholic ecclesial communities, including the Chaldean Church, became sui juris – selfgoverning entities responsible for determining their own ecclesiology and showcasing their distinct brands of indigenous theologies, with the pope in Rome serving merely as chief bishop ‘presiding in love’ over a vast network of discreet churches.14 One of the implications of this new model of ecclesiological governance was the introduction of local vernaculars in the liturgy. In the diaspora, this means that Byzantine and Eastern Catholic Churches could brandish their distinctness after a long phase of assimilation and ‘Latinization’.15 The impact of this change on the Chaldean community was great, and later permeated not only religion but also secular efforts in the diaspora to revive Syriac language, garments, icons and liturgy as a marker of Chaldean ethnic identity. In an atmosphere of tightening religious and political freedoms at home, decreased missionary intervention and evolving ideological independence from Rome, secular transnational ties with the West began to manifest as a new source of power. While maintaining a formal loyalty to the local government, a Patriarch like Cheikho carried his advocacy on behalf of the Chaldean community to an international audience who putatively lent an ear to the collective concerns of Christians. In 1984, for example, he led an ecumenical and interfaith delegation

Figure 18  The author chanting next to Patriarch Paul Cheikho in a first communion ceremony he attended in Baghdad shortly before his death. St Joseph Church, July 1988.

6. The Modern Chaldean Church

157

to the Vatican as witness to the suffering of the Christian communities in Iraq from the consequences of the war with Iran. Cheikho diplomatically navigated his way between the dictates of the central government of Iraq and the circuitous protection of Vatican networks, paving the way for the next patriarch to fortify and elaborate these networks. Patriarch Rouphael I Bidawid (1989–2003) activated additional transnational ties on behalf of the Chaldean community in Iraq during decades that were dominated by traumatic internal displacement and several waves of outward migration of Iraq’s Christians. These new transnational ties included representing the Chaldean community in transnational contexts, advancing ecumenical bonds, launching a literary-heritage-saving campaign in diaspora and establishing Chaldean dioceses in the United States. Bidawid’s earliest exposure to transnational circles dates back to the 1940s, to his time in the junior Chaldean seminary in Mosul, which was administered by the Dominican mission. However, his tenure in Lebanon (1965–89) serves as a good example of how the current formulation of the Chaldean ‘minority’ cannot be understood without reference to transnational processes and the changing political environment in the Middle East. Bidawid continued his education in Rome, which, coupled with his subsequent exposure to Europe and the United States, allowed him to obtain a position as the chaplain in service of the Christians working in the Iraq Petroleum Company. This company extended from Tripoli in Lebanon to Kirkuk in Iraq, ethnically diverse regions with sizable Christian expatriate communities.16 In 1958, at a time when the Iraqi government engaged in a tumultuous conflict with the Kurds, Bidawid was serving as the bishop of one of the largest Chaldean dioceses that spread through a large section of Kurdistan, a region that would become the centre of the conflict between the fighting Arab and Kurdish factions. While Bidawid had to employ a great deal of political tact in order to maintain good relations with the fighting Kurdish factions and the government of Iraq, he was aware that transnational political relations were as essential as transnational religious ties for extending protection to the politically marginalized Chaldean minority in turbulent, post–Second World War Iraq. From 1958 and until his transfer to Lebanon in 1965, Bidawid’s challenge was to maintain good relations with both factions, without compromising the position of the Chaldean Patriarchate in Baghdad or the livelihood of the Chaldean villages caught in the maelstrom. Moreover, witnessing the fragmentation of the Chaldean communities in the Nineveh Plains and their mass migration to major cities in Iraq or abroad, Bidawid foresaw the beginning a heritage-saving campaign that was to extend its roots internationally wherever Chaldean families congregated. In the early 1960s, Bidawid began supervising the cataloguing and transferring of the rich holdings of books and manuscripts from his bishopric to the patriarchal library in Mosul. He also published several articles on the Chaldean Church’s relations with the Christian West, a topic he was exceptionally passionate about.17 From his tenure in Lebanon in 1965 to his death in 2003, Bidawid’s career went far beyond his prolific Syriac literary and theological pursuits. While in

158

The Chaldeans

Beirut, Bidawid focused his efforts on representing the Chaldean community in multiple transnational contexts. In addition to presiding over the religious life of the Chaldean community that numbered approximately 20,000 individuals in Lebanon, the Chaldean Church he headed there provided a social nucleus for Iraqi exiles, tourists and businessmen of various religious affiliations. He represented the Catholic Church in the Fourth Assembly of the Council of Churches of the Middle East in Cyprus (2003) and advocated Church’s membership in the Council as well as participating and heading several religious committees that advocated ecumenical bonds. Moreover, deploying his Lebanese connections, Bidawid acted on behalf of the Iraqi Chaldeans when the Iraqi Ba‘thist regime attempted to strike friendly relations with the Maronite community in Lebanon. During the 1990s, after the first Gulf War which he vehemently condemned along with the leaders of other Churches in Iraq, Bidawid deployed his status as a Patriarch to formulate multiple new responses to the growing number of displaced Chaldeans, internally in Iraq and externally in various parts of the world. In 1995 he created Akhawiyyat al-Mahabba (Charity Brotherhood or ‘Confrérie de la Charité’ or ‘Caritas Iraq’), which became a full member of Caritas Internationalis, a confederation of 162 Catholic relief organizations that gained the support of all four Catholic Churches.18 During the sanctions years, the Akhawiyyat was the only private local aid agency that could distribute humanitarian aid to all regions of Iraq. In addition to acting in person as a transnational player on behalf of the Chaldeans, Bidawid also encouraged more important senior Catholic figures to employ their transnational powers to publicize the effects of the embargo worldwide. He facilitated the visit of Cardinal Silverstrini, Prefect of the Congregation of the Oriental Churches, to Iraq in 1993 as well as that of the Catholic patriarchs of the Oriental and Latin Churches the following year. Although Bidawid’s attempt to clear the path for Pope John Paul II’s ‘biblical pilgrimage’ to Iraq in 2000 was aborted by US diplomatic interventions and other embargo-related factors, the work of the Chaldean patriarchate eventually prompted papal contacts with the United Nations, American, European and Ba‘th authorities in an effort to bring about the end of the sanctions on Iraq.19 Indeed, as O’Mahony writes, ‘Apart from Tariq Aziz’, who as a high-profile figure and a Chaldean in Hussein’s coterie presented the image of Iraq’s plurality and consolidated relations with Vatican diplomatic corps, ‘Bidawid was one of the few Christian personalities who had any real [political] profile during this [1990s] period’.20 Between 1982 and his death in Lebanon in 2003, Bidawid was also involved in establishing Chaldean dioceses in Detroit, Chicago and California to accommodate the arrival of new Chaldean immigrants to the United States. Also serving the Chaldeans in transit during that period, he appointed a patriarchal vicar to attend to more than 60,000 Chaldean refugees living under harsh circumstances in Jordan.21 In summary, like Cheikho, the transnational career of Bidawid made strong strides towards ecumenism that worked politically in favour of the survival and westward mobility of Chaldean communities. Together the two patriarchs acted to define papal policy towards Iraq and to take on the roles of intermediaries between

6. The Modern Chaldean Church

159

Rome and Baghdad. They established mutual bonds between the Chaldean Church and the more influential Church of the East, subsequently dubbed ‘sister Churches’, which also had their favourable resonance abroad, where the Chaldean immigrant communities settled near other Eastern Christian diasporas, such as the Assyrian communities in Illinois and California and the Lebanese Maronite Catholic Church in Detroit. The neutral but ambivalent relations the Chaldean Patriarchates of Cheikho and Bidawid kept with the Ba‘thist regime since its coming to power in 1963 also served, though erratically, to enhance the position of the Chaldean communities in and outside of Iraq for a while. The contacts between Saddam Hussein’s government and the Chaldean Church and communities fall within the context of politicized transnational relations that were charted separately in the diaspora with the establishment of the Chaldean-American Church in Michigan. The US-enabled removal of the Ba‘thist regime which had been presiding over most aspects of Iraqi life, including interreligious affairs, coincided with Patriarch Bidawid’s death in 2003. This confluence of events created a leadership vacuum for the Chaldean community at home, but additionally opened a window of opportunity for the increasingly autonomous Chaldean dioceses in the United States to usurp power. Obliged to determine Bidawid’s successor, the Holy See selected Emanuel III Delly (2003–13) after the Chaldean synod of bishops failed to arrive at a decision due to lack of qualified candidates. Delly’s status as a ‘compromise candidate’ precluded his emergence as an authoritative leader figure.22 Moreover, due to the dependence of the diasporic Church on community funding and participation, a secular form of Chaldean leadership was able to consolidate and emerge into a community leadership position in lieu of the Church in the US diaspora. However this may be and although the Chaldean Catholic Church Dioceses of Eastern and Western US technically fall outside the Ottoman Empire jurisdictions, the bishops of Dioceses in Detroit and San Diego who are permitted to report to the Vatican directly often link their decisions back to the Patriarchate in Baghdad,23 as do powerful secular Chaldean institutions, in an effort to maintain the symbolic authority and the ancient, native character as well as the West-sanctioned Christian character of their identity. The symbolic authority of the Church, its patriarch and the patriarch’s connections with Rome serve an important political function at a time when Western media casts violence in Iraq as a religion-motivated affair and radicalizes and racializes Islam to present the religion and the perpetrators of violence as arch-enemies to Western progress, benevolence and tolerance. The intensified attacks against Christians in 2006–07 and Pope Benedict XVI’s desire to raise awareness of the Chaldeans’ difficulties as exceptional led to the elevation of Delly to the rank of Cardinal in November 2007. Age, ill health and intensified persecution and migration of Christians from Iraq continued to undercut Patriarch Delly’s influence. During that period, Louis Raphael I Sako, archbishop of Kirkuk (2002–13), began exerting stronger influence through maintaining important links with the local Muslim authorities, the international Catholic community and the Chaldean community in diaspora. These efforts continued after Sako succeeded Delly as the next and current patriarch of Baghdad in 2013.

160

The Chaldeans

Ecumenism: The Chaldean-Assyrian Dialogues The end of the hereditary succession of the Mar Shimun line with his murder in 1975 proclaimed a new phase for the Assyrian Church, one with consequences upon the ecclesiastic identities of both the Assyrian and Chaldean Churches. The promptly elected Mar Khnanya Dinkha IV (1935–2015) moved his residence from Tehran to Chicago, once again managing the affairs of the Assyrian Church away from the official See in Baghdad, despite the Iraqi government’s urgings that he establish the new patriarchate in the Iraqi capital.24 Mar Dinkha’s first years as a patriarch were focused on rectifying the internal disorder within the Church. Negotiations with the schismatic branch in Baghdad were initiated, yet the Assyrian communities remained divided between Mar Dinkha and Mar Addi II for the ensuing decades, with the majority of the US diaspora community supporting Mar Dinkha. Moreover, since 2005 another initiative widened the chasms between the Assyrian communities remaining in Iraq. Amicable relations between Mar Dinkha and the leader of Iraqi Kurdistan, Massoud Barazani, opened the possibility of returning to the Apostolic See in northern Iraq and establishing the headquarters of the Assyrian Church in Ankawa instead of Baghdad.25 Eventually the diasporic Mar Dinkha moved the attention of the Church away from the remote Iraqi context (he visited post-2003 Iraq only once during his tenure as Catholicos-Patriarch) towards a more international context. Seeking to depoliticize the office of the Catholicos-Patriarch, he focused instead on strengthening the ecumenical ties of the hitherto isolated Assyrian Church with the sister Churches in the Middle East and elsewhere. This entailed shedding the historically fraught role of the Assyrian patriarch as a nationalist leader. It also entailed a friendly gesture towards the Chaldean Church. In 1984 Mar Dinkha paid a friendly visit to the Vatican and expressed his wish to Pope John Paul II that the two Churches would someday be able to acknowledge their similarities; namely, ‘the common faith in Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary’. This visit and the revamped articulation of faith prompted the Vatican theologians to launch a decade-long deliberation on the consequences of the Christological dispute of the Council of Ephesus. The result was the historic ‘Consultations’ conference of 1994. The motives behind the Assyrian gesture towards the Vatican cannot not be underplayed, but also the ecumenical vision of the new Catholic Church should be taken into account when assessing this union. Ecumenical Rome was initiating a quest for a refurbished ideology of Catholicism – and imagined totality – that assumes principles of globalization. Thus, a direct consequence of the improving relations between the Roman Catholic Church and the Assyrian Church was the initiation of a process of dialogue and reconciliation between the Chaldean and Assyrian Churches with the aim to restore the unity that was disturbed through the conversions of the sixteenth century. Dialogues between the two Churches of the East began officially in Southfield, Michigan, in 1996, when the patriarchs of the two Churches, Mar Dinkha and Mar Bidawid, met to draft a ‘Joint Patriarchal Statement’. The Churches called upon each

6. The Modern Chaldean Church

161

other to recognize ‘the same apostolic succession, sacramentality and Christian witness’, but they also agreed to acknowledge and maintain certain ecclesiastical differences that formed during the period of separation. These differences, it was maintained, preserved the two Churches’ distinct identity and ‘MesopotamianAramaic culture’. The Chaldean Church stressed the importance of preserving its ‘full communion with the Roman See’. This, coupled with other differences said to have been effected by ‘regional and cultural conditions’, called for the patriarchs to acknowledge ‘the need for further dialogue and more involved collaboration between the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church, and, in due time and manner, between them jointly and the Roman See, in order to bring about unity between the Assyrian and the Chaldean Churches’. The dialogue continued, with occasional hesitations on the part of both patriarchs. Meanwhile growing segments of the Assyrian and Chaldean diasporic communities were beginning to acknowledge the strategic benefits behind a formal reunification between their two representative Churches, even if these Churches chose to maintain a separation on the theological level.

The Chaldean Church in the United States: Between Lay and Religious Social Fields Malkite priest Jean Corbon used the example of the diasporic population of 1.6 million Melkites to articulate a process of ‘delocalization’ of Eastern Churches during the twentieth century. Many of these churches now have origins or history of long-term settlement in one place but substantial modern migrant communities in other, often distant places. The concept is that delocalization permits the revival of ecclesial life in a new, more receptive environment whereby new ecclesiological vision emerges to meet the needs of the international church and its diasporic subjects more effectively.26 The gradual formation of a distinct Chaldean Church in the US diaspora is another prime example of church delocalization. The first Chaldean parish was St Ephrem church, which was organized in Chicago in 1913.27 However, the most conspicuous formation of an autonomous Chaldean religious body in the American diaspora is the Mother of God Parish in Detroit, Michigan. The anonymous author(s) of ‘The History’, an article written in celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Mother of God Parish, do not exaggerate when they state, ‘the history of Mother of God Parish is the history of Chaldeans in the US’.28 This church was established only after a somewhat unified Chaldean collective had already been organizing itself in the secular social sphere in a financial capacity that allowed it to sponsor the importation of church proxy from home and not vice versa. In the early 1920s, when the Chaldean community in Detroit numbered less than thirty families who had settled near the older and larger Lebanese Maronite community, Chaldeans combined their religious practices with those of the Maronite Church. As the community grew larger and more autonomous

162

The Chaldeans

in the 1930s, socially active members founded the Chaldean-Iraqi Association – later the Chaldean-Iraqi Association of Michigan (CIAM) – to represent their particular common interests. In less than a decade the size of the community grew to approximately seventy-five families, whose social needs and activities were marshalled through CIAM. The principal goal of CIAM’s founders was to ‘unite the community, to retain a Chaldean priest and to later acquire a church of their own’.29 To this end, the Chaldean Church was initiated into the diasporic life of its community of followers via an association delegate who was the first to coordinate between the Chaldean Patriarchate in Iraq and the Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit in an effort to import a Chaldean priest from Iraq to serve the growing Chaldean community in the United States. After obtaining their first priest, Detroit Chaldeans enthusiastically sought to acquire their independent Chaldean church through the financial assistance of the Archdiocese of Detroit. The Chaldean religious institution continued to expand and to be transformed in the US diaspora, with the transfer of the first Detroit pastor, Toma Bidawid (not to be confused with Patriarch Rouphael Bidawid), to a new Chaldean Parish in Chicago and the arrival of a second priest from Iraq, Toma Reis, to serve the Detroit community in his place and so on. In subsequent decades, the growth of the Chaldean-American Church corresponded to the growth of the Chaldean-American community. By 1951 the community grew to about 125 families, who could offer more help with the functions and financing of the Church through volunteer work and donations. A communal effort between Chaldean immigrant families helped the Chaldean Church achieve more independence by paying its debt to the Archdiocese in Detroit. While the Chaldean community and its churches grew in tandem, the mobility pattern of Chaldean families triggered a parallel mobility of their places of worship. As families began to move from the city of Detroit to its residential suburbs in the 1960s, so did the Mother of God Parish, which was relocated in the city of Southfield in 1964. The westward Chaldean migration that was initially facilitated through the transnational connections of the Chaldean Church in Iraq continued to have mixed effects on the demographics of the Christian communities remaining in Iraq, which began to shrink steadily since the 1960s. At the same time, migration and transnational networking served as a vital expression of the identity of Eastern Christianity in the United States while its establishment and maintenance depended heavily on the diaspora community’s contributions, at the leadership level the institution of the Chaldean Church in the United States for a long time exhibited more autonomy from its lay followers and more dependence on the decisions of the Patriarchate in Iraq. This order of authority transmission was reversed in the twenty-first century. In the beginning, the functionaries who operated the diaspora Church had primarily received their religious training in Iraq, the Middle East or Rome. By 1952, the Chaldean Church in Detroit was able to organize and administer its own variety of religious activities while drawing on financial assistance from the first Parish Council, which was composed of influential lay members from

6. The Modern Chaldean Church

163

the Michigan-based community. Visits from Patriarch Cheikho during the 1960s and 1970s implemented, through his assessments, changes and additions in the allocation of religious posts in various areas in Southeast Michigan where Chaldean families were rapidly multiplying. Church functionaries also enjoyed a high level of mobility between Iraq and Detroit, and in this charted one of the earliest religious and political transnational networks within the Chaldean-American social field.30 After serving as a pastor of Mother of God Parish, for instance, Toma Reis was transferred back to Iraq to be appointed Bishop of the Diocese of Zakho, Iraq. Meanwhile, Gorial Koda was transferred from Iraq to his post as the third pastor of the Mother of God Church. After serving a three-year term, Koda was transferred back to Iraq and a fourth pastor exchanged countries with him to serve the same Detroit Parish. This cyclical mobility pattern turned the attention of the Iraqi political authorities of the time to the Chaldean community in diaspora. As early as 1952, when the Detroit Chaldean community had almost doubled in size to number 300 families, King Faisal II of Iraq was to pay them a friendly visit. Ostensibly amicable transnational relations between the various Iraqi regimes and the Chaldean diaspora continued to exist until the first Gulf War through the conduit of the Church. As for Saddam Hussein, several local and community news outlets have repeatedly pointed to his connections with the Chaldean community in Detroit during the early 1980s. In fact, delegations of Chaldean businessmen and clergymen to and from Iraq and the presidential palace for ‘investment purposes’ in the late 1970s and early 1980s point to Chaldean entrepreneurs’ efforts to establish economic and political ties not only in Iraq, but more immediately in the city of Detroit, by means of asserting close connections with the Iraqi government. Saddam Hussein’s bond with Chaldean Detroit reportedly started when he donated $250,000 to Reverent Jacob Yasso’s Chaldean Sacred Heart Church in Detroit in 1979. The money is said to have helped build the Chaldean Centre of America, located on Seven Mile Road next to the Sacred Heart Church, in the district that is dubbed today ‘Chaldean Town’. Several reports by Chaldean, Assyrian and American media point to the Ba‘th’s numerous attempts to improve its image, placate Chaldean-Americans or ‘Arabizanate’ (Arabize) them either by threat or by bribery through Church liaisons. US State Department officials, for instance, asserted that, while establishing an elaborate network of spies that infiltrated the US-based Iraqi-Christian diaspora, in 1979 the Iraqi government also gave away approximately $10 million to US-based Chaldean and Assyrian Churches, which was interpreted as a ‘bribe’ but was given away as a ‘donation’. In Detroit alone, it was estimated that the Iraqi government doled out $1.7 million to Chaldean churches and organizations in 1980. These generous ‘donations’ earned Saddam Hussein Mayor Young’s ‘Key to Detroit’ which officially granted Iraq’s president the status of an honorary citizen of the city.31 Assessing the meaning of Detroit mayor’s gift of the Key to Detroit to Saddam Hussein, Amir Denha, publisher of the Chaldean Detroit Times, commented, ‘[Coleman]Young didn’t give a damn about anything outside of Detroit … The gift was for us, not Hussein. He was proud of us.’32

164

The Chaldeans

There are likely more strategic motives behind these symbolic gestures. This, of course, was at a time when the Ba‘thist regime was still an ally of America and had entered the first phase of the eight-year-long war with Iran, America’s fierce enemy. Nonetheless, not long after this exchange of courtesies, FBI agents, together with Assyrians and Chaldeans from Detroit’s diasporic communities, alleged that the Iraqi regime was paying certain Chaldean and Assyrian immigrants on a regular basis to provide reports on the activities of co-ethnics in the United States.33 The Chaldean community in its US diaspora never fully trusted the intentions of the Ba‘th government. In 1981, Monsignor Ablahat Najor, pastor of Chaldean Assyrian St Thomas Parish in Turlock, California, was murdered. Najor was one of many expatriate Christian Iraqi clergy to have received monetary gifts from Saddam Hussein. He used the $250,000 gift he received that year to construct a social hall for the church. The FBI was involved in investigations but could not determine the identity of the assailants. They ascribed ‘beatings, arson, and even homicide’ in the Iraqi Christian immigrant communities to agents hired by the Iraqi government. Despite the absence of conclusive evidence, the violent event reinforced these communities’ conviction that the Ba‘thist government of Iraq was committing ‘acts of terrorism’ against its diasporic members when they did not comply with its expectations of espionage.34 Though little scholarly research about the relations between Iraq’s successive governments and the Iraqi diaspora in America exists, there are several previous references that point to the amicable social exchanges and visits between Iraq’s governing bodies and representatives of the Chaldean diaspora. Many Chaldeans fondly remember King Faisal II’s visit to Detroit in 1952, his stay at the home of the affluent Atchoo family and his excursion to Belle Isle with the local priest and community representatives.35 Sa‘id Qazaz, governor of Mosul, is also pictured visiting the Chaldean community in Detroit the early 1950s.36 The late 1950s likewise featured invitations from Abd al-Karim Qasim’s ICP to the Chaldean community to visit Iraq and ‘witness the progress made since they left’.37 The ensuing Ba‘thist era brought in a remunerative exchange between the Ba‘th and Detroit’s Chaldeans which coincided with a period of alliance between the IBP and the US government. When this alliance weakened, the FBI and the Chaldean community alleged links between these donations and Ba‘thist surveillance of the activities of Iraq’s diasporic communities in the United States.38 These examples attest to how, for the Chaldeans, asserting Iraqi, Arab, Christian and Chaldean identities was a fluid and interchangeable process in a multi-ethnic place like Detroit at least until the 1990s. The situational expression of these identities was primarily tied to strategic purposes, advancing their socio-economic status in the United States more so than in Iraq. Change in the political situation after the first Gulf War and significantly after the 9/11 attacks led to shifts towards stronger assertion of the Chaldean identity as Christian, native Iraqi and non-Arab. Transnational politics of this sort did not always infiltrate the everyday activities of the Church in its diasporic stronghold. To the majority of the lay Chaldean migrant population, new Church personnel simply introduced new ways of involving the diaspora community in religious life, maintaining the lifeline of their

6. The Modern Chaldean Church

165

Chaldean identity which remained inextricably rooted in Iraq. During the 1960s, the same decade when Monsignor Najor was assigned pastor in California, the fourth comer from Iraq to Michigan, Pastor George Garmo (later elevated to the rank of monsignor by the patriarch), established youth activities at Mother of God Parish, obtained a section of the Holy Sepulcher Cemetery in Detroit for the burial of members of the Chaldean community and opened a Mission House for the Chaldean Sisters. Also at Garmo’s behest, the Chaldean American Ladies of Charity (CALC) was established in 1961 for the purpose of providing social services and financial assistance to new immigrants. In a couple of decades the twenty-three active women members of CALC initiated additional networks of community services for co-ethnics. Their fundraising and networking efforts resulted in the construction of a senior citizen centre under the auspices of the Chaldean Church and a health programme for low-income uninsured families through partnership with the Chaldean American Association of Health Professionals (CAAHP).39 Since its inception and to the present, the transnationally oriented Chaldean Church of Michigan continues to be grounded within a lucrative network of local lay organizations. In the 1970s, CIAM was searching for a site to build a Chaldean social club. This materialized in 1975 through the purchase of three acres from the site of the Mother of God Parish in a mutually beneficial agreement between the Parish and CIAM and resulted in the creation of ‘The Chaldean Heritage Association’. In addition to striving to become a ‘community-wide venue for activities’ through working locally with lay organizations and transnationally with the Patriarchate in Baghdad, the Michigan-based Church slowly forged nationwide connections with other Chaldean churches. In 1982, less than one year after the unresolved murder of Monsignor Ablahat Najor in Turlock, the church achieved a milestone through the appointment of Pastor Ibrahim Ibrahim of the St Paul Chaldean Assyrian Church of Los Angeles as the first ‘Bishop of the St Thomas Chaldean Catholic Diocese of the US of America’. Through the event, the Mother of God Parish became his Diocese, and was proclaimed ‘Our Lady of Chaldeans Cathedral’. During that early 1980s, when the Chaldean and Assyrian communities alleged that the Ba‘thist regime in Iraq was trying to Arabize them through Church liaisons, English was introduced to mass services at the Michigan-based Cathedral (originally Arabic and Aramaic only). By 1990, English masses were added permanently to the schedule of Sunday and holiday church services, allowing second-generation Chaldeans more access to the religious life of the community. This feature facilitated the maintenance of social interaction between Arabic- or Aramaic-speaking new immigrants and English-speaking second-generation Chaldeans through the opportunity to sustain a common faith while sharing the physical space of the same ethnic Church.40 With time, second-generation, English-speaking Chaldeans began claiming membership in the life of their ethnic Church, a fact that endowed the religious institution in its American diaspora with a special symbolic authority over the affairs of the community in spite, or because, of owing its material existence and financial robustness to their initiative and unremitting aid.

166

The Chaldeans

Symbolic authority refers here to the power of the verbal or textual endorsements the Church offers in contexts of formal or informal secular undertakings, such as a ‘Chaldean Household Demographics Survey’ which was sent to every identifiable potential ‘Chaldean’ household in Southeast Michigan in spring 2007. The research for this survey was conducted by Walsh College of Business and United Way for Southeast Michigan, commissioned by CACC and funded by as diverse a set of corporations as DTE Energy, Charter One Bank and Country Fresh Dairy. That a two-line letter of support by Father Manuel Boji, rector of Our Lady of Chaldeans Cathedral, should preface the bundle of papers making up the application materials of a socio-economic study might seem irrelevant in other contexts. But Boji’s succinct statement, ‘I support this project hoping that this survey will benefit the whole Chaldean community. I would like to thank the Chaldean Chamber of Commerce for its effort in this matter,’ suggests that the Church still holds a prominent role in legitimizing and legalizing community projects. From the perspective of the members of the Chaldean community in diaspora whose input the survey sought to elicit, no other lay institution, no matter how prestigious or authoritative, was able to vie with the symbolic authority and the assurance of the Church. The Chaldean News, an English-language monthly community publication founded in 2004 and designed predominantly to draw a second-generation Chaldean readership, reserves a permanent column for ‘Religion’, in addition to regularly featuring full-length articles, special issues and cover illustrations about the pope, the Chaldean bishops and other religious dignitaries in Iraq and elsewhere – another compelling reflection of the active role the Church continues to play in the life of the diaspora community and in turning its attention to transnational matters. As a transnational player with strong symbolic power over the ChaldeanAmerican community and protective influence on behalf of the Chaldeans in Iraq, the Chaldean Church functions as a conduit between its communities of followers in the two countries, creating a conceptual social field of belonging where the two geographically separated communities can engage in transnational activities on familiar terms. Not only do US-based Chaldeans readily fund their religious institutions in the diaspora, but they also trust the branches of this institution as the legitimate disseminators of financial aid to the Chaldean institutions and communities in the homeland and elsewhere. For instance, since 2005 Patriarch Emmanuel Delly worked with funds raised and donated by CALC to make significant contributions for a prestigious Chaldean Seminary in Iraq.41 The programme ‘Adopt-A-Refugee-Family’, first piloted in 2007, is now one of the most community-trusted programmes which collect monetary contributions from thousands of US-based Chaldeans and send them to Chaldean refugees overseas.42 Initially, the Chaldean Federation in Michigan collected the funds and wired them to religious personnel affiliated with Jesuit and Chaldean Churches (Fr. Joseph Burby in Amman and Bishop Antoine Audo in Aleppo) to be disseminated among Chaldean refugees in Syria, Jordan and elsewhere.

6. The Modern Chaldean Church

167

Contrary to public appearances that suggest this support is unconditional, financial remittances transmitted through transnational institutional media within Chaldean socio-political networks are more often than not offered with concrete expectations. In fact, they turn the process of giving and receiving into a cycle of reciprocal proceeds. CALC members made their donation of $10,000 in 2004 with the knowledge that six young men had recently joined the Seminary in Iraq and were on their way to becoming Chaldean priests. For a long time, the diasporic church, CALC and other community members were critically concerned with the shortage of priests in the quickly expanding Chaldean-American parishes. In the beginning of the new millennium, the priest–parishioner ratio in Chaldean Michigan was 1/12,000. Diaspora clergy attributed this unreasonably low figure to the Chaldean community’s ‘preoccupation with material prosperity’ which drives second-generation Chaldeans away from priesthood.43 Ironically, however, it is precisely by financially contributing to fostering and ordaining new priests in the country of origin that the US-based community has traditionally secured the continuation of its ‘authentic’ Church in the diaspora. CALC’s monetary contribution to the Iraqi Seminary is one of the examples that point out the junctions where secular Chaldean transnational activities redound to the maintenance of a Chaldean religious transnational social field and vice versa. Within the transnational context, this example offers an opportunity to conceptualize the migrant Chaldean community as a site where multiple transnational social fields, such as the Church and lay institutions,44 exist within and intersect across the borders of nation states. Another prime example is that of the power struggle between the Pope Francis and Patriarch Louis Sako. In fall 2014, few months after ISIS infiltrated the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq and began a reign of terror against the religious minorities in the region, Sako ordered several Chaldean priests in the US diaspora to return to Iraq to help preserve the church or face excommunication.45 The priests, who were mostly US citizens, demurred, as did their lay community leaders in California and elsewhere. The latter group loudly protested that their priests are not ‘cattle for the slaughter’. Backed by their diasporic communities, the priests appealed to Pope Francis of Rome, whose position confirmed they need not cede to Sako’s orders. As mentioned earlier, the Chaldean Church, since the Second Vatican Council, has not been strictly under the jurisdiction of Rome. However, the pope’s intervention was not out of the ordinary given the historical precedence of this power hierarchy and the renewed effort to intervene on behalf of the Christians of Iraq in the sectarian aftermath of 2003. What was unusual and reflective of a critical shift in circumstance is the patriarch’s response: Sako went against the will of the pope by insisting on his ultimatum of excommunicating the priests if they do not return to Iraq. Both the pope’s support of the priests’ appeal to stay safe in diaspora by overturning the patriarch’s orders and the patriarch’s resistance to this order indicate the drastic reassignment of authority within the Chaldean Church following the fall of the Ba‘thist state. It is indicative of a shift in the role of the patriarch rather than a decline, since the years that followed this incident only brought Sako’s

168

The Chaldeans

elevation to Cardinal (by the same pope who vetoed the patriarch’s travel order)46 and saw Sako’s nomination for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize in an acknowledgement of his efforts to promote ‘peace and coexistence’ among Christians and Muslims in Iraq.47 In addition to the changing Vatican–Chaldean Church dynamics, the altercation over the Chaldean priests’ return to Iraq revealed a significant rift between the home Church in Iraq and the Chaldean Church in the American diaspora. The Baghdad-based, Catholic aligned Patriarchy in Iraq, led by Louis Sako who has strong influence on the Chaldeans in Michigan, was strongly of the opinion that Chaldeans should hold fast to their homeland and Iraqi citizenship. The other faction, led by former bishop Sarhad Jammo who presided over the Chaldean community of Southern California, the second largest diasporic community after Michigan’s, was of the conviction that it was time for Chaldeans to flee for their lives when possible.48 Not only does this rift testify to the Church personnel’s durable dependence on the Holy See and the papacy in deciding the direction of their Church despite their status as sui juris,49 but also reflects the weakening of ecclesiological attachment to Baghdad with the absence of a critical mass of Chaldeans at home for the Church to represent in the wake of mass departures, and the Chaldean Church’s desperate effort to maintain its former identity. This important encounter casts new light on an extensive tipping and fragmentation of power within the internal structure of the Church hierarchy, which now relies more for its survival in Iraq on the approval of its Muslim supporters than Chaldean public opinion in the diaspora.50 Critically, it testifies to an emergent power of the US-based section of the Chaldean Church and its cumulative autonomy and increasingly independent dealings with the Vatican. Additionally, it points to a fascinating co-dependency between Church personnel in the US diaspora and their affluent lay supporters there.

Parting with Ecclesial Identity: Secular Institutional Circuits How did the Chaldean Church in the United States become so powerful as to maintain its legitimacy in the eyes of its followers despite threats of excommunication by the 2000-year-old stronghold in Iraq? This consolidation of power was a gradual process that spanned a century and involved ethnic institutional networking that extended beyond the domain of religion. What stands out from mapping out the transnational flow of money, policies and services between lay and religious institutions is that the early institutionalization of the Chaldean religion in diaspora depended on community-oriented efforts of Chaldeans as an ethnic minority, a role reversal from the historical precedence at the homeland, where the institution of the Church had continually acted on behalf of its lay followers to ensure their survival and protection as a religious minority with no legal provisions to express its identity in ethnic terms. With US-born or -raised priests and nuns joining the ranks of the Chaldean Church in America in

6. The Modern Chaldean Church

169

the second decade of the new millennium,51 a new transformation is shaping the Church–laity interdependence. Reliance on the Iraq-based sending institution has not only steadily diminished, but even reversed with Patriarch Sako’s order to the US-naturalized Chaldean priests to return to Iraq. For the past three decades, US-based Chaldeans, together with other diasporic Iraqi Christian groups, most conspicuously the Assyrians, have been pushing for practical as well as symbolic forms of American intervention on behalf of Iraq’s Christians. Diaspora Chaldeans continue to lobby for the creation of a protected zone and safe-passage corridors for Christians still in Iraq, for special refugee visas and streamlined approval by State Department and Homeland Security screeners for Christian asylum seekers.52 Moreover, the diasporic efforts to consolidate Chaldean, Assyrian and Syriac secular institutional resources are often paralleled by efforts by the Chaldean and Assyrian Churches in the ecclesial arena. In June 2015, for instance, Sako proposed a union between the East Syriac Patriarchate of the Church of the East and the Chaldean Church, going so far as suggesting his resignation and that of Mar Addai II, patriarch of the ancient Church of the East, in return for choosing a new Patriarch that would consolidate the leadership of the three East Syriac churches.53 Although stemming from secular Chaldean institutions, claims of entitlement for special provisions from the US government are rhetorically based on the Christian identity of the community. Applying a transnational framework to study the multi-layered identity of the modern Chaldean Church clarifies existing misperceptions about institutional life, economy and politics not only inside the Church, but also among members of the minority community who affiliate with it. The transnational perspective on Chaldean migrant communities and the migration of their church transcends the view on Chaldean life from the delimited context of the diasporic resettlement or the exclusively religious context of Church activities. It takes into account the dynamic flow of Chaldean identities, economies and politics across territorial boundaries, a dynamism that gives the Chaldean community the public ethnic profile it now possesses and tries to project in an increasingly anti-Arab and anti-Muslim America. Doubtlessly, religion is a key component of the group’s identity, and Chaldean ethnic identity is decisively marked as Catholic. Many of the transnational political projects I described involve substantial input from the Chaldean Church. Chaldean identity in the United States is not only a religious identity, but also an ethnic and political one and at times primarily so. The power of Chaldean secular institutions derives from two sources: first, they are not financially or administratively dependent on the sponsorship of the Chaldean Church; and, second, these institutions aspire to gain recognition and entry into an American political mainstream by adopting the mainstream’s own rhetoric of secularization and separation between church and state.

7 A S AFE H AVEN D REAM : H OME BET WEEN D ETROIT AND THE N INEVEH P L AINS

What would have happened if we were not such an anti-Semitic nation during the Holocaust? We could have saved millions of people and we didn’t, we failed to do it … This [minorities under ISIS in Iraq and Syria] is another case like that, where we could save literally thousands. Gregory Stanton, president of Genocide Watch, 20161

Introduction I recently chanced upon a curious Instagram picture that prompted me to investigate its story: a group of diaspora Assyrian and Chaldean youth holding the corners of a large flag of ‘Assyria’ with a caption that read ‘Suryoye all over the world’. At first, this image seemed very familiar, as I had come across several similar depictions of national identity and solidarity throughout the course of my fieldwork on this project. What made this image unusual was the presence of another large flag, the Israeli one, right above the group and their national emblem. The Assyrian youth were standing in an Israeli airport and taking national pride in a collaborative interethnic project. Led by the Iraqi Christian Relief Council (ICRC), whose mission is to serve ‘persecuted Assyrians’ (including Chaldeans and Syriacs) and the ‘persecuted church throughout the Middle East’,2 the group was headed to Jerusalem to prepare future leaders and learn about the ‘Middle East conflict’. The comments on this picture on Instagram ranged from expressions of solidarity and pride to admonishing the group that Israel backs the Kurds who are repressing Assyrians’ rights in Iraq, to straightforward shaming them (in Arabic) for posing like traitors with a national enemy. Later, I found this same image annexed to a Jerusalem Post article entitled ‘Assyrian Christians Visit Israel, Inspired by Jewish History They Hope to Emulate Israel’s Resilience’.3 The idea of bringing Assyrian and Chaldean youth to Israel ‘was pioneered by the Philos Leadership Institute and its Passages Israel program’, expounded the article. Juliana Taimoorazy, the Iran-born Assyrian founder of ICRC explained how ‘the Philos Project program partnered with the Museum of the Bible Foundation to sponsor and bring young Christian millennials

172

The Chaldeans

to experience Israel’.4 For this group of youth, concluded the article which digressed to highlight the oppressive nature of pro-Palestine activism and the Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) movement in the United States, ‘the story of the founding of Israel has a message for how they think young Iraqi Christians can come together in the future … Israel is an inspiration for a future Assyria.’ Persecution, genocide, ethnic cleansing and extinction from the region are the most immediate associations that populate social media, international discourse and foreign policy discussions of Christians in post-2003 Iraq. For many years, and through several tactical measures and networking efforts, US-based Chaldeans and Assyrians and other minority Christian groups have urged inter-ethnic collaborative efforts and governmental focus on the deteriorating conditions of Christians at home. Despite these efforts, violence only exponentially escalated. This chapter considers the violence of the post-2003 decades not through the lens of the horrific experiences of Chaldeans and Assyrians in Iraq, which have been widely documented and repeatedly likened to the Jewish Holocaust,5 but rather by turning to a set of Chaldean collective narratives, speech acts and self-perceptions in the US diaspora that have led Chaldeans to support US and international policies that consistently augment sectarian violence against minorities at home instead of curbing it. Recent presidential elections, the Bush

Figure 19  Instagram caption: ‘Suryoye all over the world’.

7. A Safe Haven Dream

173

administration’s actions in Iraq and the Chaldean ‘war on terror’ in Michigan link this paradox to recent Chaldean representational modes, inter-ethnic and political ties, and lobbying tactics. The discursive shift from conducting Chaldean legal affairs as a religious minority in Iraq to publicly posing as an ethnic minority in the United States coincided with the rise of inter-ethnic violence in Iraq as the cumulative consequence of the Iraq– Iran war (1980–88), the Gulf War (1990–91), the economic sanctions (1991–2003), the US-led occupation in 2003, sectarian cleansing (2006–08) and ISIS infiltration and occupation of the northern region (2013–17). This complex confluence of adverse social transformations of recent Chaldean life at home and the diaspora – coupled with a revived framework of persecution, genocide and Western tutelage of Christian minorities dating back to the interwar period – is prompting the forging of new collective identity narratives and alternative political alignments in the host country. Recent manifestations of the politics of being Chaldean in America include the efforts to stage the community as white (therefore, as non-Arab), Christian (therefore, non-Muslim) and indigenous to Iraq (persecuted like the Jews). Tracing these overlapping currents to the present moment, the discussion highlights three key strategic positions community leaders have been successfully promoting: (1) opposition to the public expression of Islam within their districts, (2) alignment with anti-Arab and anti-Muslim US foreign policy and (3) partnership with well-funded Jewish and Israeli communities and organizations locally and transnationally. Together these projects highlight important junctures and discrepancies between the local ambitions of Chaldean policy- and culture-makers and their political agenda abroad on behalf of the Chaldeans remaining in Iraq. James Clifford’s rooted–routing dual orientation of displaced minorities6 is well exemplified by the Chaldeans, who, on the one hand, fight for citizenship and equal rights in the place of settlement and, on the other, continue to live with a sense of loyalty to the ancestral land of Iraq and to the remaining Chaldeans there. As recipients and participants in previous centuries’ discourses on their status as cultural intermediaries in the posited ‘East-West’ dichotomy, their definition of Chaldeanness has for a long time been at once restricted and made possible by Islamophobia. Through this web of relations and transformations, a Chaldean– Jewish partnership initiative has emerged, showcasing the Holocaust and the state of Israel as analogies for a practicable solution.7

Chaldeans Post-2003 When it comes to the circumstances attending the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and the quest for ‘regime change’ in Iraq, there is a general understanding of the collaboration that took place between leaders of the Iraqi diaspora and neoconservative American entities – many of them linked to the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC).8 In contrast, how Iraq’s diasporic minorities lobbied on behalf of their communities remaining at home before and after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 is much

174

The Chaldeans

less discussed and understood, despite its multi-layered relevance and impact on policymaking in Iraq and public opinion in the United States. Following the US occupation of Iraq, Christian internal displacement and search for asylum and refuge outside of Iraq abruptly escalated. Falling mostly outside of the quota system of Sunni, Shi‘i and Kurdish governance, and in the absence of effective state security apparatus and private militias, Christians, like other ethno-religious minorities without sufficient political clout, were left vulnerable to the sectarian violence that steeped the country. Urban neighbourhoods with Chaldean majorities such as Baghdad’s Dora district, which was said to be home to more than 100,000 Christians before the war, were subjected to ethnic cleansing between 2006 and 2008. By 2014, only 1,500 Christians could be counted in Dora.9 Many Chaldean city dwellers either returned to their ancestral villages in northern Iraq or left the country. According to UNHCR reports, between October 2003 and March 2005, 36 per cent of Iraqis who applied for refugee status were Christians.10 In Syria, Iraqi Christians constituted 44 per cent of asylum seekers.11 Others relocated to refugee camps in European cities.12 Many Chaldean immigrants settled in the United States in the following decade. While at least half of this displaced population was estimated to be in transit countries, such as Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Turkey, during the three years following the occupation, since 2006 the number of Christians in the Nineveh Plains KRG-governed region also more than doubled to reach between 100,000 and 120,000 in 2011.13 The main reason behind this shift was diaspora Christians’ lobbying in the United States and Kurdistan, which provided an alternative to leaving the country. As Iraq’s Chaldeans undergo a prolonged phase of escalating hardship and persecution, attempts to come to their aid by US-based Chaldeans and Assyrians broadly fall into two distinct and sometimes paradoxical trajectories. One is the effort to contain them in a self-governing administrative unit in the Nineveh Plains by laying historical and political claims to the region; the other is to lobby on their behalf for special visa status, genocide designation and refugee provisions in the Western diaspora to help them leave the country.

Quests for Autonomy: The Nineveh Plains Settlement Project(s) Religion is for God, nation is for all.

Cardinal Emmanuel Delly III, 201114

Like Cardinal Delly, Chaldean patriarchs before and after him have objected to the Nineveh Plains settlement project on account of the need to maintain Chaldean identity as, first, a religious identity and, second, an integral part of Iraq’s pluralistic national identity. The lay and secular community found additional objections to the idea. In reply to my question, ‘do you think the idea of an autonomous Christian region in northern Iraq is a good or a bad idea, and why?’ my Chaldean interviewees dismissed the possibility in answers that ranged from ‘leave this wishful thinking and jingoism to the Assyrians,’ to ‘Turkey will never allow such a

7. A Safe Haven Dream

175

thing as long as its borders are involved,’ ‘I only believe in universal identities that don’t involve borders and sectarian divisiveness. Otherwise, are we any better than the feuding Shi‘is and Sunnis?’ ‘it’s too late now that ISIS has destroyed Mosul,’ ‘belonging to that land ended long ago’ and ‘instead of wasting their time and money, let these idealistic politicians invest in helping the few remaining Christian survivors get out.’15 Community cultural ambassador, journalist and prolific writer Weam Namou claimed that her perspective ‘stems from 10 + years of journalism, sitting at the table with higher-up politicians, many from Iraq’s Parliament and Washington, and also locals I’d interviewed who still live in Iraq’. She eloquently outlined key objections to the Nineveh Plains project: Creating an autonomous region for Chaldeans/Assyrians in Iraq is not about it being a good or bad idea. It simply will not work. Since the 1970s, our community has been trying to unite all minorities and asking for the Iraqi government to make the Nineveh Plains an autonomous region for them. What prevented this from happening is conflicts between the Arabs and Kurds, the Shias and Sunnis, the Iraqi military and the Peshmerga; also issues between Baghdad and Ankawa, relations between Iraq and Syria, etc. The second problem is security. Who would protect this autonomous region? The Christian Iraqis don’t have a defense force. Without security, they wouldn’t be able to protect their resources of agricultural lands and oil reserves. The people would be set up in the middle, between the Kurds in the north and the Arabs in the south, so that at any given time, they can get struck from both sides. Third, the Chaldean/Assyrian population is nowhere near where it once was. There were approximately 1.5 million Christians (6% of the population) in Iraq in 2003, but according to charity Open Doors, there are only 250,000 left. Christians don’t feel safe to return to Mosul since many of its current residents were loyal to the Islamic State. They had a twinkle of hope when Telkaif, the once-Christian village in Mosul, was liberated on January 26, 2017, but their hope faded when the road that connects Telkaif to Al-Qosh was closed off two days later. It is still closed today. The church is still empty, the homes and businesses pillaged, destroyed, abandoned, some burnt. Fourth, yet perhaps the major problem, is the division between the Chaldeans and Assyrians. The 2010 Baghdad church massacre had caused the Chaldean/Assyrian/Syriac leaders to briefly put aside their differences, unite, and thoroughly discuss the possibilities of establishing an independent region in the Nineveh province so that their communities would not have to endure another horrific attack. Unfortunately, their discussions ended up in debates and quarrels and in the end, the Islamic State came along in 2014 and shattered that idea once and for all.16

Evidently there is more than one compelling reason to reject the notion of geopolitical segregation on the basis of ethnicity and religion. Yet despite the strong and often well-reasoned denouncement of segregation proposals among lay Chaldeans, the idea of self-rule or autonomy has continued to generate discourse

176

The Chaldeans

and interest among Iraq’s Christian minorities for over a century and continues to garner support from the Assyrian community at large. What is worth noting is a shift in the political awareness of Chaldean culture-makers in the diaspora, who, unlike the majority, began leaning towards positions that align them more with the Assyrian nationalist approach instead of the position of the Chaldean Church and communities as we shall see shortly. Early petitions to the League of Nations for the Nineveh settlement were predicated on two political features that speak to the Zionist model and the historical context of the creation of the Israeli state. One is a process of racialization and secularization of religious identity in Europe and America, and the other is a nativist national claim to a biblical land. Together, Armenians, Assyrians and Jews drew on a bright rhetoric of ancient nationhood, and pit this rhetoric in stark contrast with the picture of the Muslim majorities existing in the claimed territories.17 Proposals for an ‘Assyrian nation’ go as far back as the First World War, but even for decades prior, the image of the Nineveh Plains occupied a vivid place in both popular and academic imaginaries. The place evoked biblical associations for centuries, buttressed later by the archaeological artefacts and monuments uncovered there from the eighteenth century onwards. The site also assumes an iconic value for Iraq’s Christians and their missionary allies, having for centuries hosted the headquarters of the Chaldean Church and its earliest monasteries. Its proximity to the ruins of ancient Nineveh, Assyrian artefacts that corresponded with biblical accounts and countless Mesopotamian ruins scattered around Chaldean and Assyrian villages that had come into contact with European and American excavation campaigns also strengthened global associations between the old and the new inhabitants of the region and encouraged the narrative for their territorial claims based on racial and linguistic difference. The Ba‘quba camp which the British had set up for the Assyrian and Armenian refugees who escaped the Ottoman massacres to northern Mesopotamia in 1918 was a prototypical camp that became the module upon which the League of Nations constructed its comprehensive refugee regime. The solidification of a national Assyrian identity and the idea of a sovereign ‘Assyrian nation’ during the post-war refugee crisis owed much to the nature of international campaign to raise funds and awareness for these plighted of ex-Ottoman Christian populations.18 Both Ottoman officials and British forces had expressed an urgent need to remove the Christians (mostly Armenians and Assyrians, but also some Chaldeans) away from the centres of power because of the perceived threat they posed to the hegemonic order and imperial security as fifth columnists with allegiances to the Entente powers. Not only was international aid and relief called upon by organizations such as the American ‘Near East Relief ’, ‘Chaldean Rescue’ and the Assyrian diaspora’s ‘Relief Society of Geogtapa’ for rescuing dispossessed and persecuted individuals, but also the rhetoric that went with these calls was one of saving the existence of civilized Christian ‘nations’ as they faced ‘the wrath of benighted, barbaric Muslim rage’.19 This kind of rhetoric implied that assimilation into the post-war Arab states shortly after the Ottoman sectarian cleansing

7. A Safe Haven Dream

177

constituted a form of national and racial annihilation. The tragic implications served to legitimize the creation of Assyrian refugee camps in Iraq as transitional spaces on the way to sovereign statehood rather than towards integration within the Iraqi state.20 The suspension of refugee communities into enclosed, isolated, homogeneous spaces inside an overarching new state that did not share the same national identity resulted in the creation of a new minority status that was not present in the region previously. The camps became a permanent feature of the new Iraqi nation state, while Christian nationalists, instead of integrating with the overarching society, chronically held on to a separatist ethnic, national, stateless identity.21 While some Assyrian refugees had converted to Catholicism and blended with the Chaldean communities in the northern villages upon settling in Iraq,22 large numbers were enticed by the passionately stated national aspirations and claims of unique ancient–new Assyrian civilization. The rhetoric of Assyrian sovereignty was additionally inspired by Woodrow’s 1918 Fourteen Points which were to serve as a blueprint for world peace following the war, especially the twelfth that emphasized the rights to autonomy and self-determination, stating that ‘the Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development’.23 The idea of sovereignty became so compelling that for a while it lured other Syriac Christian groups to the cause. In the diplomatic arena, cross-continental and interdenominational collaborators were emboldened to form the ‘Assyrian delegation’ to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference. The delegation included Jacobite (Syriac Orthodox), Chaldean, as well as Assyrian representatives. Together they presented a report entitled The Claims of the Assyrians as Presented to the Paris Peace Conference, through which they petitioned for an ‘Assyrian national homeland’, defining the Assyrian people in their petition to include all of the Syriac religious communities in addition to a ‘Maronite element’, Muslim Shakkaks and Yezidis.24 This early episode of collective zeal for Assyrian nationalism, which prompted Syriac Christians to introduce themselves to the British as ‘belonging to the Assyrian race’,25 is inseparable from the larger political context of the period, during which the region under question lacked a legitimate governance system and definitive ethic identities, making many nation state and ethnic identity proposals seem more viable than they did in retrospect. From the start, however, the Assyrian delegation met with serious impediments from the mandate powers, especially Britain. The Assyrian delegation from Iran was forced to leave Paris for fear that their demands, which fell outside of the mandate map into Iranian territory, would jeopardize the mandate control over the affairs of the minority. The other group that was estimated to stir controversy with its demands for sovereignty was the very group that was earlier promised autonomous administrative rights – the Assyrians Mesopotamia delegation. They were given permission to travel to Paris via London only six months after the Conference had begun and the head of the delegation was detained in London until the conclusion of the Conference. In practice, then, the

178

The Chaldeans

only groups that were to petition on behalf of the Assyrian refugees were members of other, more religiously identifying denominations such as the Chaldeans and the Jacobites, and zealous diaspora Assyrian nationalists who formulated abstract, absolutist, maximalist demands from their permanent new homes in the United States and Europe that did not align well with the demands of the Assyrian refugees in Iraq. Refugee Assyrians’ activism from Mosul and Baghdad centred on the notion of repatriation to their former homes in Hakkari, outside of Iraq. Simultaneously, the American Assyrian diaspora, through the New-York-based Executive Committee of Assyrian National Associations of America, presented demands – which were declared as universal desires of Assyrians across the globe – for a unified British-protected Assyrian state ‘bounded roughly by Tikrit (below Zaba) in the south, and the province of Dearbeker in the north; and by a straight line running parallel with the banks of Euphrates in the west, to the mountains of Armenia in the east’.26 Despite these deeply entrenched perceptions of entitlement to reclaim and autonomously govern the Nineveh Plains region, and as Alda Benjamen observed in a 2011 study of civil society in the Nineveh Plains, with the failure of the 1919 demands for autonomy and Assyrian nationhood27 the region’s political, social and cultural composition was largely ignored until the fall of the Ba‘thist regime in 2003.28 The idea of autonomy was revived by various political parties and gained momentum with the promulgation of the Iraqi Constitution in 2005, simultaneously at home and in the US diaspora. Unlike the deeply inculcated and relatively more stable ideological structures of Assyrian nationalism, Chaldeans’ recent position on the claim of the land and nationhood – when not emulating the claims of Assyrian nationalism – reflects the tension between ethnic and ecclesiastical identities that traces back to the creation of the Iraqi nation state a century earlier. It re-echoes misalignments between Church and lay leadership within the community. Whereas the Church in Iraq strongly opposes the settlement proposals today, arguing that such a religiously homogeneous homeland would bring the risk of ghettoization and put an end to Christians’ long history of coexistence with Arab Muslims and to the centuries-old Christian Arab theology,29 many secular Chaldean community leaders supported nationalist proposals that align them more closely with an Assyrian secular nationalist agenda. Some Chaldean leaders have gone as far as permitting their ‘Chaldean’ identity to merge with or be subsumed under the Assyrian umbrella for strategic political purposes. As in the aftermath of the 1915 massacres, Assyrian politicians spearheaded the renewed demands for Christian autonomy in the Nineveh Plains region, prominently Yonadam Yousef Kanna, former minister in different KRG cabinets and one of the founders of the ADM; Sarkis Aghajan from the Christian Union of Kurdistan, affiliated with KDP; and Fawzi Hariri from the KDP who represented the Kurdish Alliance List.30 The recent campaign, moreover, succeeded in absorbing the Chaldean majority under the Chaldo-Assyrian or the Chaldean Syriac Assyrian (CSA) label. It succeeded also in prompting Chaldean culture-makers in the American diaspora to adopt the Assyrian rhetoric of national identity.

7. A Safe Haven Dream

179

Observing the provisions of Article 125 of the new Iraqi Constitution, the central government in Baghdad, the KRG and the Assyrians along with other local minority groups concurrently laid claim to the Nineveh Plains region.31 The Article states that ‘this Constitution shall guarantee the administrative, political, cultural and educational rights of the various nationalities, such as Turkomen, Chaldeans, Assyrians and all other constituents, and this shall be regulated by law’. This language originated from the Transitional Administrative Law’s Article 53(d) and was subsequently incorporated into the 2005 constitution of Iraq, making it constitutionally possible to envision an administratively autonomous Nineveh Plains province. Complicating matters, the administration of the region was already claimed by the draft constitution of the KRG, whose Article 2 included the Ninawa (Nineveh) governorate (including areas with Christian and other minority concentrations such as al-Shaykhan, Sinjar, Telkeif, Qaraqush and Ba‘shiqa) within the boundaries of the Kurdish region. Article 35 of a later draft of the Kurdish constitution (June 2009) moreover mimicked Article 125 of the Iraqi constitution, allowing the creation of an ‘autonomous region’ within the regional government, thus working to absorb the region’s minorities under the umbrella Kurdish national identity in a manner reminiscent to the Ba‘th regime’s pan-Arabism campaign which had worked to subsume all minor identities under the Arab national label during the previous century.32 Despite the initial cooperation between the different Christian political parties and the Kurdish authorities in Kurdistan since the partial autonomy from the Federal authorities in 1991, problems precluded full cooperation with the Kurds. Most notable of these were the Christian villages that contained houses and lands taken over by Kurds who had been expelled from their own villages during the Anfal campaigns and other Ba‘thist raids on the Kurdish north in the 1980s and the assassination of a number of Assyrian politicians in the Kurdish region.33 Competing protective measures and settlement plans were proposed in efforts to address these challenges. Some of these witnessed partial implementation and others did not. In addition to tensions with the Kurdish authorities, internal divisions among the Christian parties themselves around the nature of their own political autonomy within the Kurdish region were difficult to overcome. When proposing an administrative unit for Iraq’s minorities, the Christian parties in fact proposed three distinct options rather than one, a matter that barred consensus around this key agenda item and compromised the legitimacy of the idea. The three administrative possibilities proposed simultaneously were: (1) an autonomous region in the Nineveh Plains, annexed to the Kurdish region; (2) a federal province in the Nineveh Plains, annexed to the central government in Baghdad and (3) no delimited federal or autonomous province but guaranteed national rights for Christians wherever they may be in Iraq and Kurdistan.34 Proposals of self-administration (idara dhatiyya) differed from proposals for autonomy (hukm dhati) and were closer to what has been practised in the Chaldean city of Ankawa, north of Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region and Telkeif and Alqosh in the Nineveh Province since 2003. Self-administration includes municipality councils but does not grant legislative and executive branches.

180

The Chaldeans

Autonomy theoretically entails that Christians would be appointing their own courts, making Syriac the official language of the region and electing a parliament, which in turn would elect the chief executive and approve the executive branch. It would also mean having representatives of the region in the Iraqi and Kurdish regional parliaments, provincial councils and ministries in both governments.35 Following a series of church bomb explosions in Baghdad in 2004, the demands for autonomy on behalf of the people fleeing the capital were initiated by Minister of Finance and vice–prime Minister of the Kurdish Region, Sarkis Aghajan. One of the first Assyrian politicians to cooperate with Kurdish authorities, Aghajan was scorned as an accomplice by many Assyrians and lauded by others for the housing programmes that accommodated more than 20,000 Christians displaced from their homes both by Kurds in the north and sectarian violence in other parts of Iraq. In addition to his building and reconstruction projects, Aghajan was credited for unification efforts through initiating the popular Chaldean Syriac Assyrian Council (CSAC) in 2007, whose goals included the promotion of the Syriac language and the establishment of autonomy in what was proposed as the ‘historical regions’ of the ‘Chaldean Syriac Assyrian’ (CSA) people.36 As the Christian populations were in decline since the 1950s with the migration to the cities and outside of the country, the decline alarmed Assyrian nationalists. It signalled the disappearance of the ethnic group from their historical land. Aghajan, among other Assyrian politicians, saw in the reversed migration outside of Iraqi cities an opportunity to repopulate the traditionally Christian towns and villages in the north.37 Hundreds of villages were financed, built or reconstructed under Aghajan’s supervision in Dohuk, Zakho and Erbil along with churches, schools, orphanages, residences for bishops of all denominations, including the Chaldean one in Ankawa. These efforts redoubled the number of Christians of all denominations in the KRG region, which reached more than 120,000 by 2006. The largest concentration of Chaldeans and CSAs became located, once again, in the Nineveh Province in northern Iraq. By 2006, these communities could be found in three main districts: Telkeif, population 167,600, half of which were Chaldean and the other half planted there during the Arabization campaign of the former regime; Baqhdaida, population 125,700, dominated by Syriacs; and Sheikhan, population 58,000, some of which are Chaldeans and Assyrians among a majority of Yazidis and Kurds.38 While most of the Assyrian political groups in diaspora supported one of the two proposals that characterize the Nineveh Plains project, not all Chaldean groups, in the United States or in Iraq, were enthusiastic about the proposed settlement. The Chaldean Church stood out for its opposition to both settlement proposals. One persistent argument was that the settlement posed a safety problem. By grouping all Christians together, a Chaldean archbishop counter-argued, they ‘will become targets, sandwiched in between Kurds and Arabs’.39 Ironically, by arguing that either plan would only make things worse by creating a ‘Christian ghetto’ enclosed within majoritarian hostilities, this position implicitly supports the nationalist claim that Chaldeans and Assyrians form a separate ethnolinguistic group discontinuous with Arabs and Kurds.

7. A Safe Haven Dream

181

The ‘Safe Haven’ Projects and Lobbying in the United States The first formulation of a ‘Christian haven’ project, a revived version of the proposed 1919 ‘Assyrian nation’, took place at an ADM conference in Baghdad in October 2003 following the US-led occupation of Iraq in April of that year. The settlement project was to ensue under the auspices of Kurdish leadership, yet organized co-ethnic advocacy efforts in the Western diaspora on behalf of the Chaldeans and Assyrians of the Nineveh Plains were strongly mediated by efforts to influence the US government to extend special protection provisions to minorities in Iraq. The conference attendees – Assyrian and Chaldean politicians, civil servants, academics and Church leaders – gathered together and adopted the ‘Nineveh Plains Administrative Region’ programme.40 The ADM, spearheading the event, issued a public declaration stating that a ‘special law will be established for self-administration and the assurance of administrative, political, cultural rights … where our people reside’.41 In less than a year, transnational networks of American Middle Eastern Christians and their supporters brought the objectives of the programme to focus from their diasporic stronghold. The Middle Eastern American Convention for Freedom and Democracy in the Middle East (MEAC) convened in Washington DC in 2004 under the sponsorship of Maronites, Copts, Assyrians and Chaldeans and their representative diaspora organizations, such as the American Lebanese Coalition, US Copts and the Assyrian American National Federation (AANF). During the convention, immigration attorney Robert DeKelaita, a Chicago-based, self-described ‘ChaldoAssyrian’, delivered a keynote speech, stressing, to the consensus of the present Christian groups, the need to focus the convention’s efforts on helping the endangered ChaldoAssyrian community.42 After posing the recent destruction of Babylon and Nineveh and the mass exodus of the ChaldoAssyrians as a serious problem for the country and for its Christian population, DeKelaita claimed the solution ‘lies in the Nineveh Plain’ political unit in Iraq’s Kurdish region, which would be ‘economically supported [by the US], secured and administratively designated for ChaldoAssyrians’. DeKelaita also made the argument that Iraq’s legitimacy as a nation is predicated upon its ethno-religious diversity. ‘Iraq, without Babylon and Nineveh, is illegitimate as a nation, and Iraq without ChaldoAssyrians is incomplete’, thus proposing the Nineveh Plains province not only as a solution for vulnerable Christian minorities, but also as a solution for Iraq’s identity crisis.43 This position was to be echoed over and again in the subsequent decade by Chaldean leaders such as Martin Manna Director of CACC and co-founder of Chaldean Assyrian Syriac Council of America (CASCA) and NCS, the two organizations that were to provide the strongest form of diasporic lobbying for Nineveh Plains province.44 Other non-Christian organizations were also invited to the 2004 DC Convention. By refusing to acknowledge the plight of Christians in Iraq, the Kurdish Patriotic Union (KPU), the Syrian Reform Party (SRP) and a Shi‘i delegation from Iraq precipitated rancour among the ChaldoAssyrian representatives. That antagonism surrounding this issue grew along religious (Christian vs. Muslim)

182

The Chaldeans

lines also created a geographical rift where diaspora Middle Eastern nationalists (predominantly Christian) set themselves against political parties indigenous to the Middle East (predominantly Muslim). Chaldean nationalists had been making the same point in the years leading up to the 2003 occupation. By 2002, a rising sense of Chaldean nationalism in the American diaspora led to the simultaneous creation of two major Chaldean American organizations, the Chaldean Democratic Union in northern Iraq and the Chaldean National Congress. That year, the two nationalist groups, under the leadership of the Chaldean Federation of America (CFA), sent a letter to George W. Bush asking him to mention Chaldeans in his speeches on Iraq. They cited as reason for this request their status as natives of Iraq and ‘the third largest ethnic non-Arab Christian group’ whose political representation is required if the new US-installed Iraqi government were to represent the true ethno-religious diversity of the country.45 Meanwhile at home, fear of antagonizing Kurdish parties, which presided over the governance of the Nineveh Plains since 1991, created a sizable dilemma among ChaldoAssyrians and a notable rift between the diasporic and the local perspectives on the issue. Diaspora leaders were convinced that protection is more effective if secured through Western intervention, while the ones remaining at home were split between collaborating with the Iraqi government or the Kurdish authorities to attain their goals. The outcome was that Christian minorities were unable to reach consensus on their political affiliation: should Iraqi Christians cooperate with Kurdish leadership to form their autonomous area within Iraq’s federal state, should they collaborate with the central government in Iraq or should they depend directly on external resources to create a federal state for minorities alone?46 The year 2005 featured the creation of Washington DC headquarters of the Iraq Sustainable Democracy Project (ISDP), a special project of the Assyrian Academic Society. The project, which claimed to focus on minority rights, especially the ChaldoAssyrians, coordinated with a vast array of civil society and human rights groups in Iraq and the US government and secured most of its organizational support from Assyrian and Chaldean diasporic foundations.47 In December 2007, diaspora efforts culminated in the US Congress’s bill that included $10 million in assistance to the internally displaced religious minorities in the Nineveh Plains, with a particular emphasis on the ‘endangered’ Christians of the region. The bill included the following language48: The Appropriations Committees support the use of prior year funds, as proposed by the House, to assist religious minorities in the Nineveh Plain region of Iraq, and direct that prior to the obligation of funds, the Department of State consult with ethno-religious minorities and locally-elected representatives to identify Iraq-based non-governmental organizations to implement these programs. The Appropriations Committees are concerned about the threat to the existence of Iraq’s most vulnerable minorities, particularly the Assyrian/ Chaldean/Syriac Christians, who are confronting ethno-religious cleansing in Iraq. The Appropriations Committees expect the Department of State and USAID

7. A Safe Haven Dream

183

to designate a point person within the Department to focus, coordinate, and improve US Government efforts to provide for these minorities’ humanitarian, security, and development needs.

This was the first American bill to contain monetary and policy specifications for administering US government aid to the Christians of Iraq. The language was considered by the newly formed CASCA to be ‘a tremendous victory’ for their advocacy efforts. With the intervention of diaspora Chaldean and Assyrian organizations, the interplay between political powers, religious affiliations and funding sources sent the project in different directions. While Iraqi Kurdistan prime minister Nejervan Barzani backed Aghajan’s housing proposals, other Iraqi Christian leaders such as former Iraqi minister of Displacement and Migration Pascale Warda voiced their opposition to the project internationally, with the argument that Christian and other minorities merit a separate federal state. Warda found a different source of backing for her opposition. In 2006, she visited Assyrian and Christian organizations in the United States, in addition to the White House,  and managed to drum up support for an autonomous federal state for Christian and other minorities. Among the diasporic networks whose favour she won were the Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce and the CFA. While UN reports claimed that the majority of Iraqi refugees wanted to return to Iraq eventually, between 2003 and 2007 it was rapidly becoming apparent that the Chaldean refugees were not among those wishing to return. By spring 2007, the CFA announced that 17,000 applications were received on behalf of Iraqi refugees who wished to live in America. Most of these applicants were Chaldean and Assyrian refugees who had received death threats from extremists, operated liquor stores or done translation or intelligence work for the US troops in Iraq – experiences which made their desire to return to the ancestral land highly improbable. Furthermore, a 2009 report by Human Rights’ Watch indicated the KRG’s use of patronage, coercion and intimidation to ensure the cooperation of minority communities, suggesting unsuitable conditions for minority life in the KRG region and the need to revert to Western intervention on their behalf.49 The question remains, will US decision-makers recognize the importance of working to provide persecuted minorities the political space and protection they require to advance this essential agenda. For the Assyrian/Chaldean/Syriac Christians, this policy is now a matter of ensuring their survival. While remaining a powerful tool for making Iraq a fully federal country with the stabilization this provides, the ‘Nineveh Plain/Art. 125 Solution’ has become a matter of urgency for a minority that is now the victim of widespread ethno-religious cleansing.50

Although the CFA had publicly supported Pascale Warda’s Nineveh Plains campaign, with church-bombing, priest-kidnapping and the various acts of religious persecution of Chaldeans in Iraq, the diaspora umbrella organization with its secular and religious affiliates began publicizing that displaced Iraqi Christians cannot return to Iraq due to the escalating violence.

184

The Chaldeans

The case of the Nineveh Plains settlement project is one instance of the desire of Chaldean transnational circuits to be seriously involved in directing the political affairs of the Chaldean community in the originary land. It demonstrates how co-ethnic transnational actors could potentially complicate political matters for Chaldeans in Iraq when pursuing goals prompted by symbolic ideologies, such as the ‘myth of return’.51 Symbolic speech acts of ‘return to the homeland’ redouble the complexity of the political situation when Chaldean transnational actors begin to simultaneously pursue practical solutions that contradict their ideological pursuits. Robert DeKelaita, for instance, publicly posed as a zealous advocate of the Nineveh Plains settlement project while petitioning on behalf of hundreds of Iraqi Christian refugees who sought asylum in the United States after entering or sojourning illegally in the post-2003 decades. His asylum advocacy efforts ran so deep that in 2014 DeKelaita was charged with engaging in a decadelong conspiracy to defraud the US government by facilitating the submission of bogus asylum applications. It appeared that while advocating for the Nineveh Settlement, DeKelaita had simultaneously used false applicant names, religions, birth dates, family histories and dates of entry to the United States for his asylumseeking clients. He also suborned perjury from clients, coached them on how to lie during interviews with the Department of Homeland Security and invented for them accounts of rape, murder and religious persecution at the hands of infamous Islamic extremists. In 2017, DeKelaita was sentenced to fifteen months in federal prison for a decade-long asylum fraud scheme.52 The situation is further complicated for Christians in Iraq when Chaldean and Assyrian diaspora leaders align themselves with anti-Arab attitudes as we shall see through the Holocaust/Israel analogy. Desperate to halt the mass exit of the Christian communities from Iraq by any means, the CFA also joined in what might seem to be another oppositional project to the Nineveh Plains settlement. Operation R-4, contrary to the Nineveh Plains plan, is a transnational project that aspired to aid Chaldeans by safely removing them from their ancestral land.

Oppositional Trajectories: Operation R-4 [DeKelaita] learned [the US immigration system’s] loopholes and gamed them, fitting his carefully drafted lies into what he knew asylum officers to be looking for, matching those lies with media reports of real events in (his clients’) home countries. Andrianna Kastenek & Lindsay Jenkins, Assistant US Attorneys, 201753 US district judge Matthew Kennelly who acquitted DeKelaita of three of four counts on which he was convicted found the immigration attorney’s crime to be a ‘mixed bag’, pointing out his perplexity around DeKelaita’s motives. DeKelaita ‘didn’t appear to get rich off the scheme or overcharge clients’, Kennelly reasoned. In the end, the judge concluded that DeKelaita simply ‘decided that whatever he needed to do to get these people into the country […] was justifiable’.54

7. A Safe Haven Dream

185

DeKelaita and his small team of two Chaldean interpreters – Adam Benjamin and Yousif Yousif, who were also sentenced to serve in prison for collaboration in falsifying asylee records – had launched their independent advocacy efforts from northern Chicago serving mostly Chaldean and Assyrian clients. Meanwhile in Southeast Michigan, a big group of Chaldean leaders and affluent institutions launched a large-scale collaboration towards the same goal. Launched by the CFA in May 2006, the primary objective of Operation R-4 (Research, Rescue, Relief and Resettle Iraqi refugees) was to ‘identify, locate and assist displaced Iraqi-Christian refugees throughout the world in order to reunite them with relatives already residing in the US’.55 Phase I of the campaign, which concluded in August 2006, calculated the number of Iraqi refugees in thirtyone countries and the factors leading to their flight from Iraq. The figures were quickly revised upwards from the initial projection of a few thousand potential newcomers to the United States to several tens of thousands. A dramatic transition from the local to the transnational level of activity occurred when the CFA decided to turn Operation R-4 into a worldwide movement by sharing its findings with the international humanitarian community. It began by sending reports and delegations to the Resettlement Services division of the UNHCR. Meanwhile, Chaldean Americans represented by the CFA appealed to governmental agencies and the US Senate to expedite the emigration of Iraqi Christian refugees to the country of their relatives’ residence.56 In addition to increasing publicity of the plight of Iraqi Christians, the CFA aimed to implement changes in US immigration policies. Since the number of Chaldeans fleeing Iraq rose steeply during Phase I of the campaign, the CFA could not depend on P1 status (non-migrant work or entertainment visas) while petitioning on behalf of their displaced relatives. P1 status, the CFA asserted, was ‘too little, too slow, too painful, and problematic for our refugees’.57 Instead, the CFA sought to document how the refugees it identified were ‘persecuted religiously, ethnically and/or politically in order to fit the basic requirement for priorities P2 (persecuted group admission) and P3 (family reunification admission), i.e. to meet the refugee definition’.58 To implement action based upon these findings, Phase II of the campaign focused on the legal procedures of admitting Iraqi refugees to the United States in mass numbers. In this phase, the CFA began appealing to US legislators to secure P2 and P3 status for Iraqi Christian refugees who were kin to American citizens. The outcome (which could also be attributed to the efforts of the UNHCR and other humanitarian organizations) was the admission of 2,631 Iraqi refugees to the United States in 2007.59 This figure rose to 12,118 and 19,910 Iraqi refugees admitted to the United States in 2008 and 2009, respectively.60 Meanwhile, the CFA and the local Chaldean press in Michigan stressed that ‘85% of Iraqis who are currently residing in the US are of the Christian faith’61 and that the same percentage of all Iraqi refugee applicants have a family member already living in the United States.62 These figures were deliberately emphasized to highlight two matters critical for the American government and for public opinion: one, that by already having

186

The Chaldeans

an established network of family support the newcomers would be less likely to become a burden to the country’s economy; and, two, by virtue of being nonMuslim, these Iraqi refugees are less likely to pose the terrorist threat much feared by political entities that had previously been reluctant to set aside state funds for the resettlement of Iraqi refugees. The CFA became accustomed to concluding its reports with comments such as this one: The CFA strongly believes that Iraqi Christians, as past history demonstrates, can assimilate well without burdening the country of final resettlement, and will make a valuable contribution to society.63

‘As past history demonstrates’ refers simultaneously to the ancient history of Chaldean civilization, which the modern Chaldeans are quick to summon when stressing their legitimacy, authenticity and positive collective impact on Western societies; and to the modern history of Chaldean settlement and upward economic mobility in the United States during the twentieth century. Referring to the United States as ‘the country of final resettlement’ put the efforts of Operation R-4 in direct opposition to the Nineveh Plains settlement projects. Whereas these projects called for foreign intervention to create a home in Iraq for Iraq’s Christians, the asylum project candidly admitted that Iraqi Christian refugees who arrive in the United States have no intention of returning to Iraq. Worth noting here is that this dichotomy of goals has been minimized to the point of general invisibility. Neither local Chaldean media nor mainstream US media stressed this discrepancy in their reports, although both projects received ample coverage individually. Only in specific situations did it become efficacious for Chaldeans to admit to this discrepancy publicly. One example is the aforementioned DeKelaita. ‘My heart is wedded to the idea that they should be safe and secure in their own homeland. What I’m doing is temporary’, DeKelaita had once described his work on the Iraqi asylum cases during an interview with the Los Angeles Times inside his law office in Skokie, Illinois. This was eight years prior to his federal sentence.64 Unlike DeKelaita, however, the CFA, the majority of Chaldeans in the United States and their displaced relatives who aspire to reunite with them have not succumbed to the pretence that the admission of the Chaldean refugees to the United States is ‘temporary’. Not only are the thousands of dollars US-based Chaldeans have invested in helping their displaced kin relocate to the United States an indication that they aspire to make their resettlement a permanent one, but also they launched a decade-long public promotion of the image of Chaldeans’ permanence as US asylees, immigrants and citizens. This effort culminated in a 2018 Chaldean Household Survey, which updated its demographic findings to reflect the wideranging positive monitory impact of refugee and immigrant populations on the economy of post-recession Michigan.65 ‘For every dollar spent (by refugees) is more than a dollar of impact on the economy’, calculated Martin Manna. ‘It is because of immigrant communities and their businesses, that many communities

7. A Safe Haven Dream

187

have flourished’, he countered against the Trump administration’s recent travel ban and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) crackdown on illegal immigrants. Citing figures from the Chaldean Survey, Manna emphasized that ‘in the past decade, refugees in southeast Michigan [30,000 of whom were Chaldean between 2007–2016] have contributed between $230 million and $295 million’ to the local economy.66 In the early phase of the post-2003 asylum-seeking decade (2006–16), The CFA had to depend on private funding (mainly from US-based Chaldeans and other diaspora minority organizations)67 for its transnational Operation R-4 campaign, since the government venues it sought out declined to supply the funding it requested. The CFA was successful in rallying Michigan’s Chaldeans to a transnational cause they can relate to on a personal level: virtually everyone had a relative or a friend who wants help to migrate to the United States. Because the CFA proved to the community that its campaign was effective in helping Chaldean refugees, it also effectively propagated the particular version of ‘Chaldean identity’ that enhanced the institution’s public image. During my interview with Joseph Kassab, executive director of the CFA, who spearheaded Operation R-4 from 2006 to 2009, he requested that I cite the following words in my publication: ‘We [the CFA] put all of these efforts [Operation R-4] so that we can help our people assimilate to American life […] without forgetting their original culture.’68 Whenever there was a public opportunity, the CFA designated Chaldeans as a people with a clearly defined religion (Christianity), family values, a strong work ethic and, most emphatically, an abiding capacity to become ‘American’ without ceasing to be ‘Chaldean’. The fact that Chaldean diasporic circuits and their leaders have reached the size and level of organization that allow them to contemplate large-scale transnational projects and to construct applicable identity narratives for them is an indication that the Chaldean diaspora in Michigan has established itself as a permanent phenomenon. As such, it is now able to generate diverse transnational social fields to meet specific social or political goals as they arise while striving to represent an image of independence from the larger networks of Arab and Muslim Detroit in which it is economically and culturally embedded. As a corollary to this newfound independence, and as a permanent, white-aspiring community, the Chaldeans can now seek to diversify their alliances by inviting strategic partnerships with other minority groups such as the Jewish American community in Detroit. A perceived kinship, projected whiteness and socioeconomic success are driving Chaldean leaders and organizations to foster alliances and raising funds from other ethnic groups and allocated them all at once towards demonizing Arab and Muslim societies, promoting a discourse of victimhood and helping Chaldeans remaining in Iraq. The manner in which this is done is an example of how local Chaldean circuits in Michigan are shifting their political ideology farther away from the pro-Arab tendencies of the Chaldean Church and inching closer to ethnic self-perceptions where religion becomes confined to a symbolic status.

188

The Chaldeans

Imperial Betrayals As they have for centuries, the Chaldeans now pray for salvation from their enemies, including, they say, the President of the US. CBS News, 25 July 201769 In the months leading up the 2016 presidential elections, Michigan’s Chaldean organizations and culture-makers in the Detroit metropolitan tri-county area (Wayne, Oakland and Macomb) led a successful pro-Trump campaign, helping the GOP candidate win their state by a mere 10,704 votes.70 While major proabortion political action committees such as the Susan B Anthony List, capitalizing on Hillary Clinton’s leaked anti-Catholic remarks, managed to sway the Catholic vote across the country in favour of Donald Trump,71 the main inspiration for the Chaldean majority who stood behind Trump was his anti-Muslim agenda and what they construed as his promise to protect the Christians in the Middle East. ‘Our Christian heritage will be cherished, protected, defended like you’ve never seen before,’72 Trump had remarked at the Family Research Council’s 11th Annual Values Voter Summit while on the campaign trail in 2016. Meanwhile, Mike Pence inspired the Chaldeans by his sermon-like speech that brimmed with biblical allusions and assertions of making ‘religious freedom’ as a foreign-policy priority.73 Unaware of the distinct evangelical connotations in US political discourse on Christianity, Chaldeans (mis)took pro-Christian rhetoric to encompass the diversity of the Christian faith.74 Similarly, they conflated anti-Muslim rhetoric with a promise of protection for Christian minorities besieged by ISIS in Iraq and Syria. ‘Our community voted like it never has … because we have loved ones in the area,’75 remarked community leader Martin Manna. Several Chaldean priests, including Anthony Kathawa of St Thomas Church in West Bloomfield, had publicly blessed Trump while on the campaign trail. Chaldean social media teamed with praise for the candidate’s commitment to Christian minorities. Joseph Kassab, as head of the Iraqi Christian Advocacy and Empowerment Institute, intervened on behalf of the persecuted Chaldeans in Iraq. He shared his reports and information directly with the Republican candidate during his visit in Novi, Michigan, requesting Trump’s support with creating and protecting the Nineveh Plains administrative unit.76 What had renewed their hopes was Trump’s lead adviser on the Middle East, Maronite Walid Phares, is known for his antiMuslim views and association with extremist Lebanese Christian militias, and was said to be in support of the settlement proposal.77 At the urging of their Church, community leaders and right-wing political pundits, a Chaldean majority voted for the Republican candidate who had widely publicized his anti-Muslim agenda. Macomb County alone, where a large concentration of Chaldean and other working-class white Catholic residents voted for Trump and where the mosque controversy we will be looking at shortly takes place, was said to be the single county responsible for Trump’s narrow victory in Michigan.78 Mere weeks after the celebrated election results, just as others feared, Michigan became home to the highest number of bias crimes in Midwest post-election.79

7. A Safe Haven Dream

189

In January 2017, Trump signed an executive order that immediately barred entry into the United States for the citizens of Muslim-majority countries Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. In June 2017, after Iraq was removed from the initial travel ban list in return for taking back Iraqi nationals subject to orders of removal, the ICE agents began rounding up Iraqis for deportation. ICE detained 114 Iraqis from 3 Michigan counties, most of whom were Chaldean.80 Trump’s immigration crackdown came to the Catholic community as a ‘shock’, a ‘death sentence’,81 a ‘double whammy’ and a grand betrayal.82 ‘We’re just pawns in a large game. They [Iraq] wanted to get off that ban list. They’ve got their priorities and we’re not a priority,’ concluded Wisam Naoum, the Chaldean finance lawyer who spearheaded the ACLU class-action lawsuit against the Chaldean deportation order.83 Others referenced the ‘irony’ of deporting a religious minority that had just received a genocide designation from the previous US administration.84 The vote for Trump was not the first instance in which Chaldeans acted to serve self-interests but met devastating outcomes. During the ‘war on terror’ a Chaldean majority voted for George Bush85 – because of similar promises to aid Christian minorities and help establish a ‘safe haven’ in northern Iraq. Nor were those decisions regretted in retrospect. In 2008, while gearing up to vote for McCain against Obama, the Chaldean Caucus asserted: There is no question that the American reinforcements dispatched by President Bush have helped reduce violence against Chaldeans and sectarian violence in general. The military, both directly through military operations and indirectly by helping encourage the spread of the Awakening movements, in which neighborhood watch groups have taken on Islamic extremists have helped Chaldeans drastically.86

It may seem ironic that the main opposition to Obama within the Chaldean community came from the candidate’s outspoken opposition against the war in Iraq. Many Chaldeans considered – and continue to consider – US disengagement to be disastrous for the Christian minorities of Iraq, a position that recalls the Assyrian panic over the end of British Mandate in Iraq in the early 1930s.87 Chaldeans had voted heavily for George W. Bush during the 2000 elections, and widely supported the occupation of Iraq in 2003.88 Although not exactly happy with the immediate violent outcomes of the 2003 US occupation of Iraq, Chaldeans continued to support the Republican president, believing that American protection was needed for the security of their relatives in Iraq. In the race leading up to the 2004 presidential elections, some political analysts observed that in Michigan, ‘Bush’s fortunes may rest in the hands of Iraqis,’ where Bush faced ‘his only chance at winning the state’ through the vote of the Republican-leaning Chaldeans of the affluent Oakland County where they made up around a tenth of the 1.2 million residents.89 Instead of dismissing Chaldean politics as counterfactual and misinformed, I stop at two deeply inculcated and intertwined ideologies: the profound trust in favourable Western intervention on behalf of the Christians of the Middle Eastern and the increasing mistrust of Arab and Muslim communities and policymakers.

190

The Chaldeans

Chaldean trust in Western imperialist, expansionist agendas dates back further than the support they showed George W. Bush’s administration. Looking back to 1990, in the wake of ‘serious local harassment’ by Americans angered at Saddam Hussein’s holding of Western hostages after the invasion of Kuwait, the federation of fourteen Chaldean organizations in Michigan sent George Bush Sr a letter expressing support for the US response to Hussein. With escalating military and political tension before the Gulf War in Iraq, local news in Detroit emphasized that Chaldean Americans are ‘striving to display a solidly American identity’ and went on to highlight their entrepreneurial success as business owners in Detroit. ‘We don’t want to be labeled pro-Iraqi,’ the chairman of the CFA Salman Yono had explained, ‘We are taking a pro-American approach and we are staying out of politics in Iraq.’90 This position is in stark contrast with the one concurrently taken by the Chaldean Church. In December 1990 in Iraq, the Chaldean Church participated in a ‘Christian Peace Conference’ modelled after another one held by Iraqi Muslim leaders where Church leaders convened to express support of Saddam Hussein’s settlement negotiation plans and reiterated the state’s terms of confronting foreign imperialist threats to Arab nationalist struggle.91 ‘Respectability strategies,’ described by E. Frances White, help minority communities not only ‘regulate’ their ‘social and political behaviours,’ but, importantly, illustrate how their core values are coterminous with those of the mainstream.92 These strategies help situate and explain the divergent positions of Chaldeans at home and the ones in diaspora at a time when their two countries of residence are in conflict. Sally Howell illustrates, in the case of the Muslim American community in Detroit, that respectability strategies often fall under a discursive process by which some narratives of self and Other are omitted and others are showcased, with the end result of ‘reinforcing the status quo rather than challenging the mainstream to confront its inability to accept difference’.93 Mary Sengstock, whose research on Detroit’s Chaldean community during the twentieth century promoted an image of positive difference from the Arab-American community summed up Chaldean’s respectability strategies in her statement: ‘They are very American … they really wanted to come here. They cast their lot with the US.’94 Emboldened by the impending US aggression on Iraq, and indiscriminately merging Arabs and Iraqis with Islam, Chaldeans began voicing their earliest formulations of Islamic persecution discourse, pointing out how they had lived ‘under continuous repression and persecution by the successive Iraqi Arab governments’. Looking past the unsettling context of a minority community indulging in counterproductive and sometimes lethal political decision-making, we cannot deny the pervasiveness of the anti-Arab narrative beyond the Chaldean domain. Chaldeans’ disavowal of Arabs and their own Arabness is attested through a resurgence of an Orientalist homogenizing conflation of Arab identities and Islam that predates modern Iraq.95 Significantly, it also reveals how US Islamophobia has been justified as a methodical approach for preventing greater violence, more prominently in the years following the 9/11 attacks. As a deep-seated, well-funded ideology, Islamophobia pervades the public sphere and populates the media landscape to assuage the American public – Iraq’s religious minorities included –

7. A Safe Haven Dream

191

and remind them, as Stephen Sheehi put it, ‘that invasion and war are the only means to reform the Middle East because violence is the only means that Arabs understand’.96

Tilting at Windmills: Chaldean War on Islamic Terrorism in Michigan Shia, Sunni or Kurds may or may not agree on little else, but all concur on their commitment to eliminate the scourge of Christians. Joseph Kassab, 200797 I turn to the well-known Chaldean protest against the Sterling Heights mosque in Macomb County to illustrate deteriorating Chaldean relations with Arab Muslims and pave the way to a description of the ideological shift in Chaldeans’ understanding of their ethnic and religious identity vis-à-vis other diasporic minority groups and the transformation of the nature of alliance and networks they have tried to forge in recent years in Metropolitan Detroit. These ideological shifts immediately reference catastrophic events and social upheavals that are affecting Chaldeans at home in Iraq, rather than Michigan where Chaldean Americans live. Chaldeans in Michigan have not been consistently amiable towards their Arab and Muslim neighbours or neutral towards associations with Arabs and Muslims. Islamophobia and the rising tide of religion-based ethnicities further reinforced Chaldeans’ chronic conflation of Arab identity with Islam. Pamela Pennock’s work on the rise of the Arab-American Left highlights Chaldeans’ antithetical stance and reluctance to join the working-class and the pro-Palestine struggle in Detroit when the Arab Left was formulating its radical socio-political ideology and organizing in the 1960s and 1970s.98 Chaldeans’ ethno-religious separatist tendency goes back to the 1970s or even farther, when the US oil crises, hijackings and conflicts in Lebanon, Libya and Israel heightened antipathy towards Muslims and Arabs, equating them with terrorism in the American mainstream more intensively. This dangerous corrosion of Arab-Americans’ image also coincided with intimidations, vigilante violence and an effective smear campaign at the hands of a vast spectrum of Jewish pro-Zionist organizations ranging from the small extremist vigilante Jewish Defense League to the large and more established civil rights group Anti-Defamation League, which was involved in wide-ranging advocacy efforts but took a reactionary perspective regarding Israel and Palestine. Together, multisided pro-Zionist efforts painted Arab-Americans as anti-Semitic and supportive of terrorism with the aim of delegitimizing pro-Palestinian organizations and individuals and precluding their participation in the American political arena.99 With the first-hand experience of authoritarian regimes in Iraq and the longstanding indoctrination by the Chaldean Church to keep a low political profile and remain neutral, Chaldeans in diaspora assumed an attitude of non-alignment politics in the United States for many decades. As we saw, this attitude surfaced as late as 1990 in the face of the impending US military invasion of Iraq when

192

The Chaldeans

Chaldean diaspora leaders articulated a refusal to associate their community with Iraqi politics.100 It was augmented further with the intensified rhetoric of Homeland Security and ‘War on Terror’ following the 9/11 attack. Despite the long-standing divergence between Arab and Chaldean politics in Michigan, at least until 2003, when the Detroit Arab American Study (DAAS) conducted its tri-county survey, 45 per cent of Chaldeans still felt the identity label ‘Arab-American’ represented them accurately and more than half admitted to speaking the Arabic language.101 In September 2015, Arab–Chaldean tensions came to a head in ways that publicly unleashed virulent expressions of hatred, Islamophobia and racism that were previously the hallmark of the private sphere. The controversy began when the American Islamic Community Center (AICC) of Metropolitan Detroit, a predominantly Lebanese Shi‘i congregation that formed in 2003, purchased a new property with the plan to relocate and expand its Islamic Center in neighbouring Sterling Heights, a heavily white, working-class, Catholic area known for its high concentration of ‘Reagan Democrats’ in the 1980s – blue-collar union members who suspended party loyalty to vote for Ronald Reagan in the 1980s – and now the ‘Trumpsters’ and working-class Chaldeans.102 Failing to acquire an existing building that would meet their size needs, the AICC settled on a five-acre lot that was zoned residential.103 Although the mosque’s plans for the site complied with and even exceeded city codes and requirements, their request for a special land use permit was met with a sea of virulent opposition from the mayor, members of the planning committee and Sterling Heights’ predominantly Chaldean residents. Together they vehemently rejected the proposal in five consecutive city council and planning commission meetings and protests. The planning commission first unanimously voted against the proposed Islamic Center. Muslim community members reported overt expressions of anti-Muslim hate by those who celebrated the decision. Chaldean residents were particularly expressive in their celebration using jeers, profanity, physical intimidation and even spitting by way of asserting the triumph of their cause over the cause of their Muslim neighbours.104 What was their cause? And how did they triumph? Two federal lawsuits against the city forced the City Council to reconsider. The AICC and the Department of Justice filed lawsuits citing the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act which protects against discrimination in zoning. The lawsuits settled the matter in favour of constructing the mosque, and construction on the site was to begin the following summer. When pressed during the lawsuit hearing, the Chaldean opposition cited zoning violation, noise, increased traffic, pedestrian safety, etc. as the main causes behind opposing the construction of a mosque in their neighbourhood.105 ‘The building itself does not make sense for the location […] this is a logistical issue,’ claimed a Chaldean business owner in the area.106 However, other statements point clearly to conflating Islamic fundamentalist terrorism at home in Iraq with expressions of Islamic faith and culture in the United States. Some Chaldean residents described Sterling Heights as a ‘safe haven’ from religious persecution in their homeland up until the mosque project came into the picture. Others questioned the sinister motives behind planning a mosque in a neighbourhood with a high concentration of Iraqi

7. A Safe Haven Dream

193

Christians. One Chaldean spoke on behalf of her community, ‘These people are traumatized by a genocide, and they are looking at it as “it is following us here and we have no home.”’107 Others argued that ‘all Muslims are killers on food stamps’.108 ‘American Constitution is clear about freedom of religion,’ another Chaldean argued, ‘What about the religion that wants to destroy the same American Constitution? You work with these terrorists you are one of them.’109 Muslim community leaders, especially Iraqi Shi‘i ones associated with the AICC, involved in the controversy, countered by explaining to their ‘Chaldean friends’ how ISIS has killed more Muslims than non-Muslims and destroyed more mosques than churches in Iraq, and that, if anyone is fighting ISIS at home, it is not (American) Christians or Jews, but rather Ahl al-Bayt (Shi‘a).110 Chaldean community leaders and Church heads remained mostly silent as the controversy unravelled and Chaldean members of the community heaped insults and aggression on Islam and their Muslim neighbours. Later, when pressed further after losing their case, Chaldean spokespeople treaded gingerly on the topic. Some attributed the outrage over the mosque to outspoken opposition from Assyrians with a different political agenda, rather than Chaldeans who are ready to co-exist peacefully with their Arab neighbours.111 Others, like the long-term Assyrian Sterling Heights resident, explained the Islamophobia of their community members who voiced the opposition to their recent migration and fleeing religious persecution, claiming that it ‘does affect their mental status’. Muslim observers, on the other hand, such as Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Michigan Chapter (CAIR-MI), reacted in what may be considered an overstatement that the majority of Chaldeans in Sterling Heights ‘are fourth-generation Americans who have few ties to Iraq’.112 Trying to maintain a façade of political correctness, the Chaldean News reiterated the previous arguments about location, zoning violations, sensitivity and mental health of the new arrivals from Iraq.113 It further cited at length the anti-Muslim positions of the American Freedom Law Centre (AFLC), which will be looked at shortly. The opening paragraph of the Chaldean News article defensively pointed out that opposition to building the mosque had come from residents of diverse backgrounds, ‘and all are not Chaldeans’.114 Community leaders, such as Martin Manna, interjected to represent the diplomatic, moderate face of Chaldean Americans. He cited the continued ISIS violence against Christians and other minorities in Iraq, and added, ‘However, I am hopeful the building of a mosque will lead to broader discussion about inclusiveness here in America.’115 A religious authority also weighed in, expressing the tolerant and loving side of the Christian faith of the Chaldeans. Father Manuel Boji, Vicar General, explained, ‘We must discuss our differences in a civilized manner … Our religion is built on acceptance of others … Whether you are Christian, Muslim or Jewish, we are called to live in peace, love and to have respect for each other.’ Boji was against handling the matter in court initially, and rejected the legal ‘coercive approach’.116

194

The Chaldeans

Mainstream pressure had ripened the ground for Islamophobia for so long. US officials from various political persuasions either fed or capitalized on Chaldean Islamophobic sentiments and requests for help to stall the building of the mosque to push their own anti-Muslim agendas. Email records revealed during the lawsuits showed that Sterling Heights’ officials privately questioned if AICC leadership had ties to terrorism. Mayor Michael Taylor and City Planner Donald Mende involved the police chief in checking if the mosque developers were on the terrorist watch list. Michael Shallal, a Chaldean employee of a Department of Homeland Security contractor and later Republican candidate for State Senate, congratulated the mayor for his efforts to block the building of the mosque, citing the many levels it would have affected the Chaldean residents of the city. Planning Commissioner Jeffrey Norgrove, one of the planners who voted the mosque down, posted antiMuslim comments on social media, suggesting that Arab-owned small businesses in the city were financing Islamic terrorism.117 Despite the legal settlement and a monetary compensation of $350,000 from the city to the AICC, tensions between Arab and Chaldean residents and community representatives continued to escalate. A year later, in March 2017, the AFLC filed a civil rights lawsuit, alleging violations of federal and state laws. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of seven residents of Sterling Heights who opposed the construction of a mosque. Three of the plaintiffs were Chaldeans (and one Assyrian) who described themselves or their families as being ‘from Iraq, where Chaldean Christians have been subjected to violence and abuse from ISIS’.118 Seeking outside legitimation and support, Chaldeans had filed their lawsuit through a third party that defines itself as a ‘national public interest law firm dedicated to fighting for limited government, federalism, and America’s JudeoChristian heritage’. The co-founders of the AFLC David Yerushalmi and Robert Muise describe themselves as experts on national security and Islamic terrorism.119 ‘It is evident that AICC wanted to “plant the flag” in this Chaldean Christian community by building this huge Mosque,’ commented AFLC Co-Founder and Senior Counsel Muise, whose biography states he ‘has been involved in numerous cases defending American freedoms against the growing threat of sharia’. He explained in a blog on the case: This is a community of Christians, many of whom fled Iraq because they or family members were subjected to violence and abuse from ISIS … Unfortunately, Sterling Heights isn’t the only place where these Mosque-building tactics are being employed. We will do what we can to stop it.120

The rising conspiratorial tone with which the Right often depicts Islam is coeval with the rise in Chaldean Islamophobia in America. The timing of the escalation of the Chaldean–Arab conflict in the United States and what it correlates with at home in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan is of utmost importance. Looking closely at events affecting Chaldeans in multiple locales, it is no coincidence that the Sterling Heights’ controversy began in 2015, almost a year after ISIS decimated the minority communities of Mosul and the Nineveh Plains and proclaimed the

7. A Safe Haven Dream

195

Caliphate in June 2014, halting all hope for an autonomous Christian haven. The controversy was sparked almost a year before a US-backed coalition of Iraqi and Kurdish forces launched the first operation to retake Mosul in October 2016, reviving that hope. In other words, the conflict in Metro Detroit issued at a time when the Christians remaining in Iraq were experiencing the most dramatic episode of existential uncertainty since the Ottoman massacres a century earlier, which had led a large segment of embattled and displaced Armenians, Assyrians and Chaldeans to seek refuge in the Nineveh Plains and its environs in 1915. The Iraqi context necessitates not only looking at the historical and current parallel of the Nineveh Plains, but also at the political utility of deploying the analogy of a US-enabled statehood following a globally recognized episode of ethno-religious persecution: the case of Israel and the Holocaust.

A Jewish Likeness: The People of the Genocide Two ethnic communities working together and forming friendships – certainly something to celebrate. David Sachs, Senior Copy Editor, Detroit Jewish News An officially articulated interethnic, inter-religious Chaldean–Jewish partnership began in 2010 in the affluent suburbs of Southeast Michigan. Against the backdrop of the events described above, this partnership emerges as a corollary to US foreign policy in Iraq. Social encounters between the two communities in Michigan had begun more than two decades earlier. The affluent city of West Bloomfield has been known for a number of decades for its large Jewish and Chaldean populations, who traditionally kept a proper distance from each other when Chaldean identity was less separable from Arabness. In December 1990, as the United States was gearing up for the first Gulf War on Iraq and stories on Iraqis began to feature more frequently in mainstream media, the New York Times published an article on Jews and ‘Ethnic Iraqis’ in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.121 The incredulous tone portrayed the Chaldeans as the unlikely friends of Jews due to the (pro-Palestine) politics that divide the two groups in the Middle East. It went on to explain how a neighbourly coexistence could be achieved nonetheless, since Jews and Chaldeans had no choice but to learn how to share the same neighbourhood. A more unlikely picture could hardly be imagined than one in which Jewish American supporters of Israel and American descendants of Iraqi Christians socialize over coffee and Danish at a Jewish temple, expressing their worries about the Persian Gulf crisis with neighbourly warmth.122 Efforts towards peaceful coexistence began with a ‘minor contretemps’ between Jewish and Chaldean residents of Bloomfield Hills that is shockingly similar in tenor and content to the Sterling Heights mosque controversy. In 1989, the ChaldeanIraqi Association of Michigan bought the Shenandoah Gulf and Country Club

196

The Chaldeans

that was located directly across the street from Temple Israel, a Reform Jewish synagogue. The dispute ensued as Jewish homeowners objected to the Chaldean purchase, citing – as in the case with the Chaldean complaints against the mosque project – noise, traffic and other zoning issues that further land development would bring about. The irony of the current Chaldean position against the mosque in Sterling Heights is particularly poignant since Chaldeans did not believe the reasons behind the Jewish community’s objecting to their building project, sensing that racial and cultural prejudice was the cause of the Jewish resentment to their presence instead. Redoubling the irony of Chaldean Islamophobia is the fact that the Jewish community and Temple Israel leaders eventually accepted the Chaldeans among them, recalling how, eleven years earlier, Jews too had to fight a legal battle for permission to build the temple. The article proceeds to enumerate the many similarities between the two groups – common roots and ancient ancestry, family values, upward socio-economic mobility, entrepreneurial spirit and comparable migration and labour histories in Detroit – similarities that later became staples mentioned at every opportunity when the communities partnered with each other in the new millennium. Minorities are known to foster strategic alliances to present their case more compellingly before the majority. Chicano and Iranian student activists joined forces on the US–Mexico borders to bring attention to dictatorial rule in Iran in the years leading up to the Iranian Revolution. African American and Muslim American activists found ideological intersections that helped bolster each other’s struggles during the civil rights movement. Minority networks extend beyond political activism into many social domains. Maronite Lebanese grocery store owners helped Chaldeans newcomers get financially and socially established in Detroit when they started to settle in the city in the 1930s and 1940s as we saw earlier. What makes the Jewish–Chaldean partnership in Detroit exceptional is its formulation around the elision and vilification of a geographically contiguous and culturally overlapping minority group: the Arabs. The recurrent histories of rejection by the established white majorities, and the resemblance between the way the Jewish neighbourhood related to the Chaldean newcomers in West Bloomfield in 1990 and the Chaldean neighbourhood related to the Muslim newcomers in Sterling Heights in 2015, are all the more striking when we consider the binary nature of the Jewish–Chaldean partnership that ensued. It becomes evident that the ouster of the Arab/Muslim component from this interethnic and inter-religious union is predicated on events in the Middle East rather than the shared US diaspora when we consider the Chaldean affirmation of Zionism and the legitimacy of Israel as the basis for the Jewish–Chaldean partnership in Michigan. Nor is it accidental that the Chaldean–Jewish discourse was born to an atmosphere of pervasive racial profiling of Arabs and cultural Islamophobia. As it doctrinally elides Islam from the monotheistic trinity and omits Arab and Muslim experience from its discourse on uprootedness, displacement and immigration to America at the very site of these communities’ largest concentration outside of the Middle East, the partnership becomes a reflection of an essential and distinctive ideological formation in the age of US Empire. Although Arab/Muslim and Jewish

7. A Safe Haven Dream

197

organizations in Detroit have also began collaborating for strategic purposes in recent times, the nature of the collaborations is quite different. Moreover, the Arab/ Muslim–Jewish and Chaldean–Jewish partnerships rarely overlap or intersect. For example, The National Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council, supported the American Jewish Committee and the Islamic Society of North America, teamed up in October 2017 to fight against the rising rate of hate crimes against both communities in Metro Detroit. The Chaldeans were not involved.123 Another example is a 2014 collaboration among five minority weeklies in Detroit aimed at highlighting the economic contributions of their communities and open dialogue for inclusion, partnership and regional success. In addition to the Jewish News and the Arab American News, the three other weeklies were the Michigan Citizen, the Michigan Korean Weekly and Latino Press.124 The Chaldean News was conspicuously absent from this partnership, despite their pre-existing separate partnership with the Jewish News. As Chaldean novelist, journalist and cultural representative Weam Namou observed, at present there are ‘better relations between the Chaldean and Jewish community and the Arab and Jewish community than there is between the Chaldean and Arab community’.125 In 2010, the Building Community Initiative (BCI) was initiated by the Christian-leaning, conservative Chaldean News and the pro-Zionist Detroit Jewish News.126 Instigated by joint commercial and political agendas, the BCI was set up as a cultural campaign to legitimize the Chaldean–Jewish union by disseminating information on the shared ancient history and common cultural present of the two communities. The BCI set out to build platform for social action and a variety of social bridges between the two affluent communities in Southeast Michigan, whose experience, according to Jewish News contributing editor Robert Sklar, ‘has all the hallmarks of building on common ancestral roots in the Middle East … Iraq for Chaldeans and Israel for Jews’.127 Quickly, through ‘mega-events’ funded in part by Jewish and Chaldean foundations and Bank of America in Troy, Michigan, networking efforts were put forth to target various age groups and both genders.128 Educational workshops were organized under the directorship of St Thomas Chaldean Catholic Church in West Bloomfield Hills and Adat Shalom Synagogue in adjacent Farmington Hills, targeting Chaldean and Jewish middle schoolers. A teen forum convened the same season in collaboration with the Bloomfield Hills School District in which almost 200 Jewish and Chaldean high school students participated. Chaldean ‘Project Bismoutha’ (Healing), providing free health services to refugees and low-income community members by community professionals, was modelled on Jewish community’s ‘Project Chessed’ (Kindness), run by Jewish Family Service of Metropolitan Detroit. Even a Chaldean-owned grocery store in Oak Park, Michigan, was eventually featured on the cover of the Chaldean News and in the Chaldean News/Jewish News magazine supplement for catering to Jewish clientele by devoting a separate 6,000-square-foot section of Kosher meats, groceries and catering. The project earned the approval of Jewish Orthodox rabbis from around Michigan and was praised for providing ‘100 per cent kosher supervision, including a full-time mashgiach’.129 That year, the United Jewish Foundation of Metropolitan Detroit began making donations

198

The Chaldeans

to the Chaldean Federation’s refugee sponsorship programme.130 The year 2010 witnessed the coming together of the Chaldean Shenandoah Country Club and the Jewish Community Centre, two affluent community centres that are less than a mile from each other in West Bloomfield, to organize a variety of events for members of the two communities to mingle and learn about each other’s cultures. They set up ethnic Jewish and Chaldean food banquets and contests featuring the patriarchs and matriarchs of both communities and ‘150 happy guests’ who ‘sampled the similarities and differences of the traditions, tastes, aromas, spices and recipes brought to this country by our Chaldean and Jewish forebears’.131 Reflecting one year after the successful Chaldean–Jewish union, Father Anthony Kathawa of Mother of God Chaldean Church asserted that it was ‘politics that separates us, not religion! Our faith, our belief in God, brings us together and empowers us’.132 Soon after, BCI organizers began planning and advertising a group visit to the Chaldean and Jewish holy sites in Israel for members of the two communities. How does this partnership construct a compelling ideological analogy and what ends does the analogy serve? Since the formalization of the partnership, Chaldeans and Jews embarked on a public enumeration of their many resemblances – from being children of Abraham133 to speaking ‘sister’ Semitic languages,134 having physiognomic and genetic links,135 and having a similarly successful immigration experience in the United States (expanded into self-portrayals as white).136 At the core of this Chaldean–Jewish mergence is a twofold simile: the Holocaust as an equivalent to the ISIS-perpetrated ‘genocide’ of Christians and Israel as an equivalent to the proposed Nineveh Plains autonomous administrative settlement. The perceived usefulness of this simile stems from perceptions of sameness and of the contrast in attaining the ‘safe haven’ dream; that is, the perception that persecuted Jews were compensated for their hardships through migration to the United States and the creation of the state of Israel, whereas persecuted Chaldeans must continue to struggle until they attain the same right to exist autonomously in the Nineveh Plains and obtain adequate US protection and refugee status.

The Jewish Holocaust and the Christian Genocide On the day of the first ICE raids on Chaldeans in 11 June 2017, apprehensive Michigan Jewish community members and rabbis turned to the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC)/AJC asking how to support their Chaldean friends. The event had a traumatic personal resonance, many reflected. ‘As Jews, it is very distressing to hear about this,’ admitted JCRC/AJC executive director David Kurzmann, citing the analogy of the rejection of the St Louis ship that had sent Jewish refugees back to Europe where they met their death and concluding that ‘the US risks repeating this same dark mistake’.137 Chaldean Church personnel echoed the same analogy. San Diego’s Chaldean bishop Bawai Soro told the Christian Post reporter in what became the headline of the article, ‘Deportation

7. A Safe Haven Dream

199

of Iraqi Christians [is] “worse” than Rejecting Jewish Holocaust Refugees.’138 An immigration attorney reflected that the idea of rounding up people and throwing them on a bus ‘conjures up scary images for Jews’. Several congregants of Temple Israel organized rallies through their synagogue, joined by members from the Detroit Jews for Justice group. They held signs of a biblical quote from the book of Exodus, ‘You shall not oppress a stranger, since you yourselves know the feelings of a stranger, for you also were strangers in the land of Egypt,’139 alluding to a shared ancient history of Jewish and Chaldean persecution in Mesopotamia. Although this was not the only place where Jews protested these raids and the various threads of the Trump administration’s campaigns, this local scene took on its own Chaldean colour due to the strong co-ethnic partnership. Several JCRC/ AJC professionals offered pro bono legal services to their Chaldean neighbours in Southeast Michigan. Bradley Maze, a Farmington Hills’ attorney representing the cases of five Chaldean ICE detainees, found it noteworthy to point out ‘the irony’ that key professionals involved in the class-action lawsuit ‘are all Jewish … from Michigan ACLU Executive Director Kary Moss who filed the lawsuit to attorney Margo Schlanger, former civil rights chief in the Department of Homeland Security in the Obama Administration, to Judge Goldsmith’. Nor did the Chaldean leaders overlook this fortuitous connection, adding to the list of their powerful Jewish friends the former Michigan senator Carl Levin, who supported the community through the legal services provided to the CACC through Honigman Miller Shwartz and Cohn LLP. The president of the chamber Martin Manna affirmed, ‘There is no community like the Jewish community … You would have thought it was his own child in danger of being deported from the way [Carl Levin] responded so quickly.’140 Efforts to highlight the shared political and social Jewish–Chaldean history as part of political advocacy did not emerge suddenly with the recent deportation debacle. Community leaders in Southeast Michigan have deployed these similarities for more than a decade.141 Since 2007, in fact, the interventions of Zionist sympathizers have amounted to a public campaign in which the Chaldean ‘genocide’ was portrayed as a parallel that could not be ignored.142 That year, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) – an organization with a long, complex history and multithreaded involvements among which advocacy for Zionism and Israel is only part of the story – ‘engaged in a big way with the Chaldean community in the realm of advocacy’. In Geneva and Washington, HIAS pushed hard to establish refugee resettlement for Iraq’s religious minorities all the while citing the Jewish parallel. HIAS efforts, which received $3.4 million in US government funding that year to help non-Muslims leave Iran, were viewed by others as strategically aimed at propagating the image of Islam’s mistreatment of non-Muslims. Yonathan Betkolia, an Assyrian leader and member of Iran’s parliament held the United States and HIAS responsible for his community’s decline, arguing that ‘they give all those green cards to our people. Their only goal is to propagate the idea that Iran is mistreating its minorities’.143 For reasons relating to how Islam figures differently in American and Iranian political ideologies, Betkolia’s position does not characterize

200

The Chaldeans

the attitude of Chaldean leaders in Michigan. The contrast is indeed quite stark when we consider the concerted efforts these Chaldean leaders launched in 2010 to communicate to the board of the JCRC in Bloomfield Hills the plight of Christians in Iraq, prompting Gideon Aronoff, former national president and CEO of HIAS and current CEO of Ameinu, North America’s largest grassroots Zionist movement, to write on his society’s website: ‘We are particularly empathetic to the plight of Iraqi Christians … We can’t ignore a parallel to our history as striking as this.’144 Robert Cohen, the executive director of the Council, similarly concluded, ‘We have a lot of similarities in our immigrant experience.’145 To build on this shared persecution analogy, in 2011 the Holocaust Memorial Centre in Farmington Hills held exhibits for members of the two communities ‘depicting the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust and Chaldeans in the Armenian Genocide’.146 In a special tour of the Holocaust Memorial Centre organized for Chaldean-Jewish Arts & Culture Committee, Firyal Yono, a Chaldean member of the committee, reflected that ‘it was very moving and sad to see what the Jewish people in Europe went through before and during World War I’, making it all the more important to ‘publicize the plight of Iraqi Christians today who are being persecuted because of their religious beliefs’.147 With the dissolution of the Ba‘thist state in Iraq in 2003, Chaldeans were quick to note – and indeed encouraged by the ‘War on Terror’ discourse in the American mainstream – the benefits of framing the plight of Iraqi Christians in accessible terms that harken to the Jewish Holocaust. Chaldeans had been both witnesses to the unassailable contract between the United States and Israel, and recipients of mass anti-Arab racism in the aftermath of 9/11.148 These two experiences are what led Chaldeans to handily conceptualize the benefits of not only distancing themselves from the Arab identity, but moreover framing their plight at home, once again, in terms that are antithetical to Arabs and Islam. Appropriating the Islamophobic discourse that informs the Zionist anti-Arab paradigm makes the struggle of vulnerable ethno-religious groups palatable to Western audiences. In its most conventional forms, the Holocaust analogy conveniently extends to cast the United States as the ultimate haven where rescue from mass extermination is possible. A 2010 article reminded both Jews and Chaldeans in Michigan: Whether refugees wear a cross or Star of David, worship in a church or a synagogue, they’re just as refreshed by the pure, open atmosphere of liberty to America. This inviting environment has nourished generations of Chaldean and Jewish immigrants. Many benefited – and may still do – from hands helping those who yearn to breathe free.149

Ethnic ‘Homelands’: Israel and the Nineveh Plains An article in the New York Jewish Week about an encounter between the women’s Zionist organization Hadassah and the Assyrian National Congress at the United Nations in 2000 recounted an incident from 1943: A stranger claiming to represent

7. A Safe Haven Dream

201

the ‘Assyrian nation’ visited Labour Zionist essayist Hayim Greenberg in New York. ‘It appears you Jews are about to get yourselves a state’, the visitor reportedly said. ‘Can you spare a corner of it for an old neighbor?’ A dumbfounded Greenberg replied, ‘When Jews and Assyrians last crossed paths, our Northern Kingdom was destroyed and 10 tribes were lost. Now they want our help?’ The visitor rejoined, ‘But you saved us once before … when Jonah warned Nineveh to repent. Now we’re reduced to 30,000 battered souls, clinging to a mountainside in northern Iraq, beset by Arabs, Turks and Kurds alike. All Europe spurns us. You are our last hope. Besides, after Hitler, you may not need as much space as you thought.’150 The concept of Assyrian nationhood on the basis of persecution and ethnoreligious separatism had several precursors in the Ottoman aftermath, most crucial and contiguous of which was the state of Israel. The Zionist movement had arrived by the turn of the century not only to spark the idea of ethno-religious nationalism among European Jews, but also to propose physical separation as a solution to Europe’s ‘Jewish problem’. By the First World War, this ideology developed into a small-scale practice of removal and transfer of Jewish populations that spanned Europe and Ottoman territories and paralleled the coming of age of the colonial concept of ethnic geographies.151 Three concurrent precedents gave rise to the appeal and practice of Assyrian ethnonational separatism in the context of the late nineteenth-century encounter between the British, French and Ottoman Empires: the multilateral ethno-religious cleansing that marked the Ottoman–Balkan–Caucasian encounter; British and French colonial expansionist policy in the region; and the Zionists movement and its new discourse on Jewish ethnicity and nationhood.152 The rise of race science in Europe bolstered the concept of inherent, immutable ethnic, racial – and even religious – identities and linked them to policies on citizenship and nationhood both at home and in the expanding colonies. The pseudoscience did not only investigate the biological basis of Christian colonial subjects to set them apart from the Muslim Arab majorities as in the case of Copts,153 Chaldeans and Assyrians. It also – crucially – concerned itself with the question of Jewish otherness. As the European empires expanded, racial consciousness came to legitimize imperial rule and to suggest self-governance through ethnonational separation as a ‘solution’ for the conjectured problem of racial difference.154 The concept of racially superior religious ‘minorities’ and their subsequent need for colonial protection often made explicit reference to European Jews, pointing to a reluctance towards their inclusion in the political process.155 Racialization of religious difference in terms akin to Jewish otherness in Europe extended to cast an imperial view on these groups as ‘indigenous’ peoples whose communal identities and political rights became inextricably linked. In addition to the racialization of religious difference, fascination with the ‘Holy Land’ and the growing evangelical Protestant claims over it during the late nineteenth century were part and parcel of the enterprise of biblical archaeology and early mass tourism that singled out, too, the Nineveh Plains and the remains of Babylon for political and cultural claims of Western Christian Civilization.156 The evangelical ‘restorationist’ vision of the Israel and Nineveh settlement by

202

The Chaldeans

birthright was concomitant with the language revival movements of Hebrew and Aramaic. Together with the territorial claims, revived languages, new scripts and printing enterprises solidified the sense of legitimacy and entitlement to the proposed national identities and institutionalized the idea of Assyrian and Israeli nationalities in international contexts. Evangelical missions had viewed both Jews and Eastern Christians as potential targets of mission activity whereby social, economic and political difference from the Muslim/Arab majority could be propagated. Like the accumulated materialization of Israel, the hypothetical concept of sequestering indigenous Christians in the oil-rich region of the Nineveh Governorate as a West-dependent buffer zone between Kurds and Arabs serves to renew the opportunity for neocolonial expansion through the proxy of political ‘protection’ from sectarian unrest. Following the end of the millet system and the ethnic cleansing campaigns of the First World War, large clusters of Armenians, Assyrians and Jews formed in the American and European diasporas. Throughout the interwar period, community activists representing the demands of the refugees remaining at home, lobbied for the support of the international community for the creation of minority ethnic ‘homelands’. Diaspora activists approached the peace talks following the First World War as a platform to harness an international audience for their plight and claims for national autonomy. Not only were the putative consideration for the creation of Israel, Armenia and Assyria hailed by the displaced minorities scattered throughout the world, but also they served to provide an international framework of legitimacy for British, French and League attempts to demographically rearrange the Middle East and retrofit it for the rhetoric of ‘self-determination’ despite the protests of the local Muslim Arab majorities. Historian Laura Robson argues three points that are often overlooked in these historical accounts. One, that the diasporic advocacy efforts were all the more valuable to the League ‘precisely because it often directly countered the approaches and desires of local populations in the Middle Eastern mandate states’.157 Two, diasporic minority lobbying for ethnic homelands served as much to reclaim a share in the territory of the Middle East as to bolster their standing within the new Western host nations as a racially advanced groups in comparison with the Muslim Arab and Turkish populations.158 And, three, American commitment to Zionism, which had inspired both Assyrian and Armenian nationalist discourse, ‘had little to do with the actual remaking of Jewish life in Palestine and everything to do with creating a “hyphenated” ethnic identity that would mark Jews as full participants in a fundamentally American project of pluralistic belonging’, one that emulates the same process that led other white nationalities to American naturalization.159 The Jewish state as paradigm of success for the Chaldean/Assyrian claims developed from coming into contact with multiple complex Jewish genealogies.160 In addition to the concrete and more informed demands stemming from eastern Europe and Palestine itself, American Jews’ approach to Zionism stemmed from their domestic political experience in early twentieth-century America, where they faced restrictions on immigration and an increasingly xenophobic political atmosphere under Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. As a result, diaspora

7. A Safe Haven Dream

203

Jewish activists used a maximalist, abstract language to set demands for a much broader territorial ethnic ‘homeland’ in Israel.161 It is this latter approach that set off the diasporic Assyrian discourse on ethnic nationhood, whose absolutist, separatist tenor – not to mention its ambitious and impracticable territorial vision – contrasted profoundly with the day-to-day survival and repatriation demands Assyrian refugees made from inside Iraq. It is not coincidental that the Jewish–Chaldean/Assyrian analogy has been widely deployed for decades, since the petitions for a Nineveh settlement to the League of Nations. The idea of self-rule or autonomy was not new to the Christian minorities of Iraq. Thanks to a Wilsonian concept of self-determination, minority expulsion and protection merged to become two components of a single process that legitimized foreign intervention and hypothetical ethnic nationhood over pre-existing pluralistic social arrangements. From the quagmire of the imploding Ottoman Empire and the mass displacements of the First World War, a secularized, nationalist faction of Assyrians rose up to demand national sovereignty. They projected it in the location of Nineveh Plains where the ancient Assyrian Empire as their homeland (Syriac atra, land) existed several millennia ago. Framed within the colonial and Zionist contexts of removal and settlement, the claims of firstness and indigenousness exhibit their political utility for Iraq’s Christian minorities. Chaldean, Assyrian and Syriac political parties made the following statement in a 2017 renewed proposal for the Nineveh Plains settlement: For thousands of years, the Nineveh Plain has been known as the home for the Chaldean/Syriac/Assyrian people and Yazidis. As a result of conflicts and wars throughout history, the area has also become home for Shabaks, Kaka’i, Turkmen and Armenians.162

According to this logic of birthright, the Zionist foundational myth emerges as a compelling paradigm of the legitimacy of autonomous nationhood demands. In retrospect, it seems that Zionist lobbying had paid off spectacularly with the 1917 Belfour Declaration and later with the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. What makes this paradigm particularly compelling for the revivalist demands for Christian nationhood today is that public acceptance of the principle of Zionism and promise of Euro-American political backing of the creation of a ‘Jewish national home’ in Palestine was coeval with the earliest articulations of the Assyrian demands and British, French and US advocacy for an Assyrian Christian nation.163

Déjà Vu: The ‘Assyrian Nation’ Far from coincidental, the US backing of the Nineveh Plains settlement proposals was an integral part of these proposals, just as petitioning for an autonomous ‘Assyrian nation’ in northern Mesopotamia during the interwar period was founded upon French and British ethnic and racial differentiation between Arabs

204

The Chaldeans

and Assyrians in Iraq. The renewed failure to accomplish a workable Christian autonomy is predicated on a misreading that misconstrues the West’s incursion in the region and its corollary anti-Muslim rhetoric as religious war aimed at extending protection to non-Muslims in the region. The practical measures to create the Assyrian sovereign state in the aftermath of the First World War never materialized, yet the Assyrian refugee camps in Iraq continued to stand as tangible evidence of the League of Nations and British mandate’s theoretical commitment to the national sovereignty of the Assyrian people. The contrast between the success of the Israeli state and the failed Assyrian state rested on a divide between Euro-American diplomacy’s vision of Ottoman Christians as persecuted communities in constant need of international intervention and political tutelage, and their view of Jewish settlers as a self-reliant extension of European civilization.164 Despite the historical discrepancy between intent and outcome in the Assyrian and the Jewish demands for nationhood, the Nineveh–Israel analogy resurfaced when political unrest and sectarian violence began to take its toll on Christian communities in Iraq after 2003. It featured prominently as efforts to create a Christian ‘safe haven’ in the Nineveh province began to be articulated in the diaspora. Drawing heavily on the Israel analogy, nationhood demands were revived in the twenty-first century by secular Assyrian and Chaldean political parties and community leaders who chose to go against the traditional political alignment of the Chaldean Church with the central Iraqi government to collaborate with Kurdish policymakers instead. One impetus was the Republican US administration’s reneged promises to save religious minorities from the atrocities of Islam. However, in practical terms, rather than governmental agencies, it was mainly minority, humanitarian, Catholic and Zionist organizations that conducted the investigations and advocated for the ‘genocide’ designation. In 2007, the same year the CFA in Detroit began the ‘Adapt-A-Refugee-Family’ programme, the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit and counterparts nationwide urged the US government to ease visa restrictions on ‘endangered Iraqis’, with the result of assisting more than 5,300 Iraqi refugees, mostly Chaldean, settle in the area within three years. The 2007 US Senate Hearing on ‘The Plight of Iraqi Refugees’ featured a report from the CFA and another joint letter from American Jewish Organizations. In a letter addressed to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the Jewish group, which included HIAS and the AntiDefamation League among its numerous pro-Zionist signatories, justified their ‘particular sympathy’ for Iraq’s Christian refugees by citing the similarities between Christian and Jewish persecution ‘combined with the fundamental Jewish principle of Piddyon Shevuyim (redemption of the captivity)’.165 The letter also referenced the ‘Jewish exodus’ from Iraq between 1948 and 1970 as a precedence for Muslim persecution of non-Muslim minorities in the country. The CFA letter reiterated the Christian–Jewish parallel in Iraq. It opened by citing the lynching of Jews immediately after the Ba‘th Party seized power in 1968 and concluding that no Muslims – be they Shi‘a, Sunnis or Kurds – could be trusted when it came to Christian protection.166

7. A Safe Haven Dream

205

In the years following the ISIS infiltration of the region, it was members of the International Association of Genocide Scholars who brought attention to the issue by signing a document in 2016 stating that ISIS has perpetrated genocide against ‘Chaldeans, Assyrians, Melkites, Greek and Coptic Christians; Yazidis, Shia Muslims, Sunni Kurds and other religious groups’.167 The BCI had been initiated with an intention to amass as much legitimacy and as many resources as possible to lobby the US State Department, the Obama administration and the National Security Council for a direct policy regarding the Nineveh Plains settlement and a special refugee status for non-Muslim refugees.168 HIAS depicted itself as a key player in ‘rescuing’ Iraq’s Christians as they were caught in the post-occupation maelstrom. The organization advocated for establishing a US-backed stronghold for minorities in Iraq, in tandem with helping minority refugees leave the country. While negotiating in Geneva and Washington on behalf of Iraq’s Christians, HIAS pushed for refugee resettlements for Iraq’s religious minorities all the while referencing the Jewish parallel. In 2015 the Holocaust Memorial Museum put out a report on its investigation about the Yazidis, providing evidence that they were victims of genocide, and the well-funded and politically conservative organization Knights of Columbus,169 released a 280-page document arguing that Iraq’s Christians were victims of ISIS genocide.170 The intensified violence against minorities in northern Iraq since 2003 activated a revival of the rhetoric of religious-based ethnonational statehood that had been the hallmark of the interwar peace negotiations. In addition to giving voice to a retrospective sense of ethno-religious persecution that evokes the Ottoman massacres, it extends to more recent episodes to offer a revisionist reading of Chaldean life in modern Iraq. Considering that Chaldeans began to identify as persecuted Christians under the Ba‘th regime mainly when Western media began to identify them as such after 2003,171 this altered relation to Iraq, its Arab Muslim majority and their own collective identity helps temporally situate the Chaldean omission of their recent Arab identity and their new ambitions to align with the influential and responsive US Jewish and Israel lobby.

Conclusion: Practical Utility and Limits of the Jewish Analogy Through it all, Assyrians [and Chaldeans] continue to look with longing and envy at their old neighbors, the Jews. It’s hard not to. Jews are the one non-Muslim minority in the Middle East that’s successfully stood up to the Arab majority. Jews have also succeeded spectacularly at the very thing the Assyrians [and Chaldeans] have done worst: garnering sympathy from the Christian West. New York Jewish Week, 2000172 In 2015, two Chaldeans, Republican Michigan Rep. Klint Kesto and California businessman Mark Arabo, attended the national conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). After the event, they turned to friends and social

206

The Chaldeans

media with favourable quotations of Benjamin Netanyahu on Iranian terrorism and expressions of admiration for Israel and calls to protect the Christians of Iraq, ‘as if the two issues are related,’ commented an Arab-American source, which proceeded to illustrate the extent of misguidedness of Chaldean American politics. ‘The tragedies facing Christians in the Arab world are much more comparable to the plight of Palestinians than the state of Israel,’ it explained, citing the example of the disenfranchisement of Palestinian Christians in Israel.173 If Chaldeans are going towards a rift not only with the Arab majorities with which they are affiliated, but also with the Christian minorities that express the same concerns vis-à-vis the Arab majorities, then what political desiderata are they seeking to fulfil through a partnership with America’s pro-Israel lobby and organizations? As ‘speech acts’, the analogies involving the Holocaust and Israel have the performative function of conjuring up readily available images of unjustified victimhood and assigning culpability to a common miscreant: Islam. The success of the ‘Chaldeans are the new Jews’174 trope lies in creating an illusion of equivalencies that enables the perception of Chaldeans as victims of methodical, selective extermination in the Arab world. Contrary to the political agendas of most Arab-American activists and policymakers, the Chaldean American agenda reinstates rather than deconstructs Zionism’s sidelining and expulsion of Arabs. Chaldean–Jewish efforts to depict a shared collective history of persecution and deliverance in America signal the amiability and rapport between the two minor communities. More often than not, the Nazi analogy serves as an integral part of the persecution narrative that links home and diaspora Chaldeans. Bishop Soro commenting on the 2017 deportation order, said, ‘The American government, for the first time ever, is about to deport to a country undergoing an active genocide the very people targeted in that genocide.’175 A month after this statement, the Zionist Organization of America – Michigan Region (ZOA-MI), sponsored an event for a coalition of Jewish and Christian religious and community organizers which gathered and presented a programme on ‘the genocide against Christians and minorities in the Middle East’.176 Although in some instances ISIS went from generic terrorism to the realm of genocidal ambition in the context of certain ethno-religious populations, omission of the discrete political sequences that led to the two contexts of violence and of the scale and scope separating the horrors of Nazi mass extermination from ISIS terrorism bear witness to the intensity of the Western Islamophobia that underscores the conflation of the Nazi and the Mesopotamian situations. We would be remiss to ignore the multiple layers of social and political meaning, for example, of the fact that diaspora Chaldean leaders are seeking the support of influential Zionists, such as Eugene Greenstein, former president of the ZOA-MI, who is sponsoring and promoting the ‘genocide programme’ among Chaldeans, and even Gideon Aronoff, who’s currently the CEO of Ameinu, an organization that is committed to the ideological foundation of Zionism in the Jerusalem Program, which aims at ‘strengthening Israel as a Jewish, Zionist and democratic state … with a unique moral and spiritual character, marked by mutual respect for the multi-faceted Jewish people’.177

7. A Safe Haven Dream

207

A similar intensity surfaces in the conflation of the Sterling Heights’ mosque’s personnel with ISIS terrorists. These two sentiments are not enacted and expressed in isolation. More often than not, conflation between Muslim extremists and Nazis or Muslim Extremists and Arab-Americans serve as an integral part of the persecution narrative that links Chaldeans at home with those in the diaspora in ways that seek to re-enact the discursive relationship between the Jewish diaspora and Israel. The perceived benefits of aligning with Zionist and humanitarian Jewish discourses are incontestable. However, the limits of the Jewish analogy in this selfportrayal are also evident. The examples we looked at illustrate both the function of this self-portrayal and the limits against which it brushes up. The US Congress bill that promised to dole out $10 million in assistance to the internally displaced religious minorities in the Nineveh Plains in 2007 is one example of nominal success. The Israel analogy, as an example of why the US government should financially back the creation of exclusionary ethnonational states for non-Muslim minorities in the Middle East, has been likewise successful in promoting the Nineveh Plains settlement insofar as the proposal received support from twelve members of US House of Representatives and in the language used in crafting the resolution they presented to the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the House asking the US Congress to promote the creation of a Nineveh Plains province.178 A similar effectiveness is attested through the unanimous approval of a ‘genocide’ designation of Iraq’s Christians in March 2016 by Obama’s House of Reps.179 ‘It is my sincere hope that this trans-partisan resolution will further compel the State Department to join the building international consensus in calling the horrific ISIS violence against Christians, Yezidis and others by its proper name: “genocide,”’ said US Rep. Jeff Fortenberry, the Nebraska Republican who introduced the measure.180 The vote was hailed as a rare event, the like of which did not occur since a 2004 vote under the Bush administration that acknowledged a genocide in Darfur. Although Chaldean and other minority sponsors were delighted and empowered by the vote, the measure remained, like the one about Darfur, advisory rather than actionable. Although rhetorically promising as a path for political influence, the limits of the victimology discourse and its Jewish analogies are reflected in on-the-ground politics in Iraq. Not only did the 2016 ‘genocide’ designation remained advisory rather than mandating action on behalf of the designated victims, the vote seemed to be less concerned with the victims of ‘genocide’ than with vilifying the projected Muslim perpetrators. It triggered a fierce national debate about whether the United States would now have to open its borders to thousands of ISIS victims and what that would entail in terms of ‘bringing terrorism home’. It became a hot button issue during the subsequent presidential debate that tipped the results in favour of increased anti-immigration and anti-Muslim policies after the elections and culminated with the ICE raids that did not single out persecuted minorities for preferential treatment. Following the ICE raids, the Chaldean community made national headlines again, this time with a disconcerting profile: a persecuted minority that furthered

208

The Chaldeans

the cause of its own persecution. From ‘true American’ Muslim-hating victors, Chaldeans turned overnight to identifying with victims in this country. Young Chaldeans wore T-shirts that read ‘Chaldean Lives Matter,’ while others held crosses and reproaching signs that read ‘you vowed to protect us’ as they protested in front of a Michigan courthouse. ‘[Trump] is the one who actually declared that Christians had no future in the Middle East … Vice President Pence said that it’s genocide for Christians in Iraq. How did everything flip and why is everything happening to us? It’s a question we just can’t get answers to,’181 reflected Father Kathawa, who had blessed Trump in person one month before the elections. Are there indeed no answers to these questions? And if there are, what set of ideological beliefs obfuscated these answers to the extent that the majority of US citizens identifying as Chaldeans, and strongly desiring to rescue their loved ones from persecution in Iraq, would fail to foresee these events and pledge allegiance to an administration with a clear anti-Arab agenda? The answer, I tried to show, is in great part located in Chaldeans’ shift from viewing themselves as Arabs to identifying simultaneously with the white mainstream in America and the Israeli exception in the Middle East. If we accept Stephen Sheehi’s argument that Islamophobia does not arise from a historical Christian distrust and acrimony towards Muslims but rather from white America’s history of racism and discomfort with people of colour,182 then we can begin to understand how Chaldeans have repeatedly fallen victims to political betrayal by the United States despite their filial loyalty and sense of religious affinity to the West. Martin Manna articulated this sense of betrayal and abandonment from both sides on the political spectrum in retrospect to ICE raids: Republicans – while they appreciate our Christian beliefs and they fight for us when we talk about the persecution of Christians – when you talk about immigration they seem to shut down. On the other side, when you talk to Democrats, they want to rally around social justice and immigration reform but when we talk about the persecution of Christians, it goes to a deaf ear.183

Having put their trust in the religious affinity that binds them with antiMuslim neoconservatives, evangelical Christians and hard-line American Zionists, Chaldeans overlooked how the pervasive, totalizing, systemic nature of Islamophobia in the United States continues to subsume them under the category of the non-white Other rather than the familiar non-Muslim ethnic minorities or co-religionists. Despite its evident limitations, Zionist-styled engagement with the US government on behalf of Iraq’s Christians has been far from meaningless to the diasporic Chaldean political actors, who consistently analyse, internalize and make use of propaganda rhetoric to advocate for their own interests and political aspirations under the aegis of the ‘Endless War’ regime. The internal limits of the Chaldean–Jewish analogy are reflected in the growing anti-Muslim fervour stemming from a Chaldean failure to retrace and assign culpability to foreign policy in matters that concern the devastation of Chaldean lives in Iraq. The Chaldean anti-Muslim position that culminated in the example

7. A Safe Haven Dream

209

of the virulent protest against the Sterling Heights Islamic Centre project out of fear of ISIS terrorism is a statement of unmitigated consent to the multiple policy betrayals involving Chaldeans and the United States, and to these policies’ design to outsource blame to Islam and sectarianism in Iraq. What is unmistakable about the Jewish–Chaldean partnership in Greater Detroit is its formulation around political agendas that pit US-based Chaldeans against their closest and oldest allies with whom they share deepest social and linguistic ties, the Arabs, whose identity they had assumed for many decades and continue to strategically assume unevenly at present, both at home and in diaspora. Statements by Chaldeans’ Zionist advocates such as Eugene Greenstein who condemn ISIS atrocities by likening the persecution of Christians to the Holocaust while asserting that ‘only the Israeli Defense Forces are preventing another genocide of the Jews’184 are reflective of a complex reassignment of roles by which Zionism is endorsed both as an ideology of legitimizing the existence of ethnocentric states and as a symbolic storehouse for articulations of religious superiority and hegemony vis-à-vis the Arab world. This context elucidates a broader Chaldean failure, which is to discern the entanglement of the United States and Israel as settler states. The enmeshed sovereignty of both states, as Keith Feldman described it, is the domain of ‘routinized deployments of state-sanctioned violence that manifest in expansive and linked regimes of militarization, a deepening apparatus of securitization and the tendering of neoliberal practices of accumulation by dispossession’.185 Drawing on material linkages to Israel as a military, economic and geostrategic partner of the United States, the Chaldean–Jewish union is predicated on an endorsement of Zionism. The interethnic and inter-religious Chaldean–Jewish coupling accentuates the ouster of Arabs and Muslims through its reliance on a familiar victimology, a ‘genocide’ profile and US guardianship as the common denominators between Chaldeans and Jews. The rhetoric merges neatly into the discourses of unipolar power, reiterating a mainstream position that posits Muslims and Arabs as the alien, immutable, maligned threat to the West’s national security.

8 C HA L D E A N N E S S : T H E O F F IC IA L N A R R AT I V E A N D I T S C HA N G I N G D I SP L AYS

One of the major themes we express and articulate throughout the exhibition [of the Chaldean Cultural Center] is that language, faith and culture act as an ancient thread unifying the entire history of Chaldean culture. Saylor, CCC exhibit designer1

Shortly after the sabotage of the National Iraqi Museum in Baghdad in the wake of the US-led occupation in spring 2003, the Detroit press began seeking opinions from the Iraqi diaspora concerning these events. Naturally, they reached out to the Chaldean community, an old ally who could be trusted to offer a critical perspective on Islam and the Iraqi government.2 The late Rosemary Antone, a community matron and a prominent public figure from the Chaldean American Ladies of Charity, expressed her fear that ‘many priceless objects of Chaldean culture in Iraq have been damaged or destroyed’.3 Shortly after this interview, Chaldeans in Michigan launched a campaign of Andersonian ‘political museumizing’4 to preserve, replicate and display what remained of ‘Chaldean culture’. The Chaldean Cultural Center (CCC) was scheduled to open in 2004 as an annex to the affluent Shenandoah Country Club and ‘feature a library, an historic time-line exhibit and a gallery with replicas of murals and ornate relics from ancient Chaldean society’. As a chairwoman of the CCC’s committee, Antone was quoted by the Oakland Press a week later saying, ‘Many of us who have been here a long time, and our children, don’t know the depth of the culture of Chaldeans … We have our own language. It’s important to preserve that.’5 A year later, the gallery project was articulated more fully online. On the homepage of the CCC, created in 2004, Mary Saroki Romaya described the gallery project in succinct terms that revealed the designers’ wish to encompass the Chaldean identity components which the book introduction outlined: Imagine stepping into an area where you could do all of the following: see what the town center of ancient Babylon was like; touch the stele on which Hammurabi’s Code of Laws were etched; walk into a sacred space and hear the

212

The Chaldeans

‘Our Father’ spoken in Aramaic as Christ would have taught it to His apostles; be transported to Telkaif, or other surrounding villages, in the early 20th century to witness a bride preparing for her wedding; journey to America and view the New York skyline as early pioneers would have seen it from Ellis Island; feel the pride as you stand inside a grocery store in the 1920’s as a Chaldean entrepreneur establishes his place in the Detroit business community; learn what Chaldeans are doing today as they expand their professional horizons. How is all of this possible? Welcome to the Chaldean Cultural Center (CCC).6

Figure 20  Floor plan of the CCC gallery exhibit, showing its five divisions.

8. The Official Narrative

213

Similarly, the 2007 Chaldean Household Demographics Survey offered a tabloid narrative of Chaldean identity, but this time following analysis of data gathered in a study by Walsh College and United Way of Southeast Michigan: Chaldeans differ from the majority of Iraqis in three major respects: first, they are Christian rather than Muslim; second, their ancestral language is Aramaic rather than Arabic; and third, most prefer to identify themselves as Chaldeans rather than as Arabs or Iraqis. Chaldeans also trace their lineage to the Chaldean empire of Ancient Mesopotamia, whose major city was Nineveh.7

A telling correlate to this emphasis on Chaldean identity as Christian rather than Muslim, Aramaic rather than Arabic, native Iraqi rather than Arab is the implicit publicity agenda of the CACC, the producer of this survey, who repeatedly found that earlier national and academic surveys did not represent the Chaldeans accurately. ‘The survey is particularly important because Chaldeans are chronically undercounted by the US Census Bureau,’ according to the late Michael George, chairman of the CFA at that time.8 Despite their interests in conveying palatable renditions of Chaldean truth, public narratives like the CCC’s and the Household Survey offer, instead, a dynamic interplay between experience, expression and aspiration. No questions on the multiple-choice Survey elicited the assertion that ‘Chaldeans trace their lineage to the Chaldean empire of Ancient Mesopotamia’. Statistically, it is debatable whether or not Chaldeans prefer the Chaldean identification over the Arab or Iraqi one. Two earlier surveys, as mentioned, the 2000 US Census and the University of Michigan’s Detroit Arab American Study (DAAS, 2004), revealed that a considerably smaller segment of the population identified as ‘Chaldean’ or ‘Chaldean/Assyrian/Syriac’. That figure was 32,000 in the US Census, compared to the Household Survey’s 113,000 Chaldeans in Southeast Michigan alone. DAAS, on the other hand, showed that only 15 per cent of the Arab and Chaldean American population chose to racially identify specifically as ‘Chaldean’, whereas 45 per cent of the Iraqi Christians identified in the study were comfortable with the identity label ‘Arab-American’.9 These quantitative discrepancies or overlaps (many Chaldeans identify interchangeably as Chaldean and Arab or Iraqi depending on the exigencies of the situation, and many speak both Aramaic and Arabic or only Arabic or neither) do not disqualify the text of the Chaldean Household Survey or the manicured narratives carefully culled out for the museum display, which stems from a different orientation towards rubrics and facts. For example, when I asked Martin Manna about these numerical discrepancies, he emphasized that the CFA and the CACC ‘never were fully involved with the DAAS survey because they [DAAS authors] chose to identify our community as Arabs rather than Chaldeans’. Manna attributed outside survey’s ‘undercount’ of Chaldeans ‘to the fact that there wasn’t much involvement from our community leaders and/or they didn’t have a comprehensive list of Chaldean households’.10 As an official narrative of identity, the Chaldean museum and the Survey’s chief aim is to exert socio-political influence, not historicity. Thus, the outcomes, irrespective of their objective reliability, resolutely remain of immense importance to

214

The Chaldeans

understanding the process of constructing ethnic identity in the United States. These results are important for a host of reasons, even when refashioned to meet certain representational agendas. For one, who delineates a group’s ethnography is a matter of significance when it comes to articulating a group’s past. It is essential in the present as well as for the broader construal of Chaldean ethnicity. The authority Chaldeans once ascribed to the representations created by the Roman Catholic Church or EuroAmerican missionaries, archaeologists and officials to stage their collective past in art galleries (Louvre, British Museum), national history museums (Iraq) and through individual orientalist tours (Maria Theresa Asmar, Yacoub and Mourassa Yavre) has shifted to collective auto-ethnographic projects, which are now becoming the central site of Chaldean rituals of citizenship. When ethnic groups exist in an age that stipulates their agency and voice for recognizing their presence, art and national museums can no longer sustain a definition of ‘Who the Chaldeans Are’. Francis Boji, who took over the lead of CCC museum planning after Antone’s death in 2009 and completed the project in 2017, described the rationale behind the exhibit: People think we are Arab because we come from an Arabic Islamic country but we have a different language, heritage and our own religion. We lost so much of our belongings and artifacts in all the wars in Iraq. This cultural center allows us to preserve our history.11

Chaldean narratives emerge as powerful tools when we construe them in light of the community’s pressing political need to negotiate a space for itself among competing identity discourses. The representational power of the classical ethnographic museum, national museum or national survey have given way to auto-ethnographic projects which many US-based Chaldeans find more fitting for representing them accurately. Among the various characteristics that set these auto-ethnographic endeavours apart from other types of representations is the notion that the ‘community narrative’ evolves from within the community, in response to its own situational needs and without the superimposition of the hegemonic voice of classical ethnography. The official auto-narrative serves to anchor collective remembering – an otherwise continuously changing, ambivalent and dispersed process – in tangible, transparent sites and fixed articulations. Although the official narrative is shaped by members of the community, it also has the power to reshape that community. What could, for instance, better account for the collective move from upholding twentieth-century Iraq as a paradigm of peaceful religious coexistence to remembering the country as the perpetual site of the religious persecution of minorities?12

Visual Displays of Firstness The ‘techniques of enframing, of fixing an interior and exterior and of positioning the observing subject’, which Mitchell discussed in the context of the French colonization of Egypt, ‘create an appearance of order, an order that works by

8. The Official Narrative

215

appearance’.13 These same techniques are at work in creating the authenticity of appearance, which is, recursively, the appearance of authenticity targeted by the Chaldean display of identity. The ancient–modern interplay is a site of cultural enactment – a site where the explicitly public is made, staged and displayed. This conceptual terrain is where collective knowledge is institutionalized and exhibited. There, sets of ‘regularities’ do not always correspond with individual lives, yet not infrequently dictate and regulate them.14 Promoted and financially sponsored by the influential CACC and other Chaldean institutions is the exhibit gallery of the CCC. Mesopotamia was the cradle of civilization, ‘where the wheel was invented, where astronomy and mathematics began. The first schools, the first library, the first law,’ said CACC CEO Martin Manna in a 2004 speech about the gallery, pointing out that it was to be created because it ‘gives us a chance to tell our story’.15 The CCC planned to devote an entry division of the gallery to these firsts – to a section entitled ‘The Ancient World’, where the Tower of Babylon, the Code Hammurabi and other Mesopotamian symbols would be displayed as ancestral relics. The quest for meaning, for finding answers to frequently asked questions and for affixing a communal identity and establishing stature appear in the official version of Chaldeanness guided by grand narratives of history. Since the popularization of the ancient Assyrians and their civilization by Western missionaries and archaeologists in the nineteenth century, both modern Assyrians and Chaldeans began to appropriate the history of the ancients. From the outset, ancient motifs suggesting association between ancient and modern Chaldeans/ Assyrians proliferated so widely and rapidly that by 1918 we find several such anachronistic references. A small emblem of the Assyrian King Sennacherib (705– 681 BCE), for instance, appeared on the bottom left corner of the page containing

Figure 21  Martin Manna for the Detroit News. The background is a replica of the Lion Hunt, an Assyrian stele relief from Nineveh, reproduced in Amer Fatuhi’s Mesopotamian Gallery.

216

The Chaldeans

Figure 22  Left: the image of Maria Theresa Asmar that appeared in the 1844 version of her Memoirs of a Babylonian Princess, showing her Ottoman-style headdress and her autographs in Arabic and English at the bottom. Right: the author as imagined in a 1918 American publication, showing the image of Assyrian King Sennacherib (705–681 BCE) at the bottom.

Figure 23  The ‘Chaldean National Calendar’, a publication initiated in 2002 by the CCC.

8. The Official Narrative

217

the (wrong) personal image of Maria Theresa Asmar in the Autobiography in the Middle of the 19th Century, 1820–1870, a publication of an American bibliographical series that republished an excerpt of her Memoirs of a Babylonian Princess. In contemporary diasporic Chaldean media, the ancient–modern visual juxtaposition is a prominent corollary of the official identity discourse. It is employed to emphasize the firstness, whose earliest formulations Chapter 1 retraced to the Roman Catholic Church’s titular designation of ‘Chaldeans’ and Chapter 2 situated in the context of the rescue missions of the Anglican Church and the search for human origins in Victorian England. Today, the ancient– modern display suggests that the modern Chaldeans were themselves the native inhabitants of Iraq, long before an Arab-Muslim majority established the current nation state, and appropriate a history that belongs to the remaining small and persecuted Chaldean/Assyrian minorities. Ancient Chaldean and Assyrian history heavily mediates the construction of modern Chaldean and Assyrian identities. Like other ancient–modern tropes that developed among Christian minorities in the nation-building era, such as Coptic–Pharaonic and Maronite–Phoenician, modern East Syriac populations have been reaching back in time to retrieve Assyrian and Chaldean monumental history and reconstitute it as exclusively and continuously their own. The sway the Louvre and the British Museum once held over standardizing the story of Mesopotamian identities in the nineteenth century has in part transferred to the auto-ethnographic projects of contemporary Chaldeans. ‘We want it to be as authentic and state-of-the-art as possible,’ Antone and Josephine Sarafa described their vision of the gallery.16 In 2004, during the early stages of the CCC gallery project, board members were hoping to procure Mesopotamian artefacts from various museums and antiquity dealers. Later on, however, they were admonished by various sectors about how buying such artefacts would in fact contribute to the harmful process of antiquity looting that has been taking place in Iraq since 2003. Consequently, they revised their plans by considering replicas that are ‘right from the original’, in place of authentic artefacts. By summer 2006, consultations with the Louvre and the Detroit Institute of Arts for recasting replicas of the Code of Hammurabi and other prominent Mesopotamian artefacts were underway. Concomitant with rewriting the past, official narrative displays mark a distinct moment of realignment in the diasporic group’s international politics and economic power relations. They involve hiring major US design and fabrication companies, sponsorship of the media sector, cooperation of multinational corporations and partnership with ethno-religious groups whose persecution trauma and national mythologies align effectively with the new narrative of Chaldeanness – in sum, the official display sanctions the use of ‘the aura of culture to attract capital’.17 For these reasons, well-funded displays like the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Michigan, figure prominently as successful analogies to be emulated. This narrative and its displays developed alongside the ethnonational salvage and rescue operations described earlier.

218

The Chaldeans

Figure 24  Although the Babylon Museum gallery did not materialize, the architecture of the Chaldean Educational/Cultural Center in ‘Chaldean Town’, Detroit, MI, founded 1974 (above) and the largest Chaldean Church in the world, St. George Chaldean Church in Shelby Township, MI, founded in 2006 (below) show how modern Chaldeans are invested in Babylonian-inspired design.

8. The Official Narrative

219

The ‘Babylon Museum of Native Iraqis’ was a competing auto-ethnographic exhibit project that sought to align itself with the existing Jewish paradigm by establishing a shared ancient chronology. The project was also envisioned in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks by a different group of Michigan-based Chaldeans, led by community historian Amer Fatuhi. The museum was envisioned to consist of six major exhibit halls, the first three of which focused on antiquity and on a stylized narrative of continuity18: 1. Ancient Mesopotamia: archaeological and educational exhibit of ancient history. 2. Chaldean Chronology: Chaldean history through artefacts and textual information. 3. Jewish [sic] of Babylon Chronology, 1900 BC–Present: archaeology and textual information.

The ‘Good American’ package: Christianity, Entrepreneurship and Family Values In her study of the marketing of Latinos and their products in the United States, Arlene Dávila observed, US minorities are all subject to stereotyping as low-income, unskilled, uneducated, crime-ridden, unemployed, and, in some cases, as perpetual foreigners, and, whether more or less family-oriented or brand-loyal than other market segments in the US, they are always required to prove their worth and compensate for their tainted image.19

Added to these ingredients that taint US minorities’ image – especially nonwhite immigrants – is the largely inescapable conflation of Chaldeans with the stigmatized Arabs and Muslims. After all, they have similar physical appearance as other Arabs, act like them and speak Arabic. For this reason, symbolic fashioning, or ‘cultural formatting’, of descent and language, among other ‘uniquely Chaldean’ qualities, aspire to stage Chaldean alterity away from other dangerously comparable groups of Arabs, Muslims and/or Middle Easterners in the United States and associate them with favourably successful minorities such as Jews, Maronites, and other Christian groups that have proven their ‘whiteness’ after assignment of ambivalent racial categorization in the early phase of their establishment in the United States. Obscuring the legal frameworks that necessitate posing as white leads Chaldeans who do not subscribe to the official narrative to witness their community as ‘racist’. Racism, evoking Stuart Hall’s definition, ‘is a structure of discourse and representation that tries to expel the Other symbolically – blot it out, put it over there in the Third World, at the margin’.20 Concurrently with Chaldean culturemakers’ attempt to cast their community out of Arab/Muslim contexts, the rhetoric of religion, professional success and heteronormative ‘family values’ attain

220

The Chaldeans

paramount status in the official narrative in order to profile Chaldean ethnicity as compatible with the projected prerequisites of the ‘white’ American mainstream. That is, staging Chaldeanness is a project that aspires to stage sameness. This interplay between alterity and sameness, or ‘descent’ and ‘consent’, to revisit Werner Sollors’s 1986 formulation, is the central drama that results in forming Chaldeanness as an American ethnicity. Catholicism in the Chaldean case assumes a medial position between sameness and difference. On the one hand, it conveys that Chaldeans are Christian, just like the religious majority in America. On the other hand, it nuances their Christianity when they add the qualification that Chaldeans belong to the ‘oldest’ Christian Church, to a unique ‘Chaldean’ brand of Christianity that is almost as old as Jesus himself. By adding reference to the ‘Chaldean Church of Babylonia’, the ancient– new discourse of firstness is doubly reinforced. This strategic portrayal is the foremost task of the official narrative of Chaldeanness. The plan of the CCC gallery designates a special room for ‘the Catholic Faith’. The Household Survey introduces Chaldean ‘difference’ from ‘the majority of Iraqis’ by pointing out first and foremost that ‘they are Christian rather than Muslim’.21 Not only are they Christian, explains the Survey, but also ‘religion is of enormous importance to members of the Chaldean community. Chaldeans are particularly proud of their heritage as one of the oldest of the Christian groups’.22 Again, as consumers of a narrative, we do not need an explanation of how a survey conducted through the mail could offer such a qualitative analysis of the Chaldean community. The quantitative portion of the study, on the other hand, claims that 59.4 per cent of all Chaldeans in Southeast Michigan attend church service regularly, with 76 per cent of these churchgoers attending mass in a Chaldean church.23 Omissions from the official narrative of Chaldeanness are more conspicuous when it comes to religion. To proceed with the example of the survey, it is worth noting how it reports that a mere 1 per cent of all Chaldeans do not attend church at all. This is not even the percentage of those who do not subscribe to the Chaldean Catholic faith, whose numbers the survey neglects to investigate. Two facts about the survey are worth pondering here in order to grasp the import of the religious identity omissions, among other omissions. First, the figures of the study are based on a mail survey that was sent out to a ‘Master List’ of 8,739 Chaldean households, acquired from local Chaldean church records, of which only 1,498 responded.24 Based on this response rate of 17 per cent, the survey claims ‘to be able to estimate the current Chaldean community as numbering 113,000 individuals’.25 In addition to these mathematically ambiguous figures (which the survey does not justify), the study depended on ‘estimates’ provided by the Chaldean churches and by schools of high concentrations of Chaldeans.26 In other words, if there are Chaldean households with no school-age or churchgoing members, it is safe to deduce that they were not represented in the survey. Second, the question of faith (e.g. do you consider yourself Christian, Catholic) does not appear. Instead, the survey asks ‘Do you attend church?’ (Question no. 17) and ‘where?’ (Question no. 18). It directly omits by so doing

8. The Official Narrative

221

any reference to Chaldeans who do not fit the criteria of its Christian narrative framework. Religion is part of the delineated package of ‘family values’ that designates Chaldeans as ‘family oriented’ and by extension as ‘good Americans’. Another important constituent of this narrative orientation towards the family and towards American virtue is presented through the depiction of Chaldeans in America as successful ‘entrepreneurs’. As hardworking men and women, the official discourse conveys that Chaldeans contribute to the betterment of their society and consequently their country. ‘The Chaldean Americans: Past and Present’ pamphlet describes Chaldeans’ positive contributions to the city of Detroit, emphasizing their role in maintaining the grocery business there after entrepreneurs of other ethnicities had abandoned the city in the wake of the 1967 riots: It has been the Chaldeans, in large part, who have provided neighborhood food shopping facilities, jobs and services to many inner city residents. Chaldean businessmen are participating in positive interaction programs with their customers and neighbors, contributing to soup kitchens, youth programs and area churches. Their contributions have been recognized and applauded by local, state and national officials and have been written up in the Congressional Record.

Defined thus, the Chaldean entrepreneurs were intended to figure in the CCC gallery, in a section entitled ‘The Land of Opportunity’. Related to this characterization of entrepreneurial success, one figure the survey boasts is that of the median Chaldean household income, which it estimated to be $96,100, ‘well above the area median’.27 ‘One reason for this’, the Survey explains, ‘is the fact that Chaldean households tend to be family households.’ Other details the survey reveals in order to demonstrate the well-above-average material prosperity of the Chaldean community in combination with its familial cohesiveness include Chaldeans’ ‘housing tenure and structure type’, their ‘housing value’, ‘fuel use’ and ‘business ownership’. Of the many omissions in this homogeneous representation of ‘Chaldean businessmen’, are the gambling problems associated with Chaldean business owners, particularly store owners whose stores sell lottery tickets.28 Another is the assortment of complaints raised by the African American communities in whose Detroit neighbourhoods Chaldeans operate many of their stores, and the antagonism that erupts intermittently between the city mayors and Chaldean store owners.29 Moreover, the armed robberies and murders suffered frequently on the job site are also omitted,30 as well as the proliferation of a ‘Chaldean Mafia’ in Detroit that had monopolized illicit drug trafficking and resulted in the death of several young individuals.31 No questions appear on the survey regarding any of the aforesaid prevalent problems, although it was purportedly designed to ‘cover just about everything’.32 With the serious social problems consigned to the private sphere, the official narrative selectively brackets the ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ of Chaldean business owners as their emblematic attribute.

222

The Chaldeans

The ‘Balanced Chaldean’ and More Omissions Chaldeans are good Americans, says the official narrative, polyphonically and in an array of gestures. As immigrants, they were propelled to this land by the American dream, which they quickly and repeatedly realized through their hard work and Christian ethics. In the original proposal of the CCC gallery, there was a section entitled ‘Journey to America’, in which the culture-makers envisioned communicating these ‘Major Concepts’: Most early Chaldean pioneers came for liberty, equality and prosperity. Early immigrants were economic entrepreneurs. Chaldean’s [sic] balanced acculturation with preserving their heritage.33

● ● ●

While ‘preserving heritage’ primarily amounts to conjuring symbolic referents through refurbishing certain elements from Mesopotamian antiquity, Aramaic and the village of Telkeif, ‘acculturation’ came to mean staging a similar stylized version of what it means to be American. Prevalent representations of this stylization are the word ‘American’, the American flag, American names and nicknames, proficiency in American English and outward compliance with national policies and the US government in power. The cover of the first issue of the Chaldean News (February 2004), for instance, represented the patriarch of the Chaldean Church with a background that included the hanging gardens of Babylon side by side with the American flag. Subsequent issues featured large-font ads of FBI jobs,34 articles about Chaldean policemen in Michigan,35 Chaldean store owners’ boycotting of Miller after the beer company had used the image of Jesus in a suggestively homoerotic way,36 and numerous depictions and articles about ecclesial life in the United States and in Iraq. These topical choices reflect the Chaldean News’ leaning towards expressing and supporting the US-based community’s more conservative views about life, work ethics and religious values. Emphasis on governmental jobs and American patriotic symbolism is made in such a way as if to suggest that all the Chaldean readers of the magazine share a similar patriotic identity. Moreover, recurrent reports on the affairs of the Chaldean Church and its dealings with Rome present Chaldean religious life in monolithic terms that stage Catholicism as the one and only possible religious affiliation to which all Chaldeans ascribe. Chaldeanness and Its Counter-Narratives In numerous other narratives of self and community, the difference between Arabs and Chaldeans is minimal or absent, as in the joint entrepreneurial projects of Ishtar, a famous Iraqi restaurant in Sterling Heights where large concentrations of Muslims, Arabs and Chaldeans reside. Ishtar restaurant is co-owned and operated by Chaldean and Muslim Iraqis who invested a large sum on the sumptuous ancient Mesopotamian décor of the place. Together, the owners present an Iraqi restaurant, where Iraqi identity and ancient Mesopotamian symbolism appear devoid of ethnic or religious specificity.

8. The Official Narrative

223

Dozens of Chaldeans who established Chaldean-American organizations were, or continue to be, active members of Iraqi- or Arab-American ones, such as Wendy Acho who was the Secretary of the CACC board and also the treasurer of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce. Amer Fatuhi who regularly hosted Chaldean events, such as the Babylonian New Year celebration in his Mesopotamia Learning Studio and Art Gallery, is also a co-founder of the Iraqi Artists’ association and the active organizer of ‘Iraqi cultural events’ that exhibit the same art works which otherwise appear in his Mesopotamian Gallery or during Chaldean art exhibits. The list goes on. A common denominator between the representational projects that stage a mutually exclusive Chaldean identity – such as the Household Survey, the CCC gallery and the Babylon Museum – is their didactic intention. The two exhibit sites both include a library and a space for lessons in history and Aramaic language in their project plans. The survey intends to inform the world who the Chaldeans are via ‘scientific research’.37 That the ancient history of modern Chaldeans is something that culture-makers have to persistently teach to young generations and outsiders through displays, lessons, lectures, etc. should alert us to the unlived quality of the monumental identity component. The non-stylized public and private presence of Chaldeans in American life (at work, in school, at home, etc.) does not spontaneously evoke a correlation with Mesopotamian antiquity. Alternative identifications of numerous individuals who think of themselves as Chaldean tend to problematize this ancient–modern liaison on regular basis. For instance, when I asked my Chaldean informants about their thoughts regarding the ancient Chaldeans, the majority expressed their confusion about their historical roots, referring me to book and articles written by community historians or claiming that they heard different accounts from Assyrian and Chaldean sources and that they were uncertain whether or not they were the same as or different from Assyrians. Nesreen, 21, answered: My [Assyrian] friend in Chicago told me that we’re Assyrians, but we don’t know it because we don’t study our history as well as they do. I guess she’s right. I mean, it’s so complicated. When I asked the [Chaldean] priest he told me not to believe that ‘cause she’s wrong. We’re Chaldean by religion and Iraqi by origin. The Chaldeans were there before the Assyrians. I don’t know. It’s so complex. I want to study our history at some point, but I have to study Aramaic first.38

Another informant, Faris, 27, who grew up in Iraq, shared the same uncertainty in different terms: I swear they gave me a headache with this question! In school [in Iraq] they kept drilling it into our heads that Nabukhadnazar was Saddam’s great grandfather, and then we come here and they tell us that we’re different and we’re the first and we’re the best and we’re the inventors of everything on earth. Of course I like the second version better [he laughs], don’t you? Now, when people ask me who are

224

The Chaldeans

Figure 25  Interior design of Ishtar Restaurant in Sterling Heights, Michigan, featuring a large replica of the Ishtar Gate.

you, I can philosophize and tell them how exotic I am. Americans love it when they know I speak Sureth. ‘Oh, you can read the Bible in the original?!’ they ask me right away. ‘Can you say something in Aramaic please!’39

8. The Official Narrative

225

A different example of ambivalence towards antiquity is that articulated by academic and pro-Palestine activist Deborah Najor, who in her presentation at a 2006 conference opened her talk with the following provocation: Born in Detroit, I am an Aramaic-speaking Iraqi-Catholic Chaldean who is a descendent of the ancient Babylonians. Why do I want to lay claim to Nebuchad-nazar, who conquered Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple, and deported the Jews? Because, if I do not describe myself this way, and I contest the historical accuracy of this identity construction, then I am not a ‘true’ Chaldean; furthermore, I am anti-Chaldean, according to those who want to police our culture and dictate the parameters of its terrain.40

Najor’s talk also pointed to Chaldeans’ Islamophobic tendencies and to the cultural inaccuracy of their diasporic self-designation as non-Arabs. Indeed, Najor got herself into the ‘trouble’ she had anticipated from the gatekeepers of Chaldean culture. In the Chaldean News issue that was printed the same month during which the conference was held, Najor’s views appeared in an article entitled ‘Ruffling Feathers: Teacher Challenges the Mainstream View’. On the same page, side by side with the article, a column entitled ‘The Other Viewpoint’ retorted rebuking reactions from some of the popular culturemakers in the community. Amer Fatuhi, for one, asserted that Najor’s comment characterized ‘a very naïve viewpoint. Our nationality is not a point of view.’ Rosemary Antone confirmed that Najor’s view was ‘absolutely not true … We as Chaldeans came before the Jewish and Islamic religions. We were the beginning … We’ve gone to different authorities; we’ve really gone into detail and deep research and feel very confident that our accuracy is right on the money.’41 The Arab identity that is mostly missing or forcefully removed from the official narrative of Chaldeanness often resurfaces in unofficial or individual accounts. For example, someone who chooses to identify as ‘Queer Chaldean’ said during one of our interviews: Personally, I am interpolated by Arab cultural signifiers (belly dancing, food, language, etc.), and I call myself Arab American. If someone asks me what my ethnicity is, I say Middle Eastern/Arab, and then get specific by including Iraqi Christian, or Chaldean. The problem is that no one knows what Chaldean is. So I am constantly forced to regurgitate the monolith definition and reinforcing this equation: Iraqi+Christian-Arab (that is a minus sign). I also call myself Arab American for solidarity. If we want real peace talk in the world, I believe it is imperative that we, people of Middle Eastern decent, join, not conflating our identities, but understanding them, to fight for justice and equality.42

‘Solidarity’, which prompts a large number of Chaldean individuals, like this ‘Queer Chaldean’, to identify situationally as Arab, is precisely what the official

226

The Chaldeans

narrative wants to invalidate in order to emphasize Chaldean Americans’ categorical difference from Arabs. This happens even when representatives of Chaldean culture seek cultural engagement with the Arab-American community. For instance, for a long time Chaldeans have been active participants in the annual Arab World Festival in Detroit (established 1972), yet in the year 2000, after long-standing requests from the CFA, CACC, Chaldean radio channel and other influential culture-makers in Michigan, the name of the festival was changed to ‘the Arab and Chaldean Festival’.43 Although changing the name of the Festival did not reflect a change in its programme, activities or audience, bringing in the term ‘Chaldean’ to the title accentuated a sense of difference, autonomy and distance from the ‘Arab’ component of the Festival. Concurrently, the intended impression of compatibility and cooperation between Chaldeans and Arabs is what the Festival embodied in practice. ‘The roar of countervalent stories is ever present, on the edge of recognition,’ Ochs and Capps reflected in their study of how we narrate the self. The presence of subcultures ensures that Chaldeans, like other ethnic groups in America, also house a range of variations and private social spheres where peculiarities, taboos, oppositions and counter-Chaldeanness are enacted. In 2008, while Iraq’s Chaldean population in Iraq was contending with a severe wave of violence in the aftermath of the US-led invasion, with almost half of its people either internally or externally displaced, other concerns were also fermenting among second-generation Chaldean immigrants in the United States. ‘Queer Chaldeans’ sent a collective anonymous letter to the Chaldean News outlining the following demands: We are part of the Chaldean community. We are also part of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered community. We want you to know we exist and we are not going anywhere. You might not SEE us, but our alleged invisibility does not make us less real … We are speaking out because as first and second generation Chaldeans, we are still striving to find a cultural identity that encompasses equality and justice. We are Queer Chaldeans and we will not allow anyone to strip us of our identity.44

The Chaldean News did not publish this letter, just as it also ignored a number of letters making representational demands the recognition of which would have de-centred the official collective narrative of Chaldeans (as a group of traditional, conservative, heteronormative family values).45 A decade later, however, the ‘scandalous’ found its way to the mainstream as a subgenre. The conservative monthly is now featuring, among other counterviews, a full story of the Zakar twins and their ordeal with their homophobic mother and family as gay men.46 A new strand of outspoken Chaldean youth has appeared in recent years in reaction to the streamlined, politically conservative formation which dominated the cultural scene in the early decades of migration and settlement in the United States. These are mostly second-generation diasporic individuals and collectives who were initially invisible and who are now more visibly outraged or rebellious

8. The Official Narrative

227

against the official version of Chaldeanness. This social outrage is often located at the intersection of leftist political alignments that interrogate the community’s rightwing, conservative status quo. Examples abound. From the twenty-five-year-old Zakar twin authors of Pray the Gay Way (2017)47 who chronicled their coming out to their homophobic Catholic Chaldean mother, their relationship to Catholicism and their call for wider acceptance and non-partisan tolerance – to the anonymous group that called itself ‘Queer Chaldeans’ and combined their demand for community recognition and acceptance in 2008 with a call for social equality and justice, to a new group of attorneys and activists, including Nadine Kalasho, Nora Youkhana and Wisam Naoum, who spearheaded the class-action lawsuit in association with ACLU on behalf of the Chaldean refugees raided and arrested by ICE in summer 2017. This latter group of young legal workers challenged the ‘old guard leadership’ with a progressive agenda and a radical new way of approaching migration policy and social justice issues in Michigan and beyond. ‘From the time the news of the raids spread through the Chaldean community,’ one media outlet observed: Responses saw a clear generational divide. Many older, more traditional community members – who had for decades been politically conservative and took Donald Trump on his word that he would protect Middle Eastern Christians – felt more of a betrayal than their younger counterparts. The ‘old

Figure 26  Cover art of Michael & Zach Zakar’s memoirs, Pray the Gay Way (2017).

228

The Chaldeans

guard leadership,’ as Naoum describes it, wanted to fall back on a strategy of political pressure, even though Michigan Republicans were mostly silent on the issue, and attempts by Democratic Congressman Sander Levin and Chaldean lobbyists in Washington to engage the Trump administration fell on deaf ears. On the other hand, some younger community leaders, led by Kalasho and her legal partner, Nora Youkhana, saw the situation as much too urgent to rely on politics.48

In Closing Identity ‘always has ambivalence within it’, Stuart Hall noted, since ‘the story of identity is a cover story’.49 The case of the modern Chaldeans is a case of competing versions of the cover story. Their story has gone by so many names and acquired so many hyphens – from Syriac to Nestorian to Chaldean to Assyrian, passing by Ottoman, Iraqi, Arab and, finally, for the purposes of this discussion, American. The modern Chaldean cover story took root in the nascent state of Iraq where competing forms of nationalism were at play. It later travelled to the United States where it encountered a new set of parameters of identity. When Chaldeans, who stood at the representative periphery for decades, began to amass a recognizable majority, the result was a dialogical process that bears the resilience to alter the contours of the past. This chapter has taken on testing the stakes and efficacy of upholding these invented traditions in the United States. For close to a century, Chaldean culturemakers – epitomized today in Southeast Michigan by Martin Manna, president and CEO of the Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce (CACC) and community spokesperson who is among the first to be sought out by local and national media on matters that concern Chaldean history, culture and politics – have laboured to construct and maintain a stylized brand of ethnicity – mostly ahistorical and conservative in outlook – that could ensure the entry and flow of the group into the cultural mainstream of white Christian America independently of the overarching Arab and Muslim contexts in which Chaldeans have historically been ensconced. Official narratives, following Marita Eastmond, remain vulnerable to the destabilizing effects of ‘historical deposits’ – counter-narratives and memories that are at odds with past narratives and official versions of identity.50 In the case of the representational dynamics within the Chaldean community, the role of these counter-narratives, especially the ones forming in the diaspora of the post-2003 era, is central for understanding Chaldean identities at the intersection of religion, ethnicity and nationality. The Chaldean story is incomplete without consolidating the official narratives of Chaldeanness and the contemporary auto-ethnographic sites in which they are re-articulated. With this we may provide a working definition of the identity label ‘Chaldean’ as a process that is both synchronic and diachronic in scope.51 Chaldean identitarian discrepancies are not unprecedented in the US-based Chaldean community, yet its emergence into the public sphere is recent. Those who are engaging in challenging the official version of Chaldeanness publicly consider

8. The Official Narrative

229

their actions ‘brave’, and often designate themselves as ‘progressive’, ‘dissident’ or ‘reactionary’ individuals. The majority of cultural ‘dissidents’, however, still prefer to voice their opinions under the cover of anonymity. For instance, after describing my book project to the authors of the anonymous ‘Queer Chaldean’ letter, they asked if I planned to publish it using a pseudonym. The often-omitted identity components that inform the Chaldean representational margins are germane to the discussion of the politics of Chaldean ethnicity. These cultural subalterns and what I term the unofficial narratives of identity – e.g. the fact that the majority of Iraq’s Chaldeans speak Arabic rather than Aramaic and are culturally Arab rather than Syriac – appear in contrast with the official narratives of the state, Church and financially powerful institutions that form the backbone of the book’s content. Together, official and unofficial culture-makers work tacitly to ensure the community’s entry into the American mainstream, an entry that is predicated upon stylizing Chaldeans as simultaneously distinct in content from other American ethnic groups and structurally just the same. While the construction of ethnic history continues to excite controversy among Chaldean culture-makers in the United States, it is important to understand the politics that give shape to people’s investments in the past. In discussing the ‘uses and abuses of heritage’, Graham and colleagues conclude that ‘most heritage, most of the time, and for most people is harmoniously experienced, non-dissonant and an essential enrichment of their lives’, but that it is sometimes the instrument with which to contest the past.52 What makes invented heritage a unifier of Chaldean identity today is the set of circumstances that occasion it: early migrants’ quest for legal status and material prosperity; the need to redefine the community’s citizenship in a multicultural, post-9/11 United States; and the urgent quest to come to the aid of the persecuted Christian communities in decimated Iraq. Recasting just the right heritage at each given historical juncture opens up a new zone of cultural flux and opportunity. It is far from strange in such history of transition that new representational strategies should come to aid Chaldean culture-makers in waging the utopian identity project that is the mélange of modernity and nineteenth-century antiquarianism.

EPILOGUE: C E N T R E A N D P E R I P H E R I E S O F C HA L D E A N N E S S I N T H E T W I L IG H T O F T H E N AT IO N S TAT E

Article 2 First: Islam is the official religion of the State and it is a fundamental source of legislation: A. No law that contradicts the established provisions of Islam may be established. B. No law that contradicts the principles of democracy may be established. C. No law that contradicts the rights and basic freedoms stipulated in this constitution may be established. Second: This Constitution guarantees the Islamic identity of the majority of the Iraqi people and guarantees the full religious rights of all individuals to freedom of religious belief and practice such as Christians, Yazedis, and Mandi Sabeans. Article 125 This Constitution shall guarantee the administrative, political, cultural and educational rights for the various nationalities, such as Turkmen, Chaldeans, Assyrians, and all other components. Iraqi Permanent Constitution, 20051

On 15 October 2005, Iraq voted on a new constitution for a sovereign nation state ravaged by decades of repressive dictatorial rule, the eight-year-long Iraq–Iran war, two American bombing campaigns and occupations and the deadliest civil war since its creation. Despite efforts to redress the wounds that brought it to the brink of disintegration, Iraq, like most of the nation states of the post-Ottoman Middle East, emerged in the past decade as the site of unprecedented escalation in violence between Muslims and minorities, and of hardening interfaith boundaries and polarized ethno-religious differences. Western media’s portrayal of this sectarian violence generally focused on Islam as the culprit. Inherently intolerant of non-Muslims, expansionist, patriarchal – Islam was once again indicted by the Orientalist rhetoric of the nineteenth century, evoking Said’s depiction of the European framing of the religion as a ‘fraudulent new version’ of Christianity.2

232

The Chaldeans

The post-Ottoman Euro-American emancipatory promise of political and civil equality, institutional democracy and language-based nationalism that had transformed how Christian subjects came to understand themselves in relation to the consolidated Arab nation state has given way, once again, to a ‘dhimmi’ vision of inequality by virtue of having a different faith in an Islamic world. The successive practical failures of the modern international regimes to protect minorities – from the League of Nations in 1919 and up to the United Nations’ declaration of the rights of minorities in 19923 – have given way to the revival of a prior rhetoric of religious inequality. Middle Eastern minorities – the Chaldeans as a case study – are emerging from this combustible mix of nationalism, colonial trauma, chronic problem of lack of implementation of minority rights and intermediary status within the ‘clash of civilizations’, as, once again, the vulnerable ‘ra‘aya’ whose survival is predicated on the protection of the West. One of the salient features of this portrayal of religious minorities, then and now, is their lack of agency and overwhelming dependence on the intervention of a Christian – though ostensibly secular – West. Christians have been at the centre of the international and Iraqi debate on minorities since 2003, yet the constitution, the single most important document that putatively defines and protects their rights in Iraq today, is also a document that exemplifies the paradox and ambiguity inherent in the liberal secular designation ‘minority’. The prevalence and persistence of the institutional paradox of secular neutrality and Islamic precedence is striking. Not only does it exist in the constitution of Iraq today, but it has been there since the founding of the country. Not only does it exist in Iraq, but in other constitutions of the surrounding Arab Middle East.4 While recognition that the state must accord certain rights to minorities has persisted nominally since the first constitution of the Kingdom of Iraq was drafted in 1924, discrepancies between legal language and legal practices addressing minority rights were present from the outset and only intensified with the passage of time. For instance, Article 13 of the first constitution designated Islam as the official religion of the state but gave ‘complete freedom of conscience and freedom to practice the various forms of worship in conformity with accepted customs’ to all inhabitants of the country. Article 16, moreover, gave ‘the various communities’ the right to maintain schools and teach their own tongues.5 In practice however, as we saw in Chapter 3, the system created in twentieth-century Iraq did not allow for the implementation of such freedoms. Regulations and laws on land ownership, army conscription and voting negated this constitutional language. More importantly, as in the case of Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world, the central role Islam came to play in articulating majoritarian national identity and law resolutely contradicted the secular principle of state neutrality towards religious practices. In addition to the persistence of the discrepancies between the theory and practice of pluralism in constitutional Iraq,6 the language of the permanent constitution of 2005 amplifies original ambiguities. Articles 2 and 125 enshrine the religious and national rights of minorities vis-à-vis state law and majority identity in paradoxical terms. First, while minorities are verbally granted

Epilogue

233

democracy, civil rights and freedoms, these provisions are strictly framed by the assertion that they may not contradict Islamic jurisprudence, which is to serve as the basis for the Federal Supreme Court.7 Second, the constitution averts making associations between ‘Christians’ as religious subjects (Article 2) and ‘Chaldeans’ as ‘nationalities’ or ‘components’ (Article 125). Third, in addition to neglecting to qualify whether ‘Christians’ refers to religious, ethnic groups or both, the articles avoid the use of the term ‘minorities’ (aqaliyyaat) to define ‘Chaldeans’ and the other ethnic groups, opting instead for the opaque designation ‘nationalities’ (qawmiyyaat) and the more neutral designation ‘components’ (mukawwinaat). Questions regarding the classification of Christians in the constitution are left unanswered – Are they a religious sect or a nationality? Nor does the constitution offer clarity about Christians’ ethnicity – Are they Arab, Assyrian, Chaldean, Kurd or other under the law? Finally, who holds the authority to determine these designations?8 No longer is Albert Hourani’s long-lived 1947 definition of ‘minority’ in the Arab world – as either non-Sunni Muslim, non-Arabic-speaking or both9 – operable in post-2003 Iraq or elsewhere in the Middle East. Although the idea that minorities in the region were predetermined, clearly defined, separable and distinct from the majorities persisted for the bulk of the twentieth century, the past two decades have made way for a new scholarly understanding of ‘minority’ as a process of minoritization. It is within this framework that this book tried to situate the Chaldeans. The common denominator among the minority formations we see across the Middle East, including the Chaldeans and the Assyrians who were examined more closely in this book, is that they were sparked during the nineteenth century through the confluence of missionary work, secular notions of governance, the rise of nationalism and the legacy of the foreign protection of the millets.10 Iraq historian Peter Sluglett warned us that the whole question of ‘minorities’ and ethno-sectarian groups in the Middle East is, from the outset, fraught with complications on two accounts: definitions that are either too loose or too confining. In the twentieth-century project of creating an ethnically homogeneous Iraq, loose definitions tended to lump together too many of these groups under one banner. In the case of the Chaldeans, it meant their generic inclusion under labels such as ‘Christian Arabs’, ‘Christian components’. ‘Middle Eastern minorities’ or ‘Iraqi Christians’. Confining definitions like Hourani’s, on the other hand, tended towards essentialism, presupposing that each religious sect (ta’ifa) or nationality/ race (qawmiyya) had maintained the same disparate profile, composition, social demands and political context over time.11 Chaldeans were considered ethnically Arab in official Iraqi discourse throughout the nation-building period. We saw how in the internal diaspora of Kurdistan after 1991, and in the external diaspora of the United States, they gradually began shedding their Arabness until their Chaldean or Syriac identity became mutually exclusive with the Arab label on the US Census and in Kurdish public discourse. In the course of Chapter 3, we saw how most variables did not remain constant in the configuration of Chaldean identity during the twentieth century. The remaining chapters that constitute the

234

The Chaldeans

second half of the book demonstrated how this continued to be the case during the twenty-first century, and how new conceptual and political affiliations were formed in diaspora with other ethno-religious groups, such as Maronites and Jews. The ambiguities inherent in the ‘minority’ status in the Arab world have become the hallmark of debate not only among minority scholars, human rights advocates and Iraqi intellectuals and proponents of pluralism (ta‘addudiyya) who struggle to create a space in the public discourse for Iraq’s minorities to uphold the faltering identity of Iraq as a pluralistic, secular nation state.12 Significantly, as this book set out to show, these ambiguities in political designations have generated a perennial identity debate among Iraq’s ethno-religious minorities themselves, especially in the Western diaspora. While the key challenge facing Arab and Iraqi intellectuals grappling with the minority question in the twenty-first century is the search for a place for these ethno-religious groups as part of a more pluralistic national identity despite the hegemonic discourse of the law of the land, these groups – prominently the Chaldeans, like the Assyrians a century before – are questioning both their alliance with the ethnic and religious majorities in Iraq and with their own Iraqi and Arab identities. Emphasis on the religious identity of the Chaldeans became the defining feature that set the group apart from the Assyrian counterpart in the twentieth century, when Assyrianism assumed a clearer profile as a separatist nationalist identity. However, these preferences began shifting noticeably in the wake of the 2005 constitution, especially during the subsequent sectarian civil war in 2006–07. The position of the Chaldeans as merely a separate religious group became more tenuous, with the surrounding discourses providing no plan for religious minority protection and the overarching society grappling with competing notions of what constitutes membership in a post-Ba‘thist nation. Asserting one of the more acknowledged ethnicities, such as the Assyrian, Aramaic or Syriac, provided stronger claim to the protection of the law and to a legitimate position in a social order that explicitly necessitates communal identification.13 Amid the rapid transformation of Iraq’s governance body, security apparatus and demographic distribution in the post-invasion era, and reflecting the precedence set under Ba‘th Party rule, Chaldeans in Iraq continued to prefer a lay state where the emphasis would be on citizenship rather than ethnic or religious designations. This preference was also aligned with the orientation of the Chaldean Church, which historically did not support the expression of Chaldeanness as an ethnic identity for its followers. Moreover, despite the mass exit of persecuted minorities from Iraq in recent decades, the Chaldean Church consistently encouraged the Chaldean community to remain in Iraq, the region where its ecclesial identity developed and where it continued to be headquartered during the twentieth century. It also emphasized the cultivation of a Chaldean religious identity to ensure the survival of the Church and its unique character along with the ethnic integration of its followers into the Iraqi nation state as Arabs. Though emphasized further since the rapid migrations out of Iraq from 1991 onwards, the identitarian policies of the Church that stemmed from fear of losing its ecclesial particularity were met with noticeable resistance

Epilogue

235

from the people. A shift towards ethnic identification began to characterize Chaldean migrants in the United States and the internally displaced Chaldeans in northern Iraq. This alternation between the religious and ethnic minority status did not happen in isolation from the shifts happening at home or the adjacent developments in other minorities in the diaspora. As Sarah Gualtieri and Akram Khater demonstrate in their preeminent studies of the early Syrian migrations to the United States, ideas of belonging and affiliation with an Arab state were in constant dialogue with the discourses developing in diaspora.14 This study aimed to demonstrate that – for the Chaldeans too – migration, mobility and exile were not only instigated by political upheavals at home, but also helped incubate new nationalist sentiments, and export new national identities and notions of antiquity and modernity back to the homeland. It delineated the Chaldean population as a socio-economically and politically distinct class yet one that is integral to both Iraq and to the American diaspora.

APPENDIX: APPELLATIONS AND LANGUAGES Period in Use

Main Settlement

Language Spoken

Mesopotamian

Various

Mesopotamia

Various

Generic ethnonym I use in reference to all of the groups below, especially in the context of ancient history, to indicate dissociation from the religious or political denotations the other terms carry.

Assyrian (ancient)

Imperial periods: c.2000 BCE–612 BCE

Northern Mesopotamia (Assyria)

Akkadian, Aramaic, other

Arabic: Ashuri (in reference to the ancient Assyrians only); Aramaic: Ashuraya. Ashuri.

Chaldean (ancient)

Imperial period: 612 BCE–539 BCE

Southern Mesopotamia

Akkadian, Aramaic, other

Arabic: Kildani; Aramaic: Kaldaye. Dominant ethnic group in Mesopotamia during the eighth and seventh centuries BCE.

Babylonian (ancient)

Imperial periods: c.1900 BCE–539 BCE

Southern Mesopotamia (Babylonia)

Akkadian, Aramaic, other

Arabic: Babili. Historically two ethnic groups, Sumerians and Akkadians, dominated the region of the Babylonian Empires. Term is not used in reference to a modern group in the context of Iraq or the diaspora.

Aramean (ancient)

c.14th–8th Northern century Mesopotamia BCE

Aramaic (ancient)

Aramaic: Aramaye. Term relevant due to the use of the Neo-Aramaic language within the modern Assyrian/ Chaldean communities. Not commonly used as an ethnonym. Historically it carried connotations of paganism within the discourse of the various branches of the Church of the East.

Appellation

Other Context

Appendix

Appellation

Period in Use

Main Settlement

Language Spoken

237

Other Context

Nestorian

c.431–1681 Urmia (Persia), Hakkari (Turkey and Iraq), Nineveh Plains (Iraq)

Arabic, Turkish, Farsi, Kurdish, NeoAramaic/ Neo-Syriac

Neo-Aramaic: Nestoraye. After the 1681 conversion to Catholicism, the Vatican discontinued using the term to refer to those it labeled ‘Uniate’ and ‘Chaldean’.

Uniate (Chaldeans)

1681– Present

Urmia (Persia), Hakkari (Turkey and Iraq), Nineveh Plains (Iraq)

Arabic, Turkish, Farsi, Kurdish, NeoAramaic/ Neo-Syriac

Modern Chaldeans are one of six Uniate groups. This is the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical designation of Eastern Catholic Churches. Not commonly used outside of religious context. Currently the term carries pejorative connotation and is avoided in the discourse of the Catholic Church.

Chaldean (modern)

c.1681– Present

Iraq, US (MI, CA) Arabic, English, NeoAramaic/ Neo-Syriac (Sureth)

Neo-Aramaic: Kaldaye.

Assyrian (modern)

c.1881– Present

Iraq, US (IL, CA)

Arabic, English, NeoAramaic/ Neo-Syriac

Arabic (reference to the modern group): Athuri, NeoAramaic: Aturaye.

AssyroChaldean; Chaldo-Assyrian (modern)

c.1918– Diaspora Present (Europe-US) US census: 1998– Present

Various + NeoAramaic/ Neo Syriac (Sureth)

Neo-Aramaic: Kaldu-Asuraye. Ethnonym was coined by Nestorian leader Agha Petrus in exile after the First World War to unite members of both Churches who were both weakened by the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire. Members of Chaldean and Assyrian Organizations who met in Michigan in 1998 officially suggested the title ‘ChaldeanAssyrian’ to represent both groups in US census.

Appendix

238

Appellation

Period in Use

Main Settlement

Language Spoken

Other Context

Syriac-Siryan (modern)

US census: Syria, Lebanon, 2000– Iraq Present

Arabic, Neo- Neo-Aramaic: Suryoye/ Aramaic/ Suryaye. Primarily references Neo-Syriac language spoken by Mesopotamian Christians. Ethnic designation by the ‘Syrian Orthodox Church’ to represent Levantine Christians independently of the ‘Syrians’ in 2000 US census.

Christian Kurds, Christian Arabs

c.1970– 2003

Arabic, Kurdish, NeoAramaic/ Neo-Syriac

Iraq

Politically motivated designations promoted by the Ba‘th Party. Intended to subsume various ethnic groups in Iraq under Kurdish and Arab ethnicities in the national census.

NOTES Introduction   1 Sarhad Jammo, Presentation at Orchard Lake Middle School (Orchard Lake: Michigan, 2001). Cited in Natalie Henrich and Joseph Henrich, Why Humans Cooperate: A Cultural and Evolutionary Explanation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 77.   2 Dunya Mikhail is a poet of Chaldean descent who has established her reputation in the United States as both an Arab and Iraqi writer. During the first part of her life in Iraq, she participated in Iraqi poetry festivals and published in Iraqi journals in the 1980s and 1990s. Following her immigration to the United States, Mikhail’s poems began to appear in anthologies of Iraqi, Arab and Arab-American Poetry, such as Le Poeme Arabe Moderne, Iraqi Poetry Today, The Post-Gibran Anthology of New ArabAmerican Writing, New Arab Poetry and The Poetry of Arab Women. She gradually began to gain the reputation of ‘dissident and subversive poet’, a description that would not have been viable when she was writing under the censorship of the Ba‘thist regime in Iraq.   3 The Arabic term jaliya – which is used by US-based Arabic-speaking Chaldeans to refer to their community – is not used to refer to Chaldeans in Iraq, either by themselves or by others. Because communities are often extended groups that share familial ties in Middle Eastern societies, the term is simply omitted. Chaldeans refer to themselves as al-Kildan, jama’a, group of people, or simply as ahal, the colloquial term for ‘closely related people’. The fact that the expression al-jaliya al-kildaniyya, understood as ‘the Chaldean community’, was appropriated in the American diaspora should signal the identification practices that were derived through encounters with the prerequisites of the host culture. Jaliya literally means colony, delegation or a group of people leading a temporary life away from home. It was borrowed because the Arabic language does not have a term that translates perfectly into ‘community’ in the English sense of the term. See Andrew Shryock’s use of the term in the context of Detroit’s Arab communities’ collective self-references, Shryock, ‘Ethnic Futures’, in Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream, ed. Nabeel Abraham and Andrew Shryock (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2000), 485.   4 American literature scholar Werner Sollors presented what came as a radical new interpretation of ethnicity in the 1980s in his studies Beyond Ethnicity (1986) and The Invention of Ethnicity (1989). He suggested that ethnicity, the state of ‘belonging and being perceived by others as belonging to an ethnic group’, is an invented state, a condition of ‘consent’ rather than ‘descent’, confronted and maintained by various groups after they relocate in the United States. Werner Sollors, Beyond Ethnicity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), xiii, 4–6, 35.   5 Stuart Hall, ‘Ethnicity: Identity and Difference’, Radical America 23, no. 4 (1991): 15.   6 The terms West, Western and Westerner appear capitalized in most of this book to stress the cultural and conceptual disparity experienced by Europeans and Americans on the one hand, and the Chaldeans and Assyrians whom they encountered in

240

Notes to pp. 3–9

nineteenth-century Mesopotamia on the other. I continue to capitalize these words to indicate the conceptual prevalence of this divide in shaping contemporary Chaldean identities and discourses.   7 There are no fully reliable Chaldean counts, but estimates give us a good idea about the range. Oussani, one of the important Chaldean Church historians, modified his population estimate from 100,000 strong in 1901 (Gabriel Oussani, ‘The Modern Chaldeans and Nestorians, and the Study of Syriac among Them’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 22 (1901): 81) to 150,000 in 1921 (Gabriel Oussani, ‘An Historical Essay on the Assyro-Chaldean Christians’, Introduction to Shall This Nation Die? By Joseph Naayem, Shall This Nation Die? (New York: Chaldean Rescue, 1921), xxiv–xxv). Before him, Georges Ebed-Jesus V. Khayyath, ‘Etat Religieux des dioceses formant le Patriarcat Chaldeen de Babylone au 1er janvier 1896’, Jean-Baptiste Chabot (ed.) Revue de l’Orient chrétien, Series 1, I/4 (1896): 453; and Martin 1867, 205–10, estimated a range of 70,000–80,000 Chaldeans in the area.   8 Again, figures show substantial variations. The Vatican’s low statistics of 44,000 in 1928 may account for inaccessibility and lack of infrastructure in the populated areas, whereas the high local figure of 140,000 by Stephen Kajo in 1937 point to a consistent trend of exaggerating the count of each competing denomination to express economic power and legitimacy. See Kristian Girling, The Chaldean Catholic Church: Modern History, Ecclesiology and Church-State Relations (Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2018), 60–1.   9 Amanda Ufheil-Somers, ‘Iraqi Christians: A Primer’, Middle East Research and Information Project. MER 267 – Christians 43, 2013, http://www.merip.org/mer/ mer267/iraqi-christians-primer; Joseph Sassoon, The Iraqi Refugees: The New Crisis in the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2008), 25. 10 Anthony O’Mahony, ‘The Chaldean Catholic Church: The Politics of Church-State Relations in Modern Iraq’, Heythrop XLV (2004a): 438. 11 Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 98–9. 12 For instance, John Joseph’s The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East (Leiden: Brill, 2000); Adam Becker’s Revival and Awakening: American Evangelical Missionaries in Iran and the Origins of Assyrian Nationalism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015); Sargon Donabed’s Reforging a Forgotten History: Iraq and the Assyrians in the Twentieth Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016); Madawi al-Rasheed’s Iraqi Assyrian Christians in London: The Construction of Ethnicity (Lampeter: Edwin Mellen, 1998). 13 Sinan Antoon, ‘Barbari fi ruma’ (Barbarian in Rome), Jadaliyya, 9 April 2013, http:// www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/11129/. 14 Samuel Shimon, ‘Iraqi fi Baris (Iraqi in Paris) (Cologne: Dar al-Jamal, 2005), 142. 15 Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Inventing Traditions’, in The Invention of Tradition, ed. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1–14. 16 Amatzia Baram, Culture, History, and Ideology in the Formation of Ba‘thist Iraq, 1968–1989 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991). 17 Edward M. Bruner, ‘Experience and Its Expressions’, in The Anthropology of Experience, ed. V. W. Turner and E. M. Bruner (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 3–30. 18 Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1978), 63. 19 First coined by John Dorst in The Written Suburb: An American Site: An Ethnographic Dilemma (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987) as ‘auto-ethnography’,

Notes to pp. 10–13

241

– a formalized and self-conscious text that a culture produces about itself but which inevitably goes beyond its creators’ conscious objectives. 20 Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 6–7. 21 Khayyath, ‘Etat Religieux des dioceses’, 436; David Wilmshurst, The Martyred Church: A History of the Church of the East (London: East & West Publishing, 2011), 401; David Wilmshurst, The Ecclesiastical Organisation of the Church of the East 1318–1913 (Lovanii: Peeters, 2000), 199. 22 Becker, Revival and Awakening, 44. 23 Wilmshurst, The Martyred Church, 322–3. 24 Christopher Baumer, The Church of the East: An Illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 248. 25 Jérôme Labourt, ‘Chaldean Christians’, in The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 3 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908), 560; Wilmshurst, Ecclesiastical Organisation, 25; Murre-Van Den Berg 1999, 235. 26 Becker, Revival and Awakening, 57. 27 Ibid., 43. 28 Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 154–5; Wilmshurst, Ecclesiastical Organisation, 176. 29 Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 181. 30 Dunya Mikhail, Yawmiyyat maujah kharij al-bahr [Diary of a Wave outside the Sea], second edition, trans. Elizabeth Ann Wilson (Cairo: Dar Ishtar lil-nashr almahdudah, 1999), 12. 31 Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 99. 32 Ronald G. Roberson, ‘The Eastern Catholic Churches 2014’, Annuario Pontificio, 2014, http://www.cnewa.org/source-images/Roberson-eastcath-statistics/eastcatholicstat14.pdf. 33 Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 126–7. 34 Layard, Discoveries among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon: With Travels in Armenia, Kurdistan, and the Desert: Being the Result of a Second Expedition Undertaken for the Trustees of the British Museum (New York: Harper, 1853), 50–60. 35 Zia Attalla and Kas Marougi, who reportedly arrived in the United States in 1889, have been identified by some Chaldeans as the first Chaldean immigrants to Detroit, yet first documented entry was that of George Bino six years later, and the first recorded Chaldean birth in America was Daisy Kory’s in 1917. Jacob Bacall, Chaldeans in Detroit. Images of America Series (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2014), 8–9. 36 Barbara G. Gallagher, Chaldean Immigrant Women, Gender and Family (Dissertation, Wayne State University, Michigan, 1999); Josephine Sarafa (ed.), Chaldean Americans of Southeast Michigan (Michigan: A pamphlet publication, n.d.); Josephine Sarafa, Chaldean Americans: Past and Present (Michigan: A pamphlet publication of St. Thomas the Apostle Chaldean Catholic Diocese of America, n.d.), Mary Sengstock, Chaldeans in America (Michigan: Michigan State University Press, 2005); Survey, ‘Chaldean Household Demographics Survey’, in Walsh College of Business and United Way for Southeastern Michigan (Michigan: Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce, 2007). 37 This was a classical US migration model observed as early as 1885 by Ernest Ravenstein and embellished later by E.S. Lee’s migration theory in 1966. Mary Sengstock, The Chaldean Americans: Changing Conceptions of Ethnic Identity (New York: Centre for Migration Studies, 1982), 41; Chaldeans in America, 6.

242

Notes to pp. 13–15

38 It is estimated that up to 250,000 of the total 700,000 pre-1914 Syriac Christian population were killed (Baumer, The Church of the East, 252; Oussani, ‘An Historical Essay’, xxiv–xxv; Naayem, Shall This Nation Die?, xxx). Of this total number, Wilmshurst estimates 10,000–15,000 to be Chaldeans (Wilmshurst, Martyred Church, 436–7) 39 Vasili Shoumanov, Assyrians in Chicago. Images of America Series (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2001), 10, 11. 40 Laura Robson, States of Separation: Transfer, Partition, and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016), 242. 41 Yakup Hidirsah, ‘Massacre of Christians in Mesopotamia and Kurds (Syriacs, Nestorians, Chaldeans, Armenians). A Documentary Study (Hannover, Germany, 1997), 27–30; Salim Matar, al-Dhat al-jariha: ishkaliat al-hawiyyah fi al-‘Iraq wa alalam al-arabi/al-sharqani. (The Wounded Self: Identity Issues in Iraq and the Arab/ Eastern World) (Beirut: al-al-Mu’assasah al-‘Arabiyyah li-l-dirasat wa al-nashr, 2000), 107–17. 42 Robson, State of Separation, 30. 43 Sarah Gualtieri, Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009). 44 Gallagher, Chaldean Immigrant Women, Gender and Family, 5. 45 Ronald G. Roberson, ‘The Eastern Catholic Churches 2010’, Annuario Pontificio, http://www.cnewa.org/source-images/Roberson-eastcath-statistics/eastcatholic-stat10. pdf; Vahram Petrosian, ‘Assyrians in Iraq’, Iran & the Caucasus 10, no. 1 (2006): 114. 46 Niraj Warikoo, ‘More Iraqi Refugees Permitted Metro Detroit: Many May Settle in Area’, Night Ridder Tribune Business News, Washington, 15 February 2007. 47 Emily Harris, ‘Europe Struggles with Influx of Iraqi Refugees’, NPR Morning Edition, 6 March 2007. 48 Natasha T. Metzler, ‘More Iraqi Refugees Admitted in June’, Washington Post, 1 July 2008. 49 US Census, 2000; Vanessa Denha Garmo, ‘New Research Shows Refugees Contribute $295M Annually to Michigan Economy’, CN, 18 October 2017, https://www. chaldeannews.com/features-1/2017/10/18/new-research-shows-refugees-contribute295m-annually-to-michigan-economy; ‘Chaldeans in Southeast Michigan’, Chaldean Household Survey 2018, 1, http://umdilabs.com/sites/default/files/Chaldean%20 Community%20Survey%20Jan%202018.pdf. The 2018 Chaldean Household Survey justifies its 155,000–160,000 figure as follows: Kurt Metzger, Principal of Kurt R. Metzger & Associates, used multiple data sources to estimate the Chaldean population. A 2008 Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce study, which estimated the community’s size to be approximately 120,000, relied on Census data, survey responses and church lists. The 2017 estimate utilized these sources, in addition to data from the US Department of Homeland Security on Iraqi immigrants who arrived as legal permanent residents in the United States between 2008 and 2017 and listed the Detroit metropolitan area as their intended home; and data from the Department of State, Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, Office of Admissions – Refugee Processing Center, on the number of Iraqi refugees who arrived in Michigan between 1 October 2007 and 10 April 2017 (latest available). The number of legal permanent residents, who arrived in the Detroit metropolitan area from Iraq during the FY 2008–FY 2017 period, numbered 23,961. The number of refugees from Iraq, who arrived in Michigan between 1 October 2007 and 10 April

Notes to pp. 15–21

243

2017, numbered 20,894. It is noted that not all US arrivals from Iraq are Chaldean, Assyrian or Syriac, research shows that the vast majority are (footnote 6, p. 7).

Chaldean figures suffer from fluctuation in diaspora as much as they do at home, especially since many official sources, such as the US Census and the UNHCR, do not have a Chaldean-specific designation for their counts. 50 Herbert J. Gans, ‘Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America’, in On the Making of Americans: Essays in Honor of David Riesman, ed. Herbert J. Gans (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979); Mary C. Waters, Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Richard D. Alba and Victor Nee, Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and the New Immigration (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). 51 Fanar Haddad, Sectarianism in Iraq: Antagonistic Visions of Unity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 143. 52 Nadine Naber, Arab San Francisco: On Gender, Cultural Citizenship, and Belonging (Dissertation, University of California, Davis, California, 2002); Halleh Ghorashi, Ways to Survive, Battles to Win: Iranian Women Exiles in the Netherlands and US (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2003) and ‘Giving Silence a Chance: The Importance of Life Stories for Research on Refugees’, Journal of Refugee Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 21, no. 1 (2007): 117–32.

Chapter 1 – On the Politics of Appellation: The Making of the Modern Chaldeans  1 Assyrian Star, Interview with Raphael Bidawid, September–October 1974, 5.  2 Ishtar Satellite TV, Interview with Mar Emmanuel Dally, 7 May 2006.   3 To cite but few of the prominent sources, Guiseppe Assemani, Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino-vaticana, 4 vols (Rome: Congregationis de Propaganda Fide, 1719–28); Joseph, The Modern Assyrians; Wilmshurt, Martyred Church; Heleen L. Murre-van Den Berg, ‘Chaldeans and Assyrians: The Church of the East in the Ottoman Period’, in The Christian Heritage of Iraq, ed. Erica Hunter (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2009); Wilhelm Baum and Dietmar W. Winkler, The Church of the East: A Concise History (London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2003).   4 Fifteen books in the Old Testament contain references to the Chaldeans and the Assyrians, while the Arameans are mentioned 62 times, and the Aramaic language or script 12 times. The chronology of the events and succession of kingdoms in the Bible differ significantly from the Chaldean and Assyrian chronologies handed down by Greek historians such as Xenophon and Diodorus Siculus. This discrepancy between the ancient sources was one cause behind the confusion encountered by the first English and French men who attempted to decipher the Assyrian cuneiform script in the mid-nineteenth century. Mogens Trolle Larsen, The Conquest of Assyria (London: Routledge, 1996), 166–72.   5 Gen. 11:28, 11:31, 15:7; Neh. 9:7; Jub. 11:3.   6 Shak Hanish, ‘The Chaldean Assyrian Syriac People of Iraq: An Ethnic Identity Problem’, Domes 17 (2008): 32–47.   7 Gassan Hanna Shathaya, ‘One Nation-Two Names: The Chaldean/Assyrian Dilemma’, Chaldeans Online, 2001, http://www.chaldeansonline.org/ghassan/dilemma-part1. html

244

Notes to pp. 21–28

  8 Hanish, ‘The Chaldean Assyrian Syriac’, 34.   9 A chronological classification and a chart of the alphabets representing the subsets of the ‘Syriac Language’ can be found in Ramond Le Coz, Histoire de l’Eglise d’Orient: Chrétiens d’Irak, d’Iran et de Turquie (Paris: édition du Cerf, 1995), 107–10. 10 John Joseph, The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East: Encounters with Western Christian Missions, Archaeologists, and Colonial Powers (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2000), 30. 11 Albert Hourani, Minorities in the Arab World (London: Oxford University Press, 1947) 4–6; and Kail C. Ellis, The Vatican, Islam, and the Middle East: Contemporary Issues in the Middle East (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1987), 201. 12 Aubrey Vine, The Nestorian Churches: A Concise History of Nestorian Christianity in Asia from the Persian Schism to the Modern Assyrians (London: Independent Press Ltd., 1937), 21. 13 Ibid., 21–2. 14 Wallis Budge, The Monk of Kublai Khan, Emperor of China; or The History of the Life and Travels of Rabban Sawma, Envoy and Plenipotentiary of the Mongol Khans to the Kings of Europe and Markos who as Yahbh-Allaha III Became Patriarch of the Nestorian Church in Asia (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1928), https://pages. uoregon.edu/sshoemak/324/texts/monks_of_kubla_khan.htm 15 According to the American Mission among the Nestorians, the title of the patriarch changed to ‘Patriarch of Babylon and Baghdad’ as early as 762 CE. I have not encountered other references that support this claim. K Salibi and Yusuf K., The Missionary Herald: Reports from Northern Iraq, 1833–1870, 3 vols (Amman: Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies, 1997), 1: 127. 16 Vine, Nestorian Churches, 112–20. 17 Ibid., 171. 18 Ronald S. Stafford, The Tragedy of the Assyrians (London: Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1935), 22. 19 Literally Aramaic ‘Mar’, of the same root as the Arabic ‘Amir’, prince. 20 Baum and Winkler, The Church of the East, 112. 21 Joseph, Modern Assyrians, 6–7. 22 George Percy Badger, The Nestorians and Their Rituals, 2 vols (London: Joseph Masters, 1852), vol. 1:179. 23 ‘Dinha’ in Chaldean pronunciation and transcription. 24 Joseph, Modern Assyrians, 6–7. 25 The pallium is an ecclesiastical garment of the Roman Catholic Church, originally peculiar to the Pope but later it was bestowed upon Metropolitans and Primates as a symbolic delegation of jurisdiction from the Holy See. The granting of the pallium in this instance constituted a formal acknowledgement of the submission of the patriarch to papal jurisdiction and the decisions of subsequent ecumenical councils, as well as a confirmation of post-Ephesian orthodoxy. Kristian Girling, The Chaldean Catholic Church: Modern History, Ecclesiology and Church-State Relations (London: Routledge, 2018), 16. 26 Vine, Nestorian Churches, 173–5. 27 Baum and Winkler, The Church of the East, 114. 28 Joseph, Modern Assyrians, 23. 29 Badger, The Nestorians, vol. 1:224. 30 This was a common misconception among European travellers and scholars alike, well into the twentieth century. See e.g. Badger, The Nestorians and Their Rituals, 1:153;

Notes to pp. 28–32

245

Abdullah M. Rabi, Al-Kildan al-mu’asirun wa al-bahth ‘ann al-hawiyya al-qawmiyya: dirasah sosioanthropologiyya (Contemporary Chaldeans and the Search for a National Identity: A Socio-Anthropological Study) (Amman: Dar Al-Shuruq Publisher, 2001), 27. 31 Joseph, Modern Assyrians, 8. 32 David Wilmshurst, The Martyred Church: A History of the Church of the East (Sawbridgeworth: Herts, 2011), 303; Miralla Galleti, Cristiani del Kurdistan, Assiri, Caldei, Siro-Cattolici e Siro-Ortodossi (Rome: Jouvence, 2003), 45–8. 33 Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 20–5. 34 Badger, The Nestorians, 1:180. 35 Salibi and Yusuf, Missionary Herald, 1: 46. 36 John D. Faris, ‘The Latin church Sui Iuris’, Juris 62 (2002): 280–93, https://heinonline. org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/juristcu62&div=19&id=&page= 37 William Ainger Wigram, The Assyrians and Their Neighbors (London: Gorgias Press LLC, 2002 [1929]), 179–81. 38 Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 24. 39 Joseph, Modern Assyrians, 7. 40 Badger, The Nestorians, 1:70–1; Joseph, Modern Assyrians, 2–3; Austen Henry Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains: With an Account of a Visit to the Chaldæan Christians of Kurdistan, and the Yezidis, or Devil Worshippers; and an Enquiry into the Manners and Arts of the Ancient Assyrians, 2 vols (London: J. Murray, 1849), 190–1. 41 Badger, The Nestorians, 1:179. 42 Horatio Southgate, Narrative of a Visit to the Syrian Jacobite Church of Mesopotamia; with Statements and Reflections upon the Present State of Christianity in Turkey, and the Character and Prospects of the Eastern Churches (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1844). 43 W. F. Ainsworth, Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Chaldea, and Armenia, 2 vols (London: John W. Parker, 1842), 272–3. 44 Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, 1:189. 45 Ibid., 1:190–1. 46 Rassam was referred to as ‘Nestorian’ in the British publications of his time. Modern biographies refer to him as an ‘Assyrian’. Becker points us in the direction of the Anglican conversion of his family, and their close ties to the British consulate in Mosul (Revival and Awakening, 243–4). Rassam’s shifting identity is a wonderful illustration of the shifting appellation politics that paralleled the discovery of the ancient Assyrian remains, which Rassam himself helped excavate with Botta and Layard, respectively. 47 Hormuzd Rassam, ‘Recent Assyrian and Babylonian Research’, Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute, or Philosophical Society of Great Britain 14 (London, 1880): 25. 48 Salibi and Yusuf, Missionary Herald, 1, 17. 49 Ibid., I:21. 50 Badger, The Nestorians, I:178–9. 51 Ibid., 223. 52 Assemani, Biblotheca orientalis, iv, 1721, 75; cited in Joseph, Modern Assyrians, 6. 53 It is common in contemporary Chaldean and Assyrian discourse to trace their conversion to Christianity to a contact with these early apostles, Addai and Mari, who are also accredited for having written the Holy Qurbana, or Eucharistic liturgy of the Nestorian Church. 54 Joseph, Modern Assyrians, 5.

Notes to pp. 32–35

246

55 Ibid., xi. 56 Becker, Revival and Awakening, 301. 57 Sargon Donabed, ‘Rethinking Nationalism and an Appellative Conundrum: Historiography and Politics in Iraq’, National Identities, Taylor & Francis Group 14, no. 4 (2012): 407–31. 58 Becker, Revival and Awakening, 302. 59 Wolfhart Heinrichs, ‘The Modern Assyrians – Name and Nation’, in Semitica: Serta philological Constantino Tseretli dicta, ed. Riccardo Contini (Turin: Silvio Zamorani, 1993), 99–108. 60 The anonymous founders of Nineveh on Line provide the following self-description under the ‘Who Are We’ tab of their website: They proceed to define the website as ‘the home of the indigenous Aramaic-speaking Christian Assyrians of the Middle East’, and they define the modern ‘Assyrians’ as ‘the descendants of the ancient Assyrian people, one of the earliest civilizations emerging Name:

Assyria

Capital:

Nineveh 36° 21′ 34″ N – 43° 9′ 10″ E

Regions:

northern Iraq, northwestern Iran, southeastern Turkey and eastern Syria

Language:

Aramaic (Syriac)

Religion:

Christian

Nationality:

Assyrian

Population:

4,036,250

in the Middle East, and have a history spanning over 6,760 years. Assyrians are not Arabian or Arabs, we are not Kurdish, our religion is not Islam. The Assyrians are Christian, with their own unique language, culture and heritage. Although the Assyrian empire ended in 612 BCE, history is replete with recorded details of the continuous presence of the Assyrian people till the present time’. http://www.nineveh. com/whoarewe.htm 61 Introductory page of Nineveh on Line, http://www.nineveh.com/whoarewe.htm (Accessed 20 June 2015). 62 Heinrichs, ‘The Modern Assyrians’, 102. 63 Joseph, Modern Assyrians, xi. 64 Larsen, Conquest of Assyria, 75. 65 Vine, Nestorian Churches, 179. 66 Rays of Light (Zahrire d-bahra) 46, no. 11 (November 1895): addendum, 14. Cited in Becker, Revival and Awakening, 318. 67 Ibid., 302, 318. 68 Joseph, Modern Assyrians, 19–20. 69 Murre-van den Berg, ‘Chaldeans and Assyrians’, 159. 70 See Amatzia Baram, Culture, History, and Ideology in the Formation of Ba‘thist Iraq, 1968– 89 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1991), 57, 103–5; and Eric Davis, Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), 13. Ba‘thist valorization of Mesopotamian heritage and association with the Babylonian monarch Nebuchadnezzar (who presented a banner ‘to his grandson,

Notes to pp. 35–41

247

flagbearer of the Twin Rivers, President Saddam Hussayn’ during the Babylon Festival in 1988) and Hammurabi (whose biography that was presented in a symposium during the same festival strangely resembled that of Saddam Hussein), served the strategic role in the 1980s and 1990s of casting Iraq as a unified nation state despite its contentious ethnic diversity. While the pre-Islam context projected a long, prestigious history for Iraq, it did not, according to Davis, challenge its Arab identity. It did, however, reduce Arabness to one of several contributors that shaped modern Iraqi identity. 71 Hourani, Minorities, 6. 72 Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq (Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1964). 73 Amer Fatuhi, Al-Kildan munthu bad’ al-zaman: bahth ‘ann al-hawiyya al-qawmiyya alkildiyya/al-kildaniyya, 5300 BC–Present (Chaldeans from the Beginning of Time to the Present, 5300 BC–Present) (Detroit: Dar Nu‘man li-l-Tiba‘a wa al-Nashr, 2004), 14, 15, 21. 74 Joseph, Modern Assyrians, 28–9. 75 Shathaya, ‘One Nation’. 76 Ibid. 77 The Lausanne Telegraph, Correspondence No. 353, 15 January 1923. No. 230–1. Cited and translated from Turkish at: www.atour.com/history/1900/20030929a.html 78 The Claims of the Assyrians as Presented to the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, cited in Donabed, Reforging a Forgotten History, 410. ‘Shakkak’, according to Donabed’s interpretation, is likely to mean ‘Shikak’ – a Kurdish-speaking tribe near Urmia. It may also be a misnomer of the ‘Shabak’ community (Donabed, Reforging a Forgotten History, 69, 87). 79 Diaspora Assyrians established the umbrella secular foundation of the AUA in France in 1968 to advocate internationally for an Assyrian ‘nationality’ and an Assyrian ‘Nation’ in the ancestral land of present-day Iraq and to secure human rights for the Assyrians worldwide. In 1991 the AUA became a member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization that was founded in the Netherlands that year. See Assyrian Universal Alliance, official web page, http://aua.net and http://www.unpo. org/ (Accessed 20 June 2016). 80 See Robert Dekelaita, ‘An Ancient People’s Last Stand: The Plight of the Chaldo Assyrians in Post-Saddam Iraq’, AINA, 30 April 2004, http://www.aina.org/ guesteds/20040614193356.htm and Fred Aprim, ‘A Decision for the Centuries Ahead’, 28 September 2004. http://www.fredaprim.com/pdfs/2004/A%20Decision%20for%20 the%20Centuries%20Ahead.pdf 81 Hanish, ‘The Chaldean Assyrian Syriac’, 42. 82 ‘What If I Am Not Chaldean-Assyrian?’ Zinda Magazine, 9 March 1998, http://www. zindamagazine.com/html/archives/1998/mar9_1998.htm#TheLighthouse 83 ‘Chaldean National Congress Demands Inclusion of Chaldeans in Iraq’s Leadership Council’, accessed 20 June 2015, http://www.chaldeansonline.org/chaldeanews/iraq_ council.html ‘Chaldean Groups Protest Lack of Chaldean Representation in Iraqi Ruling Council’, accessed 20 June 2015, http://www.chaldeansonline.org/chaldeanews/ cnc_cdu.html 84 ‘Chaldean Bishops’ Letter Undermines National Unity’, AINA, 10 June 2003, http:// www.aina.org/releases/iraqbishops.html 85 Iraqi Constitution, Article 125, 2005, http://aceproject.org/ero-en/regions/mideast/ IQ/Full%20Text%20of%20Iraqi%20Constitution.pdf/view 86 Friedrich Nietzsche, ‘On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life’, in Untimely Meditations, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983 [1874]), 59–123.

248

Notes to pp. 43–47

Chapter 2 – Archaeology, Philology and Mission: The Modern History of Ancient Chaldean History   1   2   3   4

Hobsbawm, ‘Inventing Traditions’, 1. Youel Baaba, An Assyrian Odyssey (Alamo, CA: Youel A. Baaba Library, 1998). Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1978), 21–2. See numerous examples of European and American bestsellers and travelogues featuring these Eastern Christians in Becker, Revival and Awakening, 324.   5 American missionary Asahel Grants famously concluded that the Eastern Christians were the descendant of the Lost Tribes of Israel. See Becker, Revival and Awakening, 304.   6 Ussama Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (New York: Cornell University Press, 2008), 171; ‘Reclaiming the Land of the Bible: Missionaries, Secularism, and Evangelical Modernity’, The American Historical Review 102, no. 3 (1997): 680.  7 Becker, Revival and Awakening, 316–17; Milka Rubin, ‘The Language of Creation or the Primordial Language: A Case of Cultural Polemics in Antiquity’, Journal of Jewish Studies 49 (1998): 306–33.   8 For examples of the racial dichotomy drawn by the American Protestant missions of the nineteenth century between advanced missionary and backward Eastern races, See Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven, 141–79.   9 The distinction transferred into the official discourses of the early twentieth century. Descriptions of the Jewish, Armenian and Assyrian ‘races’ as more industrious, intelligent and civilized than the Arab and Muslim counterparts crowd the petitions they sent for exclusionary ethnic ‘homelands’ that flooded the League’s office in the 1920s and 1930s. See Laura Robson, States of Separation: Transfer, Partition, and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016), 142–65. 10 See Said on this process of conceptual Orientalization, Orientalism, 6–7. 11 Eden Naby, ‘An Assyrian Odyssey Covering the Journey of Kasha Yacoub Yaure and His Wife Mourassa from Urmia to the Court of Queen Victoria (1879–1881) and the Exodus of Assyrians from Their Ancestral Home (1918).’ Youel Baaba Library, 2000. Review. Iranian Studies 36, no. 2 (June 2003): 287–9. 12 Becker, Revival and Awakening, 12. 13 Suha Rassam, Christianity in Iraq: Its Origins and Development to the Present Day (Herefordshire: Gracewing, 2005), 114. 14 Charles Henry Robinson, History of Christian Missions (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1916), 500. 15 Becker, Revival and Awakening, 21. 16 Ibid., 5, 297–8. 17 Missionary Herald, vol. 1: 283. 18 Saba Mahmood, Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016), 44. 19 Elie Kedourie, ‘Minorities’, in The Chatham House Version and Other Middle-Eastern Studies (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1984), 286–316, 289. Cited in Becker, Revival and Awakening, 20. 20 See Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven; Mahmood, Religious Difference; Samir Khalaf, Cultural Resistance: Global and Local Encounters in the Middle East (London: Saqi, 2001); Hans-Lukas Kieser, ‘Muslim Heterodoxy and Protestant Utopia. The

Notes to pp. 47–54

249

Interactions between Alevis and Missionaries in Ottoman Anatolia’, Die Welt des Islam 41 (2001): 89–111; Barbara J. Merguerian, ‘“Missions in Eden”: Shaping an Educational and Social Program for the Armenians in Eastern Turkey (1855–1895)’, in New Faith in Ancient Lands Western Missions in the Middle East in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. Studies in Christian Mission 32 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2006) and Becker, Revival and Awakening. 21 Mahmood, Religious Difference, Intro. 22 Becker, Revival and Awakening, 297. 23 Baum and Winkler, The Church of the East, 112. 24 See Wilmshurs’s language for an example, The Martyred Church, 322. 25 Richard Coke, Baghdad: The City of Peace (London: Thornton Butterworth, Ltd., 1935), 1–2. 26 George Percy Badger, The Nestorians and Their Rituals, (London: Joseph Masters, 1852), vol. 1:279. 27 Ibid., 150. 28 Wilmshurst, The Martyred Church, 316. 29 Robert M. Haddad, ‘The Lebanese Experience and Muslim-Christian Relations’, in The Vatican, Islam, and the Middle East, ed. Kail C. Ellis (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1987), 206. 30 Ibid., 205–6. 31 Wilmshurst, Martyred Church, 326. 32 Missionary Herald, vol. 1:173. 33 Ibid., 632. 34 Ibid., 401, 435, 632; Robinson, History of Christian Missions, 490–1. 35 Badger, The Nestorians, 279. 36 Baum and Winkler, The Church of the East, 128. 37 Vine, Nestorian Churches, 179. 38 Ronald S. Stafford, The Tragedy of the Assyrians (London: Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1935), 24. 39 Badger, The Nestorians, xi. 40 Vine, Nestorian Churches, 177. 41 Rubin, ‘The Language of Creation’. 42 Larsen, Conquest of Assyria, 157. 43 Henry C. Rawlinson, Outlines of Assyrian History from the Inscriptions of Nineveh: The Twenty Ninth Annual Report of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain (London: John Parker & Son, 1852), Cited in Eckart Frahm, ‘Images of Assyria in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Western Scholarship’, in Orientalism, Assyriology and the Bible, ed. Steven W. Holloway (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2006), 78. 44 George Rawlinson, The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World; Or, the History, Geography, and Antiquities of Chaldea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, and Persia, Collected and Illustrated from Ancient and Modern Sources (London: John Murray, 4 vols, 1862–67) cited in Frahm, ‘Images of Assyria’, 78. 45 Frahm, ‘Images of Assyria’, 82. 46 Becker, Revival and Awakening, 316. 47 Ibid., 316–17; 57. 48 Joseph Guriel, Elementa Linguae Chaldaicae: Quibus Accedit Series Patriarcharum Chaldaeorum (S. Rome: Congregationis De Propaganda Fide, 1860), 7. 49 Wade C. Meade, Road to Babylon: Development of US Assyriology (Leiden: Brill, 1974), 49.

250

Notes to pp. 55–59

50 Larsen, Conquest of Assyria, 164. This was also true of the religious circles of European Jews, to whom the value of the Assyrian artefacts was relative to illustrating the accuracy of the Hebrew Bible (Larsen, Conquest of Assyria). 51 ‘Higher Criticism’ was first employed in 1787 by the German Biblical scholar Eichhorn, in the second edition of his ‘Einleitung’ to deal with big issues such as authorship, dates, composition and authority of entire books or large sections thereof. 52 Guriel, Elementa Linguae, 6–7. 53 Larsen, Conquest of Assyria, 173. 54 Ibid., 173. 55 Meade, Road to Babylon, 19; Frederick N. Bohrer, ‘Inventing Assyria: Exoticism and Reception in 19th-Century England and France’, in Orientalism, Assyriology and the Bible, ed. Steven W. Holloway (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2006), 246. 56 Larsen, Conquest of Assyria, 155. 57 Ibid., 192. 58 Ibid., xii. 59 Yannis Hamilakis, The Nation and Its Ruins Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in Greece. Classical Presences (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 14; Becker, Revival and Awakening, 337. 60 Larsen, Conquest of Assyria, 173. 61 Becker, Revival and Awakening, 320–2. 62 For a detailed account of the social impact of the American mission’s press, see ibid., 102–36. 63 Chaldean Americans of Southeast Michigan, pamphlet produced by the affluent Chaldean Shenandoah Country Club, 2006. 64 Missionary Herald, vol. 1:478; Badger, The Nestorians, 197. 65 Missionary Herald, vol. 1, 16, 22, 426; Joseph, Modern Assyrians, 92. 66 Missionary Herald, vol. 1, 8. 67 Grant Wacker, ‘The Waning of the Missionary Impulse: The Case of Pearl S. Buck’, in The Foreign Missionary Enterprise at Home: Explorations in North American Cultural History, ed. Daniel H. Bays and Grant Wacker (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003), 101–2. 68 Becker, Revival and Awakening, 275. Far from developing in isolation, the textual innovation was entwined with the Catholic legacy. Early Anglican and American missions to the Eastern Christians were built on eighteenth-century Rome-sponsored studies of East Assyrian manuscripts, especially the pioneering work of the Lebanese Meronite scholar Guiseppe Assemani, Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino-vaticana, 4 vols (Rome: Congregationis de Propaganda Fide, Bibliotheca Orientalis, 1719–28), which he wrote during his training in Rome and came to be considered the first comprehensive introduction to Syriac literature. J. F. Coakley, The Typography of Syriac: A Historical Catalogue of Printing Types, 1537–1958 (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll, 2006), 2. 69 The script used by the Jacobites, or Syrian Orthodox, was developed for the western variety of the Syriac language that had spread in Syria and other parts of western Mesopotamia. 70 That is, detested by the Nestorians who were historically on bad terms with the Jacobites, whose doctrinal confession was created as a reaction to Nestorianism. 71 Wacker, ‘The Waning of the Missionary Impulse’, 100. 72 J. F. Coakley, ‘Manuscripts for Sale: Urmia 1890–2’, JAAS 20, no. 2 (2006): 3–17. 73 Justin Perkins, A Residence of Eight Years in Persia among the Nestorian Christians (Andover, MS: Allen, Morrill and Wadwell, 1843), 497.

Notes to pp. 59–66

251

 74 Becker, Revival and Awakening, 102–3.  75 Coakley, Typography of Syriac, 3.   76 Peter Wosh, Spreading the Word: The Bible Business in 19th-Century America (Ithaca, NY: Corner University Press, 1994), 103.  77 Missionary Herald, vol. 1:22, 55.   78 David G. Malick, The American Mission Press: A Preliminary Bibliography (Chicago, IL: Atour Press, 2008), 112–20.   79 ABCFM-Annual Report, vol. 30–32, 1840, 105.  80 Missionary Herald, vol. 1:225, 491.   81 Ibid., 491.   82 Western scholars divide the Syriac script into four branches, (a) Old Syriac, hand produced (in mosaics, coins and handwritten documents) and dating from the first century to the fourth century; (b) Estrangela, a developed form of book-hand Syriac that began appearing in copied religious manuscripts of the early fifth century; (c) Serto, a more compact book-hand that took over from Estrangela in the West Syriac region during the eighth century and (d) East Syriac, another distinctive book-hand that appeared within the ecclesiastical context of the Church of the East. This development paralleled the Serto of the West but appeared later during the fourteenth century. It is this last script that the American missionaries elaborated when they committed the spoken Eastern dialects to writing and printing in the Syriac script during the nineteenth century (Coakley, Typography of Syriac, 4–16).   83 See font samples in Coakley, Typography of Syriac.  84 Missionary Herald, vol. 1:347.  85 Joseph, Modern Assyrians, 1.  86 Coakley, Typography of Syriac, 167.   87 ABCFM-Annual Report, vol. 30–2, 1840, 105.  88 Joseph, Modern Assyrians, 91–3.  89 Missionary Herald, vol. 1:46.   90 Ibid., 45.   91 Ibid., 26.  92 Becker, Revival and Awakening, 261.  93 Robinson, History of Christian Missions, 22–4.  94 Rays of Light, July 1852, cited in Becker, Revival and Awakening, 111.  95 Becker, Revival and Awakening, 107, 309.   96 J. S. Cummins, Christianity and Missions, 1450–1800: An Expanding World (Aldershot and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate/Variorum, 1997), xxvi.   97 Maria Theresa Asmar, Prophesy and Lamentation; or, a Voice from the East: An Appeal to the Women of England (London: John Hatchard & Son, Publishers, 1845) back cover.  98 Autobiography in the Middle of the 19th Century (1820–1870), University Library of Autobiography, vol. XIII (F. Tyler Daniels Company, Inc, 1918), 1.63.   99 Maria Theresa Asmar, Memoirs of a Babylonian Princess (London: Henry Colburn, Publisher, 1844), vol. 1:1. 100 Ibid., 2. 101 Asmar, ‘Memoirs’, vol. 2:311. 102 Vine, Nestorian Churches, 178. 103 Becker, Revival and Awakening, 301, 307–8. 104 Perkins, Residence, 329. 105 Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, vol. 1:66. 106 Becker, Revival and Awakening, 31–2.

252

Notes to pp. 66–76

107 Wigram, The Assyrians and Their Neighbors, 179. Although in this quote Wigram referred to the modern Assyrians, he argued that the distinction between modern Chaldeans and Assyrians is a recent one, and that both belong to the same ‘national [i.e. racial] stock’, 4. 108 See other illuminating examples Becker gives, Revival and Awakening, 300, 337. 109 Becker, Revival and Awakening, 304. 110 Nélia Dias, ‘The Visibility of Difference: 19th-Century French Anthropological Collection’, in The Politics of Display: Museums, Science, Culture, ed. Sharon Macdonald (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 42. 111 Larsen, Conquest of Assyria, 111. 112 Heather Sharkey describes a similar development in nineteenth-century Europe, where the American Presbyterian Mission planted long-lasting doubts among Muslims about the likely pro-Western sympathies of Egyptian Christians. See, American Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire. Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). 113 And also among other Middle Eastern Christian groups who came into contact with Western missions. 114 Larsen, Conquest of Assyria, 72, 110. 115 Heleen Murre-van Den Berg, ‘Apostasy or “the House Built on Sand”: Jews, Muslims and Christians in East-Syrian Texts (1500–1850)’, in Contacts and Controversies between Muslims, Jews and Christians in the Ottoman Empire and Pre-Modern Iran, ed. Camilla Adang and Sabine Schmidtke. Istanbuler Texte Und Studien (Würzburg: Ergon in Kommission, 2010), 237–41. 116 Rassam, ‘Recent Assyrian and Babylonian Research’, 26. 117 J. F. Coakley, The Church of the East and the Church of England: A History of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Assyrian Mission (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 44. 118 Hormuzd Rassam Asshur and the Land of Nimrod: Being an Account of the Discoveries Made in the Ancient Ruins of Nineveh, Asshur, Sepharvaim, Calah, 1897 (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, LLC, 2009), 167. 119 Rassam, ‘Recent Assyrian and Babylonian Research’, 29–30. 120 With the exception of the Sunni Jebour tribe, which they befriended for other sociopolitical benefits the Christians could not offer. 121 Larsen, Conquest of Assyria, 199–204. 122 Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, vol. 1:66. 123 Larsen, Conquest of Assyria, 328–9. 124 Source: The British Museum, https://www.bmimages.com/results.asp?image=001121 24001&imagex=1&searchnum=0001. 125 Wigram, The Assyrians and Their Neighbors, 179. 126 Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, 191. 127 Murre-van den Berg, Scribes and Scriptures, 2. 128 Said, Orientalism, 20–1. 129 Steven Holloway ‘Introduction’, in Orientalism, Assyriology and the Bible, ed. Steven W. Holloway (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2006), 8. 130 Said, Orientalism, 6. 131 See Suha Rassam’s explanation of how American and Anglican missions were accused of precipitating sectarian disasters by intervening in the delicate balance of Kurdish, Ottoman and Christian civil power in eastern Turkey. Rassam, Christianity in Iraq, 117–18.

Notes to pp. 77–82

253

Chapter 3 – Arab/Chaldean/Assyrian Distinctions: Political Survival in the New Nation State of Iraq   1

Petrosian, ‘Assyrians in Iraq’, 116–17; Interview with Mar Bidawid, 2003. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7WUbenkSeE   2 Although not uniformly across the splinter churches of the Church of the East.   3 For recent attempts to remedy this lacuna, see Bruce Masters, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of Sectarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Saba Mahmood, Religious Difference.   4 A recent controversial work that tries to dispel the binary between religious hierarchies and the secular Arab state is Mahmood’s Religious Difference.   5 For a substantial recent attempt to bridge this scholarly gap, see Keith David Watenpaugh, Bread from Stones: The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015).  6 Mahmood, Religious Difference, 60–1.   7 Benjamin Braude, ‘Foundational Myths of the Millet System’, in Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society, vol.1: The Central lands, ed. Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (London and New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982), 69–100.   8 Karen Barkey, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 130–2.  9 Becker, Revival and Awakening, 50. 10 Ibid., 257. 11 Masters, Christians and Jews, 130–68. 12 Ibid. 13 Hidemitsu Kuroki, ‘Mobility of Non-Muslims in 19th Century Aleppo’, in The Influence of Human Mobility in Muslim Societies, ed. Hidemitsu Kuroki (New York: Routledge, 2003): 117–50. 14 One of the most comprehensive scholarly studies of these smaller communities affected by ethnic cleansing is David Gaunt, Atto, Naures, and Barthoma, Soner’s Let Them Not Return: Sayfo – The Genocide against the Assyrian, Syriac, and Chaldean Christians in the Ottoman Empire (New York: Berghahn Books, 2017). 15 Peter Sluglett, ‘From Millet to Minority: Another Look at the Non-Muslim Communities in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’, in Minorities and the Modern Arab World, ed. Laura Robson (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2016), 24. 16 Becker, Revival and Awakening, 172–3. 17 Mahmood, Religious Difference, 63. 18 David Gaunt, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006), 40–1; Baumer, The Church of the East, 261. 19 Wilmshurst, Martyred Church, 413–30. 20 Ibid., 413, 423, 437. 21 John Healey, ‘The Church across the Border: The Church of the East and Its Chaldean Branch’, in Eastern Christianity in the Middle East, ed. Anthony O’Mahony and Emma Loosley (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), 46. 22 Wilmshurst, Martyred Church, 422–3. 23 Hundreds of Assyrians are said to have settled in the village of Alqosh, whose community had a long history of vacillating between Catholicism and Nestorianism (Stafford, Tragedy of the Assyrians, 187).

254

Notes to pp. 82–88

24 Assyrian National Association of Yonkers, NY to Secretary General of the LN, 30 January 1934, cited in Robson, States of Separation, 163. 25 The World Alliance for International Friendship Through the Churches to Secretary General of the League of Nations, 1933, cited in Robson, States of Separation, 163. 26 Wilmshurst, Martyred Church, 436. 27 Donabed, Reforging a Forgotten History, 65, 71. 28 Stafford, Tragedy of the Assyrians, 162. 29 British officials estimated around 600 casualties but Assyrian sources claim several thousands. See Sami Zubaida, ‘Contested Nations: Iraq and the Assyrians’, in Nations and Nationalism (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 6:3, 370. 30 Ibid. 31 Villages like Alqosh came under attack for harbouring escaping Assyrians. See Tuma Tumas’s memoirs, ‘Awraq Tuma Tumas’, Thikrayat (2006); cited in Alda Benjamen, ‘Assyrians and the Iraqi Communist Party’, 109. 32 Khaldun S. Husry, ‘The Assyrian Affair of 1933’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 5 (1974): 161–76 (I) and 344–60 (II); Sami Zubaida, ‘Contested Nations’, 363–82; Heleen Murre-van Den Berg, ‘Searching for Common Ground: Jews and Christians in the Modern Middle East’, in Modernity, Minority and the Public Sphere (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 3–38. Assyrian historiography, according to Murre-van Den Berg, is based largely on Yaquo bar Malek Ismail, Auraye w-try plase tbilaye, h.d., Aturaye men 1914 hal 1945 (Assyrians and the Two World Wars, i.e. Assyrians between 1914 and 1945), Tehran: Matba‘at d-si’ta seprayta d-’allime Aturaye, 1964; Yusuf Malek, The British Betrayal of the Assyrians (Chicago, IL: The Assyrian National Federation and the Assyrian National League of America, 1935). 33 Wilmshurst, Martyred Church, 412. Wilmshurst also lays the responsibility of the unmitigated suffering of both Churches on the young Assyrian patriarch, who in ‘breathtaking folly’ declared war against the Turks in 1915 at a time when neutrality was still an option. Wilmshurst, Martyred Church, 419, 423. 34 Faysal ibn al-Husayn, Faysal ibn al-Husayn: fi khutabihi wa aquwalihi (Faysal ibn Hussayn, Speeches and Sayings [Baghdad: Mudiriyyat di‘ayat al-umma, 1946], 247–8). 35 1867 and 1896 figures put the Chaldean count at 70,000–80,000 (Jean Pierre Paulin Martin, La Chaldee: esquisse historique: suivie de quelques reflexions sur l’Orient. [Imprimerie de la Civilta Cattolica, 1867], 205–10; Georges Ebed-Jesus Khayyath, ‘Etat religieux des dioceses formant le Patriarcat Chaldeen de Babylone au 1er janvier 1896’, Revue de l’Orient chretien 1:1/4 [1896]: 433–53; Wilmshurst, Martyred Church, 400), while Oussani provides a 100,000 estimate in 1901 and later revises it to 150,000 (Gabriel Oussani, ‘The Modern Chaldeans and Nestorians, and the Study of Syriac among Them’, Journal of the American Oriental Society 22 [1901]: 79–96, 81; Oussani, ‘An Historical Essay on the Assyro-Chaldean Christians’, xxiv–xxv). 36 Becker, Revival and Awakening, 274. 37 Wilmshurst, Martyred Church, 401; Kristian Girling, The Chaldean Catholic Church: Modern History, Ecclesiology and Church-State Relations (London and New York: Routledge, 2018), 56. Joseph Tfinkdji’s 1913 study of the Chaldeans reflected this newfound awareness of a distinctly Chaldean religious identity. Tfinkdji meticulously documented the extent of the conversions to Catholicism and spoke favourably of the Chaldeans who sought association with the Holy

Notes to pp. 88–91

255

See. His choice of the book title, L’Église Chaldéenne is telling. As Girling argues, the use of the term ‘Church’ to describe a group of converts to Catholicism indicates that the semi-autonomous nature of the religious community and its independence from the Catholic Church was already acknowledged albeit official recognition of this partial autonomy was not adopted until the Second Vatican Council in 1964. Tfinkdji, Joseph, L’Église chaldéenne catholique, autrefois et aujourd’hui. Extrait de l’Annuaire pontifical catholique de 1914 (Paris: Bureaux des études ecclésiastiques, 1913); Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 55–6. 38 Murre-van Den Berg, ‘Chaldeans and Assyrians’, 158. 39 Keith Watenpaugh, ‘The League of Nations’ Rescue of Armenian Genocide Survivors and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism, 1920–1927’, American Historical Review 115, no. 5 (2010): 1315–39. 40 Baumer, Church of the East, 252; Oussani, ‘An Historical Essay’, xxiv–xxv; Naayem, Shall This Nation Die? xxx; Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 60. 41 Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 60. 42 The Hashemite period witnessed the emergence of minority hyphenation of religion and ethnic ‘Arabness’. Bashkin discusses how intellectual Iraqi Jews similarly viewed themselves as ‘Arab Jews’ at the time. Orit Bashkin, New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), 2–3. 43 Masters, Christians and Jews; Bashkin, New Babylonians; Eric Davis, Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); Sami Zubaida, ‘The Fragments Imagine the Nation: The Case of Iraq’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 32, no. 2 (2000): 205–15. 44 Joseph, Modern Assyrians, 240. 45 Ibid., 233. 46 Ibid. 47 Joseph MacDonnell, Jesuits by the Tigris: Men for Others in Baghdad (Boston, MA: Jesuit Mission Press, 1994). 48 Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 67–70. It is also worth noting how at the intersection of Arab monarchy and British imperial rule, it was frequently local Christian intellectuals, as hybrid conduits, who were entrusted with the task of culture building in Iraq. For instance, the Catholic Carmelite priest Anastas Mari al-Karmali was commissioned by the British to write the first official textbook of Iraqi history. See Reidar Visser, Basra: The Failed Gulf State: Separatism and Nationalism in Southern Iraq (Münster: Lit., 2005), 106. 49 Robert Brenton Betts, Christians in the Arab East: A Political Study (London: SPCK Publishing, 1979), 183, 184. 50 Albert Hourani, Minorities in the Arab World (London: Oxford University Press, 1947), 102. 51 Mar Raphael I Bidawid and Mar Dinkha IV, Joint Synodal Decree for Promoting Unity between the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church, 15 August 1997; ‘Joint Patriarchal Statement’, Eastern Churches Journal 3 (1996): 171–3. 52 Their affairs were managed by metropolitan Joseph Hnanisho’, who represented the Mar Shimun from his stronghold near Erbil. Wilmshurst, Martyred Church, 431. 53 Liora Lukitz, Iraq: The Search for National Identity (London: Routledge, 1995), 108. 54 John Joseph, The Nestorians and Their Muslim Neighbors. A Study of Western Influence on Their Relations (Princeton Oriental Studies 20, 1961) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 216–17.

256

Notes to pp. 91–98

55 J. F. Coakley, ‘The Church of the East since 1914’, Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 78, no. 3 (1996): 189 ; cited in Joseph, Modern Assyrians, 236. 56 Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 90–1; Herman Teule, ‘Christianity in Iraq: The Development of Secular Christian Political Thinking’, One in Christ 45, no. 2 (2011): 313–14. 57 Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 69–71. 58 Ian Rutledge, Enemy on the Euphrates: The British Occupation of Iraq and the Great Arab Revolt, 1914–1921 (London: Saqi Books, 2014), 185. 59 Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 66, 117–18. 60 One striking example of the desperate desire to blend in comes from negotiations of the early draft of the first Iraqi Constitution. The draft had provisions for set numbers of minority members in the Chamber of Deputies as an attempt to give them voice within a unitary Iraqi state. Chaldean representatives rejected the proposal for fear of marking their separateness from the overarching society. Joseph, Muslim-Christian Relations, 115. 61 Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq’s Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of Its Communists, Ba‘thists, and Free Officers (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978). Table A-27 and Table A-29. 1190–2. 62 Benjamen, ‘Assyrians and the Iraqi Communist Party’, 106–21. 63 Ibid., 115. William Hazen, ‘Minorities in Revolt: The Kurds of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey’, in The Political Role of Minority Groups in the Middle East, ed. Ronal McLaurin (New York: Praeger, 1979), 49. 64 Benjamen, ‘Assyrians and the Iraqi Communist Party’,108. 65 Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 82; Betts, Christians in the Arab East, 185. 66 O’Mahony, ‘Life and Death of a Patriarch: Mar Rouphael I Bidawid, Patriarch of Babylon, and the Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq’, Sobornos 27, no. 1 (2005): 29. The Catholic Herald 1962. Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 86. 67 Betts, Christians in the Arab East, 105, 142. 68 Heleen Murre-van Den Berg, ‘The Language of the Nation: The Rise of Arabic among Jews and Christians (1900–1950)’, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 43, no. 2 (2016): 176–90. 69 See Makdisi, ‘The Limits of Anti-Secularist Critique’, Politics, Religion & Ideology 17, no. 1 (2016): 77–9. Makdisi objects to Mahmood’s singling out of the secular project and Western Christian missions as the primary source of creating the minorities problem and intensifying the primacy of Islam in the Middle East. Rather, he calls for a more balanced elaboration of the complex genealogies – local, foreign, imperialistic and liberal – that redounded to the status quo. 70 Mahmood, Religious Difference. 71 O’Mahony, ‘Chaldean Catholic Church’, 442. 72 Prominently Abd al-Rahman al-Bazzaz and Michel Aflaq (see Amatzia Baram, ‘Mesopotamian Identity in Ba‘thi Iraq’, Middle Eastern Studies 19, no. 4 [October 1983]: 427). 73 A. R. Kelidar, ‘Religion and State in Syria’, Asian Affairs 5, no. 1 (1974): 22. 74 Aflaq was further converted to Islam posthumously by his Iraqi disciples in 1989. Amatzia Baram, Saddam Husayn and Islam, 1968–2003: Ba`thi Iraq from Secularism to Faith (Baltimore, MD: Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), 21. Baram cites the following sources: Baghdad Voice of the Masses (Baghdad Sawt al-Jamahir), 24 June 1989, FBIS-NES, 26 June 1989, 10; Voice of Iraq

Notes to pp. 98–102

257

(Sawt al-Iraq), July 1982, 4; al-Da‘wa Chronicle no. 17, September 1981, 7; no. 5, September 1980, 2; no. 37, May 1983, 4, 6; Hizb al-’Amal al-Islami (Islamic Labour Party), Saddam Husayn Warith al-Shah (Saddam Husayn, heir of the shah). 75 Baram, Saddam Husayn and Islam, 9. 76 The case of the Carmelite priest Anastas Mari Al-Karmali vividly illustrates the Catholic Church’s intellectual investment in Arabic studies well before the advent of the Ba‘thist regime in Iraq. Al-Karmali, who was born in Baghdad to Lebanese parents in 1866 and educated in Carmelite missionary schools in Iraq and Lebanon, became one of the major contributors to the development of Arabic studies and Arabic lexicography in the region. In addition to authoring an Arabic dictionary in 1883, in 1911 he established the influential journal Lughat al-Arab (The Language of the Arabs). During the first half of the twentieth century, through collaborations with the British Imperial Civil Service under the directorship of Gertrude Bell and Muriel Jesse Forbes, al-Karmali helped establish and manage the first library in Iraq, the Baghdad Peace Library, which eventually became the Iraqi National Library. Upon his death in 1947, Al-Karmali’s Arabic collection of 2,500 books and 1,500 manuscripts were donated to the library. 77 Wilmshurst, Martyred Church, 431–3. 78 Samir al-Khalil (Kanan Makiya), Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 175. 79 Especially the Sunni Arab populations that later came to preside over the monarchies and armed forces of the fledging Arab nation states. 80 Baram, Saddam Husayn and Islam, 17–19. These movements, with the exception of Sa‘ada’s, were related to one another. The different names indicate either the emergence of splinter groups from the prototypical Ba‘th /Ihya’ (Resurrection) movements or the founders’ revision of their earlier models. 81 Baram, Saddam Husayn and Islam, 17. 82 George Antonius, The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1938), 18. 83 For a full analysis of Antonius’s definition of Arabness vis-à-vis non-Muslim identities, see Murre-van Den Berg, ‘The Language of the Nation’, 176–90. 84 Murre-van Den Berg, ‘The Language of the Nation’, 183. 85 See Louis Sako, Christian-Muslim Dialogue. Theological Approaches in the Arabic Language in the ‘Abbasid Period (Kirkuk, 2009), in Arabic; and Jean Corbon, L’Église des arabes (Paris: coll. Rencontres, 2, 1977). 86 For the disproportionate rates of Christian migration until the First World War, see Kemal Karpat, ‘The Ottoman Emigration to America, 1860–1914’, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Cambridge University Press 17 (1985): 175–209. 87 Gertrude Bell letter to her father, Sir Hugh Bell, Gertrude Bell Archive, 3 October 1920. http://gertrudebell.ncl.ac.uk/letter_details.php?letter_id=425 88 Sara Pursley, ‘“Lines Drawn on an Empty Map”: Iraq’s Borders and the Legend o the Artificial State’, Jadaliyya, 2 June 2015, http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/21759/ lines-drawn-on-an-empty-map_iraq%E2%80%99s-borders-and-the. This ‘artificial state’ narrative, argues Pursley, provoked wide analysis in the wake of the Islamic State’s release of a video called ‘The End of Sykes-Picot’ in summer 2014 because the video proclaimed that the erasure of the Syria–Iraq border will put an end to the nation state system imposed by the colonial powers after the First World War. The group’s leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi later explained: ‘This blessed advance will not stop until we hit the last nail in the coffin of the Sykes-Picot conspiracy.’

258

Notes to pp. 102–07

 89 Ibid.   90 Most relevant to the case of the Chaldean ethno-sectarian identity in the American diaspora was that of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party. According to this proposal, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria – and even Cyprus – were to form one single country, ‘Suraqia’, in harmony with the map of ‘natural Syria’.  91 Wilmshurst, Martyred Church, 437.   92 Teule, ‘Christianity in Iraq: The Development’, 313–14. Sometimes this position is echoed in English-language scholarship by authors invested in this identity with the claim that the other Syriac religious identities are splinters and fragments of a more fundamental Assyrian ethnic identity that predates denominational conversions. See, for example, Donabed, 2016, 5; Edward Odisho, ‘The Ethnic, Linguistic and Cultural Identity of Modern Assyrians’, Proceedings of the Second Annual Symposium of the Assyrian and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage Project. Held in Paris, France, 4–7 October 1999 (Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2001), 137–48. http://www.helsinki.fi/science/saa/.  93 Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 87, 90–5.   94 Not to mention the evacuation of so-called ‘Persian’ Kurds (Faili Kurds) from Iraq proper. Being both non-Sunni and non-Arab, the Faili Kurds have been the subject of discrimination since the creation of the Iraqi Nationality Law in 1924. In 1980, at the outset of the war with Iran and under the pretext of collaboration with the enemy state, the IBP stripped between 220,000 and 300,000 Faili Kurds of their Iraqi citizenship. Many of these individuals and families, who were concentrated in Baghdad, the Diyala Province of Iraq and in the Southern Governorates of Wassit, Missan and Basra were evicted from their homes and forced to march across the Iranian border.  95 Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 91–3.   96 Ibid., 93.  97 Ibid.   98 Sharkey Haddad, ‘Call Your Brother in Michigan’, in The Sweetness of Freedom: Stories of Immigrants (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010), 271.  99 ‘Iraq’, Proche-Orient Chrétien 39 (1989): 346–8. 100 For a detailed account of the various Christian missions and their schools in Iraq during the twentieth century, see Rassam, Christianity in Iraq; see also MacDonnell, Jesuits by the Tigris, for detailed descriptions of the arrival of the American Jesuits to Iraq upon the request of the Chaldean patriarch, their systematic expulsion in 1932–69 and the nationalization of their two Vatican-sponsored schools in Iraq (Baghdad College and Al-Hikma University). 101 Revolution Command Council Decree No. 251 of 1972 on the ‘Elimination of Racial Discrimination’ recognized the cultural rights of Syriac-speaking citizens (report, paragraphs 3, 9, 6 and 7). 102 Benjamen 13. 103 Ignace Younan, ‘Les chrétiens sous le poids de l’Islam dominant: Entre peur et compromis’, Actualité religieuse dans le monde 15, no. 51 (1991): 19. 104 O’Mahony, Christianity in Modern Iraq, 129. 105 Teule, ‘Christianity in Iraq’. 106 Joseph, Modern Assyrians, 221. 107 Baram, Culture, History, and Ideology, 20–1. 108 Baram, Saddam Husayn and Islam, 10.

Notes to pp. 107–11

259

109 Faraj Basmachi, Treasures of the Iraq Museum (Baghdad: Matba‘at al-Jumhuriyya, 1975–76), 7. 110 See ‘Abbas al-‘Azzawi, ‘Asha’ir al-Iraq (The Tribes of Iraq), 4 vols (Baghdad: Matba‘at al-Ma‘arif, 1947); Muhammad Fadhil al-Jamali, The New Iraq: Its Problems of Bedouin Education (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1934); the publications of the Society of Iraqi Authors and Writers, especially the 1960s articles of Tafsir al-tarikh (Interpreting History), Baghdad: Maktabat al-nahdha, among several other sources. 111 Saddam Hussein reasoned in his On the Writing of History, ‘What is required is that our analysis of historical events apply our specifically Ba‘thist perspective in building the Arab nation.’ Cited in Davis, Memories of State, 148. 112 Davis, Memories of State; Peter Wien, ‘From Forty-One to Qadisiyyat Saddam: Remarks on an Iraqi Realm of Memory’, in Writing the Modern History of Iraq, ed. Bocco Bozarslan and Tejel Sluglett (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2012), 105–18; Cherine Chams El Din, ‘Qadisiyat Saddam: The Gamble That Did Not Pay Off ’, in Writing the Modern History of Iraq, ed. Bocco Bozarslan and Tejel Sluglett (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2012), 269–86; Achim Rohde, State-Society Relations in Ba‘thist Iraq (New York: Routledge, 2010). 113 Ahmad Susa, Hadharat al-‘Arab wa Marahil Tatawwuriha ‘ibr al-‘Usur (Baghdad: Manshurat wazarat al-thaqafa wa-l-I'lam, 1979) 10, 30, 34, 107–8, cited in Baram, Culture, History, and Ideology, 104. 114 Davis, Memories of State, 13. 115 Ibid., 183. 116 Bayn al-Nahrayn, 1:1 (1973) 3–7; 2:1 (1973) 112–31, 241–2; 5:2 (1974) 3–4; 9–10:3 (1975) 3–4; 17: 5 (1977) 3–6. Issues cited in Baram, ‘Mesopotamian Identity in Ba‘thi Iraq’, Middle Eastern Studies 19, no. 4 (October 1983): 437–53, 426–55. 117 Sengstock, ‘Iraqi Christians in Detroit: An Analysis of an Ethnic Occupation’, in Arabic Speaking Communities in American Cities, ed. Barbara Aswad (New York: Centre for Migration Studies, 1974), 202; Andrea Pacini, ‘Introduction’, in Christian Communities in the Arab Middle East: The Challenge of the Future, ed. Andrea Pacini (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 15. 118 Teule, ‘Christianity in Iraq’, 320. 119 Heleen Murre-van Den Berg, ‘Searching for Common Ground: Jews and Christians in the Modern Middle East’, in Modernity, Minority, and the Public Sphere (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 3–38. 120 Masters, Christians and Jews, 45–6; Murre-van Den Berg, ‘Searching for Common Ground’.

Chapter 4 – From Religious to Ethnic Minority: Between Iraq and America in the Twentieth Century   1 Interview by Gregory Orfalea, Washington, DC, 1983. Cited in Gregory Orfalea, The Arab Americans: A History (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2006), 154.   2 The excellent works of three scholars stand out in particular: Akram Khater’s Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870–1920 (Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press, 2001); Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven and Gualtieri, Between Arab and White.

260

Notes to pp. 111–13

  3 Sengstock, ‘Detroit’s Iraqi Chaldeans: A Conflicting Conception of Identity’, in Arabs in the New World: Studies on Arab American Communities, ed. Sameer Abraham and Nabeel Abraham (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 1983), 137; Chaldeans in America, 3.   4 Kayal, Philip M. ‘Religion and Assimilation: Catholic “Syrians” in America’, The International Migration Review 7, no. 4 (1973): 409. Most Arab-American historians follow the estimates provided by Philip Hitti, The Syrians in America (New York: Gorgias Press LLC, 2005 [1924]) and Alixa Naff, Becoming American: The Early Arab Immigrant Experience (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985), putting the estimate of Christian Syrian immigrants prior to 1924 at around 90 per cent. However, Ottoman sources as studied by Kemal Karpat document a slightly higher percentage of Muslims in the Syrian migration, between 15 and 20 per cent, suggesting that anti-Muslim sentiments in the United States may have discouraged a large section of these Muslim immigrants to publicly identify themselves as Muslims. See Karpat, ‘The Ottoman Emigration to America, 1860–1914’, 175–209; Kambiz GhaneaBassiri, A History of Islam in America (Book, Cambridge University Press, 2010), 143; and Sally Howell, Old Islam in Detroit: Rediscovering the Muslim American Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 69.   5 Kayyali, ‘US Census Classifications and Arab Americans: Contestations and Definitions of Identity Markers’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39, no. 8 (2013): 1300; Kenneth Prewitt, ‘The Census Counts, the Census Classifies’, in Not Just Black and White: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Immigration, Race and Ethnicity in the US, ed. Nancy Foner and George M. Fredrickson (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004), 150.   6 Kayyali, ‘US Census’, 1301.  7 Gualtieri, Between Arab and White.   8 Helen Samhan, ‘Not Quite White: Race Classification and the Arab-American Experience’, in Arabs in America: Building a New Future, ed. Michael Suleiman (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Distribution Chicago: Temple University Press, 1999), 209–26.   9 Jacob Bacall, Chaldeans in Detroit. Images of America Series (Charleston: Arcadia Publishing, 2014), 38. 10 Since the 1990s, publications on Arab-American identity have undertaken a painstaking investigation of the formation of whiteness and semi-whiteness through the study of racial prerequisite laws and the lens of literary studies. Examples include Lisa Suhair Majaj, ‘Arab Americans and the Meaning of Race’, in Postcolonial Theory and the United States: Race, Ethnicity and Literature, ed. Amritjit Singh and Peter Schmidt (Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 2000), 320–37; Joseph Massad, ‘Palestine and the Limits of Racialized Discourse’, Social Text 34 (1993): 94–114; Soheir Morsy, ‘Beyond the Honorary “White” Classification of Egyptians’, in ed. Race, Steven Gregory and Roger Sanjek (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 175–98; Samhan, ‘Not Quite White’, 209–26; Steven Salaita, ‘Split Vision: Arab American Literary Criticism’, al-Jadid 32, no. 14 (2000), Nadine Naber, ‘Ambiguous Insiders: An Investigation of Arab American Invisibility’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 23, no. 1 (2000): 37–61. 11 Kayyali, ‘US Census’, 1299–300. 12 Yakup Hidirsah, ‘Massacre of Christians in Mesopotamia and Kurds (Syriacs, Nestorians, Chaldeans, Armenians). A Documentary Study’ (Hannover, Germany, 1997), 27–30.

Notes to pp. 114–20

261

13 Joseph Seferta, ‘Iraq’s Catholic Exiles’, The Tablet, 4 September 2004; Kristian Girling, The Chaldean Catholic Church: Modern History, Ecclesiology and Church-State Relations (London: Routledge, 2018), 98. 14 Kayyali, ‘Race, Religion and Identity: Arab Christians in the US’, Culture and Religion 19, no. 1 (2017): 19; Gualtieri, Between Arab and White, 6. 15 Executive Committee of the Assyrian National Association of America, 29 March 1919; cited in Robson, States of Separation, 150. 16 Ibid. 17 Den Berg, ‘The Language of the Nation’, 188. 18 Khater’s Inventing Home is an incisive exploration of the phenomenon of return emigration and its transformative impact on the development of modernity, class mobility and gender roles in the nascent state of Lebanon. 19 Orfalea, Arab Americans, 109. 20 Ibid., 153. 21 Kayyali, ‘US Census’, 1303–4; Michael Suleiman, ‘Arab-Americans and the Political Process’, in The Development of Arab-American Identity, ed. Ernest McCarus (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1994), 37–60. 22 Orfalea, Arab Americans, 151–212. 23 Ibid., 157. 24 Cited in Kayyali, ‘US Census’, 1307. 25 Ibid. 26 Stephen Sheehi, Islamophobia: The Ideological Campaign against Muslims (Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press, Inc., 2011); Kayyali, ‘US Census’, Gaultieri, Between Arab and White; Amaney Jamal and Nadine Naber, in Race and Arab Americans before and after 9/11: From Invisible Citizens to Visible Subjects, ed. Amaney Jamal and Nadine Naber (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008). 27 Wayne Baker, Sally Howell, Amaney Jamal, Ann Lin, Andrew Shryock, Ronald Stockton and Mark Tessler, Preliminary Findings from the Detroit Arab American Study (DAAS) (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research, 2004); Yvonne Y. Haddad and John L. Esposito, Muslims on the Americanization Path? (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998); Hermansen, Marcia, ‘Haddad, Yvonne Y. and Jane Idleman Smith, “Mission to America: Five Islamic Sectarian Communities in North America” (Book Review)’. A Journal of Church and State 36, no. 3 (1994): 611; Kayal, ‘Religion and Assimilation’; Philip M. Kayal and Joseph M. Kayal, The Syrian-Lebanese in America: A Study in Religion and Assimilation (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1975); Helen Samhan, ‘Arab Americans’, in Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia (Danbury, CT: Grolier, 2001); Haddad and Esposito, Muslims on the Americanization Path? 28 Kayyali, ‘Race, Religion and Identity’, 1019. 29 Andrew Shryock, ‘The Moral Analogies of Race: Arab American Identity, Colour Politics, and the Limits of Racialized Citizenship’, Race and Arab Americans before and after 9/11, 89. 30 Randa Kayyali, ‘We Are Ancient Christians: Constructions of Arab American Identities and Juxtapositions with Islam’, 2015, 19 (unpublished paper). 31 Wayne Baker, Sally Howell, Amaney Jamal, Ann Lin, Andrew Shryock, Ronald Stockton and Mark Tessler, Preliminary Findings from the Detroit Arab American Study (DAAS) (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research, 2004), 5–6.

262

Notes to pp. 121–25

Chapter 5 – Family, Marriage and Ethnic Economy: A Transnational Social Field Perspective   1 Linda Basch, Nina G. Schiller and Cristina Blanc, Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States (Langhorne, PA: Gordon and Breach, 1994).   2 Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1996), 6.   3 In 2007, Chaldeans reportedly numbered approximately 23,000 in Sweden, 18,000 in France and 5,000 in Greece (CN, June 2007, 32). No exact counts exist today, especially since the UNHCR does not include the religious category of its registered refugees from Iraq.  4 Khater, Inventing Home, 5.   5 Kayal, ‘Religion and Assimilation’, 411.  6 Sengstock, Chaldeans in America, 13. In her earlier publications, Sengstock has consistently discussed the profile and role of the Chaldean family as a building block of the Chaldean community in Telkeif and Michigan.   7 Sengstock, ‘Iraqi Christians in Detroit: An Analysis of an Ethnic Occupation’, in Arabic Speaking Communities in American Cities, ed. Barbara Aswad (New York: Centre for Migration Studies, 1974), 21–38, ‘Detroit’s Iraqi Chaldeans’, Chaldeans in America; Qais al-Nouri, Conflict and Persistence in the Iraqi Chaldean Acculturation (Dissertation, University of Washington, 1964); Allene M. Doctoroff, The Chaldeans: A New Ethnic Group in Detroit’s Suburban High Schools, 2 vols (Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1978); Henrich and Henrich, Why Humans Cooperate.   8 Formerly on DVD, Our Story: Chaldeans in Detroit. Produced by the Chaldean Cultural Center in Bloomfield Hills, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=ik46WXaNJlk  9 Khater, Inventing Home, 31–8. 10 Yona Sabar, ‘From Tel-Kepe (A Pile of Stones) in Iraqi Kurdistan to Providence, Rhode Island: The Story of a Chaldean Immigrant to the US of America in 1927’, Journal of American Oriental Society 98, no. 4 (1978): 410–15. 11 Interview, Michigan, summer 2005. 12 Although the terms first and second generations have not been uniformly defined in the literature of cultural studies, migration scholars in the United States commonly use the term ‘first generation’ to refer to persons born and socialized in a country other than the United States. ‘Second generation’, on the other hand, has been usually used to refer to US-born or socialized children of foreign-born parents, although, as Rubén Rumbaut points out, ‘under this rubric immigration scholars also often, if imprecisely, lump together foreign-born persons who immigrated as children as well as US-born persons with one US-born parent and one foreign-born parent, treating them together as a de facto second generation’ (Rubén G. Rumbaut, ‘Ages, Life Stages and Generational Cohorts: Decomposing the Immigrant First and Second Generations in the US’, in International Migration Review [New York: Centre for Migration Studies, Inc., 38:3, 2004], 1165). 13 Peggy Levitt and Nina Glick Schiller, ‘Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society’, in International Migration Review (New York: Centre for Migration Studies, Inc., 38:3, 2004), 1017.

Notes to pp. 125–30

263

14 In her fieldwork among the Chaldean community of Southfield, MI, Natalie Henrich found that 67 per cent of the Chaldeans she interviewed have no non-Chaldean friends. These informants reported interacting with non-Chaldeans at work or school only (Henrich and Henrich, Why Humans Cooperate, 87). 15 Levitt and Schiller, ‘Conceptualizing Simultaneity’, 1017. 16 See, for example, Deborah Najor’s short stories ‘Selma’s Weddings’, in Michigan Quarterly Review, ed. Anton Shammas (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, fall 1992), 607–16; ‘Bebe Khomee’, Indiana Review, ed. Charles Baxter, Indiana, 12, no. 1 (winter 1988): 14–19; Weam Namou’s novels, The Feminine Art (Troy, MI: Hermiz Publishing Inc., 2004), The Mismatched Braid (Troy, MI: Hermiz Publishing Inc., 2006) and The Flavor of Cultures (Troy, MI: Hermiz Publishing Inc., 2008). 17 CN (2008): 4:2:25–46. 18 Thomas Faist, The Volume and Dynamics of International Migration and Transnational Social Spaces (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 191. 19 I mostly gathered the information in this section during interviews with Chaldean store owners and employees in Oakland and Wayne Counties, 2006–08. 20 Sengstock, Chaldeans in America, 13–15. 21 Initially, migration literature applied the term ‘chain migration’ to describe how the first wave of migration, often of young workers, triggered other migrations from the same family or community (Charles Price, ‘Southern Europeans in Australia: Problems of Assimilation’, The International Migration Digest, 2, no. 3 (1968): 3–26), as cited in (Stephen Castles, ‘The Factors That Make and Unmake Migration Policies 1’, International Migration Review 38, no. 3 (2004): 852–84). In recent usage, the term is also applied to discuss the role of migrant networks in facilitating the transition of other migrants to the new country and the existing diaspora community. As a form of ‘social capital’, the impact of chain migrations has also been researched in the context of refugees and asylum seekers, whose mobility choices are usually strongly influenced by existing connections with co-ethnics (Khalid Koser, ‘Social Networks and the Asylum Cycle: The Case of Iranians in the Netherlands’, in International Migration Review (New York: Centre for Migration Studies, Inc, 31:3, 1997), 591–611. 22 See, for example, the story of David Kassa who immigrated to the United States in 1929 while his family waited in Telkeif. CCC documentary film, Chaldeans in America: Our Story. I also encountered a similar personal family account during an interview with Mari Emmanuel, 25 April 2006. 23 Erna Hooghiemstra, ‘Migrants, Partner Selection, and Integration: Crossing Borders?’ Journal of Comparative Family Studies 32, no. 4 (2001): 601–28; Levitt and Schiller, ‘Conceptualizing Simultaneity’. 24 Sengstock, Chaldeans in America, 20. That means also non-Arabic names, which are frequently used by Iraqi Chaldeans. 25 Interview, Detroit, 5 May 2006. 26 Madawi al-Rasheed, Iraqi Assyrians in London: The Construction of Ethnicity (Lampeter: Mellen, 1998), 202. 27 This case is by no means unique to the Chaldeans of Iraq or the other religious minorities in the Middle East. In her field research in a Dominican village, Levitt found that many young women also considered men who had migrated to be the ideal life partners and some wished to marry exclusively from that category (Levitt and Schiller, ‘Conceptualizing Simultaneity’, 1016). 28 Sengstock, ‘Iraqi Christians in Detroit’, 30–1. According to Sengstock’s surveys, 88 per cent of Chaldeans engaged in family enterprise married endogamously and lived in

264

Notes to pp. 130–34

areas with high concentration of Chaldean households, compared to Chaldean nongrocers of whom only 70 per cent married endogamously and 77 per cent lived near other Chaldean households. 29 Min Zhou, ‘Revisiting Ethnic Entrepreneurship: Convergencies, Controversies, and Conceptual Advancements’, in International Migration Review (New York: Centre for Migration Studies, Inc), 38:3 (2004), 1052. 30 By 1974, nearly 40 per cent of Chaldeans who had adult relatives in Detroit reported being engaged in business with them (Sengstock, ‘Iraqi Christians in Detroit’, 26). By 2007, Henrich and Henrich’s study shows a figure of 94 per cent for Chaldeans working with at least one relative in grocery and wholesale industries (Henrich and Henrich, Why Humans Cooperate, 86). 31 H. E. Aldrich and R. Waldinger, ‘Ethnicity and Entrepreneurship’, Annual Review of Sociology, Palo Alto, California: Annual Reviews Inc. 16 (1990): 111–35; J. M. Yinger, ‘Ethnicity’, Annual Review of Sociology 11 (1985): 151–80; Zhou, ‘Revisiting Ethnic Entrepreneurship’. 32 CACC, http://chaldeanchamber.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id =5&Itemid=6 33 ‘Chaldean Household Demographics Survey’, Walsh College of Business and United Way for Southeastern Michigan (Michigan: Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce, 2007); CN (June 2008): 5:5: 29–30. 34 Sengstock, The Chaldean Americans. 35 Personal Interview, July 2006. 36 Zhou, ‘Revisiting Ethnic Entrepreneurship’, 1044. 37 Gary C. David, ‘Behind the Bulletproof Glass: Iraqi Chaldean Store Ownership in Metropolitan Detroit’, in Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream, ed. Nabeel Abraham and Andrew Shryock (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press. 2000), 157. 38 Barbara Aswad, ‘Arab Americans: Those Who Followed Columbus’, Middle Eastern Studies Association Bulletin 27 (1993): 522. 39 Sengstock, The Chaldean Americans, 36. 40 Sengstock, ‘Detroit’s Iraqi Chaldeans’. 41 David, ‘Behind the Bulletproof Glass’, 175, interview with a Chaldean store owner in Detroit. 42 Sengstock, ‘Detroit’s Iraqi Chaldeans’, 24. 43 David, ‘Behind the Bulletproof Glass’, 173–5. 44 Ibid., 175. 45 Denha Garmo, ‘New Research Shows Refugees Contribute $295M Annually to Michigan Economy’. 46 In eight interviews with Chaldean male immigrants who arrived to Michigan between 2007 and 2008, ages 18–42, six reported sending money to relatives in Iraq, Syria or Jordan on a regular basis. The remaining two expressed the desire to do so once their financial situation improved (Interviews, May–August 2008). 47 Sengstock, ‘Iraqi Christians in Detroit’, 25–6. 48 Zhou, ‘Revisiting Ethnic Entrepreneurship’, 1041. 49 Denha Garmo, ‘New Research Shows Refugees Contribute $295 M Annually to Michigan Economy’. 50 The stores the Chaldeans initially owned in Detroit were commonly referred to as ‘Mom and Pop’ stores – owned, managed and run by a single man, assisted by his wife, children or siblings, carrying limited stock of items, extending limited credit to

Notes to pp. 134–41

265

their customers and operating for long hours, usually seven days a week (Sengstock, ‘Iraqi Christians in Detroit’, 25). 51 http://chaldeanchamber.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5&Ite mid=6 52 Similar claims were stated in an interview with Chaldean attorney Salman Sesi (Sengstock, Chaldeans in America, 18). 53 Zhou, ‘Revisiting Ethnic Entrepreneurship’. 54 Interview, Northville, Michigan, March 2005. 55 The events following the 2003 change of regime in Iraq and the resurgence of Islamic extremism placed these Chaldean-operated liquor stores in Iraqi on the central stage of ethno-religious cleansing. Dozens of liquor stores and distilleries, predominantly owned by Christians, were burned and their owners threatened or murdered. More than a business venture, liquor-related entrepreneurial activity among Chaldeans in the past decade became frequently cited by Chaldeans and their proponents as a lifethreatening activity in Iraq, one that justified seeking political or religious asylum in other countries, primarily the United States. Matthew Rosenberg, ‘Iraqi Liquor Store Murders Raise Concern’, January 2004, http://www.rense.com/general48/ris.htm; ‘Christians Fleeing Iraq’, February 2007, www.christiancentury.org; ‘Bishop Gabriel Kassab Visits London’, Nineveh Online, 2005, http://www.nineveh.com/Bishop%20 Gabriel%20Kassab.html. 56 Henrich and Henrich, Why Humans Cooperate, 87. 57 Joseph Kassab, ‘Statement of the Chaldean Federation of America on the Iraqi Christian’s Plight to the US Senate Committee on the Judiciary’, The Plight of Iraqi Refugees: Hearing (DIANE Publishing, 16 January 2007), 123–6, https://www.gpo.gov/ fdsys/pkg/CHRG-110shrg33563/pdf/CHRG-110shrg33563.pdf 58 Pnina Werbner, ‘The Materiality of Diaspora – Between Aesthetic and “Real” Politics’, in Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 9:1, 2000), 5–20. 59 Khachig Tölölyan, ‘Elites and Institutions in the Armenian Transnation’, in Diaspora (New York: Oxford University Press, 9:1, 2000), 114. 60 Sengstock ‘Iraqi Christians in Detroit’, 24. In 1962, Sengstock established through a community census that only 8 of the 305 families who participated in the census were from Iraqi villages other than Telkeif. Modern Chaldean elites, in turn, are mostly from these oldest Chaldean immigrant families or their descendants. 61 In order to focus the discussion specifically on the socio-political activity of Chaldean Americans, I decided to leave out the influential Chaldean religious establishment, which also falls within this geographical district. 62 CALC website. 63 Konja, ‘CALC Corner’, CN, 2005. 64 Jabiro, ‘Shenandoah Opens’, CN, 2005. 65 Compare these figures with the $50 initiation fee and $35 annual membership of the Chaldean Youth Club during the 1970s. 66 CFA, ‘Chaldean Federation of America (CFA) Organizational History’. 67 ‘Soaring to New Heights: Organizations Lift the Community’, CN (May 2011): 20. 68 Kassab, ‘Statement of the Chaldean Federation’, 123–6. 69 CFA, ‘Adopt-A-Refugee-Family Program’. 70 Amir al-Tamimi, ‘Iraqi-Born Attorney Specializes in Helping Refugees’, The Summit, 20 February 2012, http://gcsummit.com/2012/02/20/iraqi-born-attorney-specializesin-helping-refugees/

266

Notes to pp. 141–48

71 CCF website, ‘Chaldean Community Foundation at-a-glance’, http://www. chaldeanfoundation.org/about/chaldean-community-foundation-at-a-glance/ 72 CN, May 2011: 22. 73 Martin Manna, ‘The Nineveh Plains Solution: A Long-Term Solution’, CN (March 2014): 24. 74 CASCA 2007. 75 NCA website, http://www.chaldeanchamber.com/affiliates/nineveh-council-ofamerica/ 76 Werbner, ‘The Materiality of Diaspora’. 77 Sharkey Haddad, ‘The American Journey of a Chaldean from Iraq’, in Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream, ed. Nabeel Abraham and Andrew Shryock (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2001), 210. 78 Ibid., 207. 79 Ibid., 214. 80 CN (April 2004). 81 Al-Mashriq 24, ed. Hanna Yatooma (Michigan: Southfield, 13 February 1975). 82 Interview with Fattuhi, Sterling Heights, 2006. 83 Ghassan Hanna Shathaya (ed.), Chaldean Nation 1 (San Jose, CA, 2002) http://www. chaldeansonline.org/umtha/. 84 Vanessa Denha-Garmo, ‘Saving the Language of Jesus: Teaching Aramaic Becomes a Community Priority’, CN (October 2016): 26–7. 85 Ibid., 27. 86 CN (June 2006): 38. 87 ‘Chaldean Household Demographics Survey’, in Walsh College of Business and United Way for Southeastern Michigan (Michigan: Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce, 2007), 17. 88 Baker et al., Preliminary Findings from the Detroit Arab American Study (DAAS). 89 Judith T. Irvine and Susan Gal, ‘Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation’, in Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities, ed. Paul V. Kroskrity (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 2000), 38. 90 For example, many of the Chaldean Churches still offer service in Arabic (in addition to English and Aramaic). During the period of my fieldwork I have seen at least five Michigan-based Chaldean periodicals that are published in Arabic, al-Qithara, Babil, al-Sunbula, Sada al-Watan and al-Mitraqa, suggesting the presence of an adequate readership body. 91 Polling sites in the United States and the other thirteen European and Middle Eastern countries were selected by the International Organization for Migration in collaboration with the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq. Together these organizations worked with local groups from Detroit to organize the elections, using the $92 million budget allocated by the Iraqi government for the worldwide voting process. 92 Chad Selweski, ‘Large Chaldean Population in Sterling Heights to Take Part in Shaping New Iraq’, Macomb Daily, 4 January 2005, www.christiansofiraq.com/ sterling.html 93 Tölölyan, ‘Elites and Institutions’. 94 Robert Delaney, ‘Local Chaldeans Urged to Vote in Iraqi Elections’, The Michigan Catholic. Archdiocese of Detroit, 21 January 2005, www.aodonline.org 95 Ibid. 96 Matthew Barakat, ‘Christian Slate Wins Narrow Plurality in US Expat Voting’, AINA, 19 December 2005, http://www.aina.org/news/20051219152044.html

Notes to pp. 148–53

267

97 Selweski, ‘Large Chaldean Population’. 98 Barakat, ‘Christian Slate’. 99 Tölölyan, ‘Elites and Institutions’, emphasis in original.

Chapter 6 – The Modern Chaldean Church: Global Circuits of Ecclesial Power   1 ‘Lecture of the Holy Father – Faith, Reason and the University, Memories and Reflections’, Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 12 September 2006, http://w2.vatican. va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_ spe_20060912_university-regensburg.html.   2 Carol Glatz. ‘Elevation of Chaldean Patriarch Highlights Plight of Iraqi Christians’, 24 Nov 2007, https://www.persecution.org/2007/11/28/elevation-of-chaldean-patriarchhighlights-plight-of-iraqi-christians/   3 Baum and Winkler, Church of the East, 112.   4 Ibid., 128.   5 No exact counts exist and the (politicized) figures available from community sources are misleading for two reasons: they operate with a political agenda that benefits from promoting a numerically larger-than-real image of the Chaldean minority, and because, in order to augment the size of the minority, the figures available often temporarily overlook the social and religious distinctions between Chaldeans and Assyrians in order to represent them as one unified and sizable ethno-religious population. See for example, ‘Assyrians: Frequently Asked Questions’, http://www.aina.org/faq.html   6 Levitt and Schiller, ‘Conceptualizing Simultaneity’, 1026.   7 Kayal, ‘Religion and Assimilation’, 425; Kayal and Kayal, The Syrian-Lebanese in America, 234–5.   8 Kayal, ‘Religion and Assimilation’; Kayal and Kayal, The Syrian-Lebanese in America.   9 In a 2006 study, Gregory Orfalea counted the Antiochian Orthodox as the largest denomination of ‘Arab Eastern Rite Christians’. As of 2005, he estimated, there were 250,000 Antiochian Orthodox and 240 parishes across the United States; 250,000 Coptic Orthodox and 70 churches; 70,000 Maronites and 59 parishes; 115,000 Chaldeans and smaller numbers of Melkite Catholic, Syrian Orthodox and Syrian Catholic congregations. Orfalea, The Arab Americans, 442. See also Matthew Stiffer, Authentic Arabs, Authentic Christians (Dissertation, University of Michigan, 2010), 13. 10 Chorbishop Seely Beggiani, ‘The Maronites in the United States’, http://www.stmaron. org/spirituality/online-articles/the-maronites-in-the-united-states/ and ‘Maronites in America – Continuing the Legacy’, June 2015, https://thehiddenpearl.org/2015/11/03/ maronites-in-america-continuing-the-legacy/ 11 Stiffler, Authentic Arabs, Authentic Christians, 7, 8. 12 ‘The History’, in Mother of God Church 50th Anniversary 1948–98: Celebrating the Historical Growth of the Chaldean Community in Mother of God Parish (Southfield, MI: Mother of God Church, 1998). 13 See, for instance, Kayal, ‘Religion and Assimilation’, Dinnerstein and Reimers also argued, ‘the decline of foreign language in churches [in the US] was indicative of the growing Americanization and loss of ethnicity in American religion in the twentieth century’. The late nineteenth-century German Catholic Church slogan ‘Language

268

Notes to pp. 156–64

Saves Faith’ (1999, 184) is also indicative of the threat of assimilation certain ethnoreligious immigrants perceived upon settling in the United States. 14 Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 80. 15 Naff, Becoming American, 295; Kayyali, ‘Race, Religion and Identity’, 9. 16 J. M. Mérigoux, Va à Ninive! Un dialogue avec l’Irak (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2000). 17 ‘Iraq’, 346–8. 18 Rassam, Christianity in Iraq, 172. 19 ‘Papal Pilgrimage to Iraq’, Eastern Churches Journal 6, no. 3 (1999): 261–7. 20 O’Mahony, ‘The Chaldean Catholic Church’, 434. 21 Ibid., 438–44. 22 Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 114–15. 23 The semi-autonomous administration of the northern Kurdish region since 1991 further defused the central authority of the Chaldean patriarch. While the five Chaldean bishops whose jurisdictions are within the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) are technically supposed to report to the patriarch in Baghdad since their jurisdictions falls within the collapsed Ottoman Empire as partitioned post–First World War, they sometimes challenge the patriarch’s authority by reporting directly to the Vatican (Fred Aprim, ‘Assyria and Assyrians since the 2003 US Occupation of Iraq’, 7 March 2008, http://www.atour.com/government/docs/20080307a.html). 24 Coakley, ‘The Church of the East since 1914’, 196–7. 25 Baumer, Church of the East, 270. 26 Jean Corbon, ‘The Churches of the Middle East: Their Origins and Identity from Their Roots in the Past to Their Openness in the Present’, in Christian Communities in the Arab Middle East: The Challenge of the Future, ed. Andrea Pacini (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 98; Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 97. 27 Coakley, Typography of Syriac, 239. 28 ‘The History’. 29 Ibid. 30 A separate, Church-associated Chaldean transnational network was formed after the Second World War in San Diego, California, when a group of Chaldean young men who had received their education at the hand of the American Jesuits in Iraq were invited to San Diego to teach Arabic at the Army Language School to American officers who were to be stationed in the Middle East. Their diasporic community continued to grow in relative isolation from the family-chain-migration-based Chaldean communities in and around Michigan. 31 Detroit Free Press, 1 March 1981, 1A; Alexander R. Moses, ‘Saddam Once Received Key to Detroit’, Zinda Magazine, 31 March 2003; San Francisco Chronicle, 1:18 (1982), 5; ‘Saddam Reportedly Given Key to Detroit’, ClickonDetroit, 2003, http://www. clickondetroit.com/news/2064887/detail.html 32 Rachel Aviv, ‘Saddam Hussein’s Key to the City of Detroit’, Bidoun, Spring/Summer 2008, http://bidoun.org/articles/saddam-hussein-s-key-to-the-city-of-detroit 33 Detroit Free Press, 1 February 1981, 15A. 34 Arianna Ishaya, Familiar Faces in Unfamiliar Places: Assyrians in the California Heartland, 1911–2010 (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris Co., 2010), 173. 35 Bacall, Chaldeans in Detroit, 46, 54; Crystal Kassab Jabiro, ‘Historic Home Has Chaldean Charisma’, CN (28 August 2015), http://www.chaldeannews.com/historichome-has-chaldean-charisma/. In August 1952, King Faisal II and an entourage travelled to the United States for a five-week tour. Their stops included New York, Detroit, Washington, DC, Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, San Diego,

Notes to pp. 164–68

269

Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Florence (Alabama) and Fort Knox. Although the young king is remembered for the amicable visit to the Chaldean and Arab establishments in Detroit, the main purpose of the tour was to learn from America’s development projects such irrigation and power projects, canal systems and land reclamation schemes. See Alexandra Hilton, ‘Doomed Guests: Faisal II, the “Boy King” of Iraq’, NYC Department of Records and Information Services, March 2017, http://www.archives.nyc/blog/2017/3/23/doomed-guests-faisal-ii-the-boy-king-ofiraq 36 Bacall, Chaldeans in Detroit, 52. 37 Ibid., 102. 38 Detroit Free Press, 1 February 1981, 15A; Arianne Ishaya, ‘Assyrian-Americans: A Study in Ethnic Reconstruction and Dissolution in Diaspora’, Nineveh Online, http:// www.nineveh.com/ASSYRIAN-AMERICANS.html#_ftn1 39 Janice J. Terry, ‘Community and Political Activism among Arab Americans in Detroit’, in Arabs in America, ed. Michael Suleiman (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1999), 241–54; CN (May 2011): 20. 40 Relations with other adjacent Middle Eastern Christian Churches (especially Lebanese and Syrian) and Catholic organizations, are also developed and maintained, extending the social life of the Chaldean Church outside its strictly ‘ethnic’ relationships. 41 CN (July 2005): 18. 42 Between 2007 and 2012, the programme raised $2.4 million, almost exclusively from the Chaldean community in the US diaspora, to help more than 130,000 displaced Chaldeans through partnership with the Jesuit and Chaldean communities in various transit countries. CN (October 2012): 54. 43 ‘Father, Do You Have a Minute? Priest Shortage Hits Community Hard’, CN (July 2004): 25. 44 I discuss the role of Chaldean-American secular institutions and their influence on the Chaldean Church in more depth in ‘Fighting Our Own Battles: Iraqi Chaldeans and the War on Terror’, in Arab Detroit 9/11: Life in the Terror Decade, ed. N. Abraham, S. Howell and A. Shryock (Michigan: Wayne State University Press, 2011). 45 Tony Perry, ‘Chaldean Priest in San Diego Still under Orders to Return to Iraq’, Los Angeles Times, 15 January 2015, http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-iraqiimmigrants-20150116-story.html 46 ‘Iraqi Catholic Patriarch Elevated to Cardinal by Pope Francis’, RUDAW, 20 May 2018, http://www.rudaw.net/english/world/20052018. 47 His nomination came from the French Catholic association L’Œuvre d’Orient, which the Norwegian Novel Committee accepted. ‘Iraqi Patriarch Louis Sako Nominated for 2018 Nobel Peace Prize’, Persecution: International Christian Concern, 9 March 2018, https://www.persecution.org/2018/03/09/iraqi-patriarch-louis-sako-nominated-2018nobel-peace-prize/ 48 Hollie McKay, ‘Genocide in Homeland Exposes Rift in Iraqi-American Christian Community’, Fox News, 21 July 2016, http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/07/21/ genocide-in-homeland-exposes-rift-in-iraqi-american-christian-community.html 49 Girling traces this characteristic to Chaldeans’ foundational identity as ‘prototype Tridentine eastern Catholic community’, who have historically depended on Latin guidance as their ecclesiology and identity. Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 226. 50 ‘Iraqi Patriarch Louis Sako’.

270

Notes to pp. 169–74

51 See, for instance, ordination news in CN (April 2011): 9, CN (August 2011): 40, CN (April 2012): 24; CN (May 2012): 10, CN (August 2012): 18, CN (January 2014) Cover. 52 See, for example, efforts made around 2014. Samuel Freedman, ‘As Iraqi Christians in U.S. Watch ISIS Advance, They See “Slow-Motion Genocide”’, New York Times, 6 September 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/06/us/as-iraqi-christians-in-uswatch-isis-advance-they-see-a-slow-motion-genocide.html 53 Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 225–6.

Chapter 7 – A Safe Haven Dream: Home between Detroit and the Nineveh Plains   1 Michelle Boorstein, ‘The US House Just Voted Unanimously That the Islamic State Commits “Genocide”. Now What?’, Washington Post, 15 March 2016, https:// www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/03/15/the-u-s-house-justvoted-unanimously-that-the-islamic-state-commits-genocide-now-what/?utm_ term=.472fcf30278a   2 ICRC website, ‘Mission’, http://iraqichristianrelief.org/about-us-2/   3 The picture and the article were annexed on the website Israelandstuff.com.   4 Seth Frantzman, ‘Assyrian Christians Visit Israel, Inspired by Jewish History They Hope to Emulate Israel’s Resilience’, 18 July 2017, https://www.israelandstuff.com/ assyrian-christians-visit-israel-inspired-by-jewish-history-they-hope-to-emulateisraels-resilience   5 See, for example, ‘The Untold Holocaust: Religious Persecution and Ethnic Genocide of Assyrians in the Middle East’, Assyrian Australian Academic Society, http://www. atour.com/~tvradio/video/TheUntoldHolocaust.html; Shak Hanish, ‘Christians, Yazidis, and Mandaeans in Iraq: A Survival Issue’, Digest of Middle East Studies 18, no. 1 (2009): 1–16; Mark Lattimer, ‘In 20 Years, There Will Be No More Christians in Iraq’, The Guardian, 5 October 2006, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/ oct/06/religion.iraq; Firas al-Atraqchi, ‘Fighting Robs Iraq of Christian Heritage’, Aljazeera.net, 14 May 2006.   6 James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).   7 The Armenian example, the experience of being a Christian minority from the same relative region, is also relevant here but falls outside of the confines of the present research.   8 See, for instance, Walt Wanderbush, ‘The Iraqi Diaspora and the US Invasion of Iraq’, in Diaspora Lobbies and the US Government, ed. Josh DeWind and Renata Sugera (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 211–35.   9 Alda Benjamen, ‘In Northern Iraq, Ethnic Minorities Are Key to Rebuilding after ISIS’, World Politics Review, 10 November 2017, https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/ articles/23578/in-northern-iraq-ethnic-minorities-are-key-to-rebuilding-after-isis 10 UNHCR, ‘Background Information on the Situation of Non-Muslim Religious Minorities in Iraq’, October 2005. Cited in Hanish, ‘Christians, Yazidis, and Mandaeans’, 9. 11 Lattimer, ‘In 20 Years, There Will Be No More Christians in Iraq’. 12 Harris, ‘Europe Struggles with Influx of Iraqi Refugees’.

Notes to pp. 174–79

271

13 Teule, ‘Christianity in Iraq: The Development, 316. This includes Syriacs, Assyrians as well as Chaldeans as it is virtually impossible to find reliable data on these communities individually with their political identities in the region being enmeshed and constantly shifting. 14 Weam Namou, ‘Faith in God – and Government: Cardinal Delly Is at Peace with Iraq Situation’, CN (July 2011): 30. 15 Interviews with Chaldeans in Phoenix, San Diego and Bloomfield Hills, May–August 2018. 16 Interview with Weam Namou, 15 August 2018. 17 Robson, States of Separation, 144–5. 18 Laura Robson, ‘Refugee Camps and the Spatialization of Assyrian Nationalism in Iraq’, in Modernity, Minority, and the Public Sphere, ed. Goldstein-Sabbah and Murrevan Den Berg (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 237–57. 19 Watenpaugh, ‘The League of Nations’ Rescue of Armenian Genocide Survivors and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism’, 1315–39. 20 Robson, ‘Refugee Camps’, 241; Watenpaugh, ‘The League of Nations’ Rescue of Armenian Genocide Survivors and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism’, 1315–39. 21 Robson, ‘Refugee Camps’, 252–4. 22 Wilmshurst, Martyred Church, 437, 445. 23 ‘President Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points’, 1918, https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc. php?flash=false&doc=62# 24 Donabed, Reforging a Forgotten History, 69. 25 ‘Self Determination in Iraq’, British Foreign Office 608/96/11 (20 February 1919): 26–7. Cited in Benjamen, ‘Assyrians and the Iraqi Communist Party’, 108. 26 Joel Werda, Flickering Light of Asia: Or, the Assyrian Nation and Church. Publisher unknown, 1924 (republished on AINA’s website, http://www.seyfocenter.com/wpcontent/uploads/2016/10/Joel-E-Werda-The-Flickering-Light-of-Asia-The-AssyrianNation-and-Church-1924.pdf). Cited in Robson, States of Separation, 149. Robson, Ibid., 149–50 for the distinction between the nationalist agenda of the Assyrian refugees in Iraq and Syria and the Assyrian diaspora in the United States and Europe. Fred Aprim, ‘Assyrians in the World War I Treaties: Paris, Sèvres, and Lausanne’, Assyrian Star LVIII, no. 1 (2006), http://www.aina.org/news/20060616121030.htm 27 There were a number of Assyrian petitions and demand for autonomy in the first half of the twentieth century, prominently the Urmia Manifesto of the United Free Assyria (1917), the petition to leave Iraq before the end of the Mandate (1931), the League of Nations proposed settlement for the Assyrians (1935) and the United Nations Assyrian National petition (1945). 28 Alda Benjamen, ‘Assyrians in Iraq’s Nineveh Plains: Grass-Root Organizations and Inter-Communal Conflict’, TAARII Newsletter (Spring 2011): 13–16. 29 Teule, ‘Christianity in Iraq: The Development’, 318–19. 30 Chaldean support for the Nineveh Plains project came mainly from the Chaldean Democratic Union Party, led by Ablahad Afrim Sawa, who collaborated closely with Kurdish political parties. Herman Teule, ‘Christians in Iraq: An Analysis of Some Recent Political Developments’, Der Islam 88, no. 1 (2012): 185. 31 Benjamen, ‘Assyrians in Iraq’s Nineveh Plains’, 13–16. 32 Ibid., 14–15. This administrative–demographic debacle is also vividly reminiscent of the disputed Mosul territory in the early 1920s, which left the administrative and citizenship rights of the Turkmen and other minorities undetermined for years

272

33 34

35 36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46

47

48 49 50 51

Notes to pp. 179–84 while the Turkish and British governments negotiated the ownership of the region. See Güldem Baykal BüYüKsaraç, ‘Trans-border Minority Activism and Kin-State Politics: The Case of Iraqi Turkmen and Turkish Interventionism’, Anthropology Quarterly 90, no. 1 (Winter 2017): 17–53. Teule, ‘Christians in Iraq: An Analysis’, 186. Shak Hanish, ‘Autonomy for Ethnic Minorities in Iraq: The Chaldo‐Assyrian Case’, Digest of Middle East Studies 20,no. 2 (2011): 167; Yuhanna Bidawid, ‘The Problems of Autonomy for Our Chaldean Syriac Assyrian People’ (Mashakil al-Hukm alDhati) Kaldaya, 2006, http://www.kaldaya.net/articles/300/Article323_Dec25_ YouhanaMarkas.html Hanish, ‘Autonomy for Ethnic Minorities in Iraq’, 166. Teule, ‘Christians in Iraq: An Analysis’, 187. Hanish, ‘Autonomy for Ethnic Minorities in Iraq’, 166. Ibid., 162–3. CN (22 December 2006). During the meeting, the group also settled on the hyphenated title ‘ChaldoAssyrian’ (Kildo-Ashuri in Arabic) for official governmental business, which appeared in article 53d under the Iraqi Transitional Administrative Law of 2003. However, when Chaldeans retracted their approval of the new hyphenated name few weeks later, the two groups featured as separate ‘Chaldean’ and ‘Assyrian’ minorities in the final text of the 2005 constitution. ‘New Iraqi Census Officially Recognizes ChaldoAssyrians’, AINA, 9 July 2004, http://www.aina.org/releases/2004079004216.htm; Teule, ‘Christianity in Iraq: The Development’, 315–16. ‘Chaldean Assyrian Syriac Conference’, ADM, 2003. ‘AINA: Middle Eastern Christian Conference: Safeguard the Assyrians of the Nineveh Plains’, 7 October 2004, www.christiansofiraq.com/Ainaconference.html Robert Dekelaita, ‘On the Road to Nineveh Again’, CN (June 2006): 48. CN (March 2014): 24. ‘Chaldean Federation of America Asks President Bush to Mention Chaldeans in His Speeches on Iraq’, 3 January 2003, http://www.chaldeansonline.org/chaldeanews/cfa. html Peter Lamprecht, ‘Iraq: Christians Debate Self-Autonomy to Halt Exodus’, Compass Direct News, 23 December 2006, http://www.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page =news&lang=en&length=long&idelement=4711&backpage=archives&critere=ninev eh%20plain&countryname=&rowcur=0 The Assyrian American National Federation, Assyrian National Council of Illinois, Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce, Assyrian American Association of Southern California, Assyrian Foundation of America and the Assyrian Universal Alliance Foundation. ‘CASCA Advocacy Successful in Shining Light on Plight of Chaldean/Assyrian/Syriac People and Securing US Government Aid’, Zinda Magazine XIII, no. 19 (25 December 2007). ‘On Vulnerable Grounds’, Human Rights’ Watch, 2009, 9. ‘The Article 125 Solution Reaffirmed by US Ambassador Ryan Crocker’, Iraq Democracy Project, http://www.iraqdemocracyproject.org/policy_alert_2.html ‘The myth of return’, an expression that appeared frequently in studies of immigrants and refugees in the 1990s, often referred to the symbolic transnational activities such individuals maintain with the originary land. Badr Dahya was one of the first to define the expression explicitly, in relation to his work on Pakistani immigrants in Britain:

Notes to pp. 184–88

273

The immigrant continues to re-affirm his adherence to the myth of return because for him to do otherwise would be tantamount to renouncing his membership of the village community and the village-kin group in Britain – for these groups together form a single whole, and for a migrant to opt out of one means opting out of the other as well. The myth of return is an expression of one’s intention to continue to remain a member of both of them. Badr Dahya, ‘Pakistanis in Britain: Transients or Settlers?’ Race 13, no. 3 (1973): 241–77) 52 USA v. Robert DeKelaita. Case: 17–1644 Document: 30 Filed: 17 November 2017, 1–9. US Government Publishing Office. https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCOURTSca7-17-01644/pdf/USCOURTS-ca7-17-01644-0.pdf 53 Persecutors Jenkins and Kastenek represented the US government in this case. They made this statement in their court filing. Jason Meisner, ‘Ex-immigration Lawyer Gets 15 Months for Bogus Asylum Claims’, Chicago Tribune, 22 March 2017, http://www. chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-immigration-lawyer-sentenced-met20170322-story.html 54 Ibid. 55 CFA, ‘CFA Begins Campaign to Secure U.S. Governmental and UN Support for Identification and Resettlement of Iraqi Refugees’, News release, 26 January 2007, http://solarflareservices.com/cfa/press/pr12697.html 56 Kassab, ‘Statement of the Chaldean Federation’, 123–6. 57 CFA, ‘CFA Progress Report’, www.chaldeanfederation.org (link no longer working). 58 Kassab, ‘Statement of the Chaldean Federation’. 59 The US Department of State had initially announced its intention to admit 7,000 Iraqi refugees in 2007. Jeff Goldblatt, ‘7,000 Iraqi Refugees Expected to Resettle in the US within a Year’, 22 February 2007, www.FOXNews.com 60 US Citizenship and Immigration Services (2009). 61 CFA, ‘Statement of the CFA on the Iraqi Christian’s Plight to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary’, 2007, http://solarflareservices.com/cfa/news/senate.html 62 Goldblatt, ‘7,000 Iraqi Refugees’. 63 CFA, ‘Statement of the CFA on the Iraqi Christian’s Plight’. 64 David Zucchino, ‘Chicago Lawyer Finds Mission in Helping Iraqi Christian Refugees’, Los Angeles Times, 28 April 2008, https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/ Justice/2008/0428/p02s01-usju.html 65 ‘Chaldeans in Southeast Michigan’, 2018. The CACC and CCF sponsored the University of Michigan-Dearborn and Kurt R. Metzger and Associates to conduct the new survey. http://umdilabs.com/sites/default/files/Chaldean%20Community%20 Survey%20Jan%202018.pdf; Vanessa Denha-Garmo, ‘Updated Survey Shares New Data about the Community in Metropolitan Detroit’, CN, 1 March 2018. 66 Martin Manna, ‘Refugees for Prosperity’, CN, 28 June 2018, https://www. chaldeannews.com/features-1/2018/6/28/refugees-for-prosperity 67 Examples are a $100,000 donation from the Turkish Coalition of America made to the CFA in September 2009 and donations from Jewish American and Zionist organizations. ‘TCA Awards $100,000 Grant to Chaldean Federation of America’, 2009, http://www.turkishcoalition.org/TCAAwards$100,000GranttoChaldeanFederati onofAmerica.html 68 Joseph Kassab, phone interview, December 2007. 69 Dean Reynolds, ‘Iraqi Christian Community That Supported Trump Angry over Threats of Deportation’, CBS NEWS, 25 July 2017, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ iraqi-christian-community-detroit-threats-deportation-trump/

274

Notes to pp. 188–89

70 Victor Gaetan, ‘Christian Voters Triggered Trump’s Win’, National Catholic Register, 2 December 2016; Chris Gelardi, ‘When ICE Came for the Chaldeans’, Slate, 4 September 2017, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/09/ michigan_s_iraqi_chaldean_community_is_fighting_to_protect_dozens_of_people. html; Daniel Allott, ‘Iraqi Christians Helped Donald Trump Win the White House. Now They’re Facing Deportation’, The Washington Examiner, 8 September 2017, http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/iraqi-christians-helped-donald-trump-winthe-white-house-now-theyre-facing-deportation/article/2176817 71 Gaetan, ‘Christian Voters’. 72 Eugene Scott, ‘Trump Says He’s Fulfilled His Promises to Christians, But He Really Means White Evangelicals’, Washington Post, 15 October 2017, https:// www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/10/15/trump-says-hes-fulfilledhis-promises-to-christians-but-he-really-means-white-evangelicals/?utm_ term=.4e8799eec920 73 Ashley Zlatopolsky, ‘Which Christians Is Trump Willing to Protect?’ The Atlantic Daily, 29 June 2017. 74 See, for instance, Chaldean American leaders’ frustration with ‘evangelicals and others who have expressed outrage over the persecution of Christians in the Middle East but who have been silent about the Chaldeans who face deportation’. Lauren Markoe, ‘Chaldeans in US: Why Aren’t More Christians Speaking Out against Deportations to Iraq?’ National Catholic Reporter, 16 June 2017, https://www.ncronline.org/news/justice/ chaldeans-us-why-arent-more-christians-speaking-out-against-deportations-iraq 75 Gaetan, ‘Christian Voters’. 76 Ibid. and Niraj Warikoo, ‘Area Middle Eastern Leaders Got Face-Time with Trump in Novi’, Detroit Free Press, 1 October 2016, http://www.freep.com/story/ news/politics/2016/10/01/area-middle-eastern-leaders-got-face-time-trumpnovi/91357724/ 77 Warikoo, ‘Area Middle Eastern Leaders Got Face-Time with Trump in Novi’. 78 David Bonior, a Democrat who represented Macomb County in the US House of Representatives for three decades, said, ‘Trump comes in and ends up winning the county by almost 50,000 votes. And the margin in Michigan was 10,700 or something. So Macomb basically gave him the state.’ Mark Binelli, ‘Inside Trump County, USA’, 25 January 2017, https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/insidetrump-county-usa-124726/ 79 Niraj Warikoo, ‘Michigan Had Highest Number of Bias Crimes in Midwest PostElection’, Detroit Free Press, 1 December 2016, http://www.freep.com/story/news/ local/michigan/2016/12/01/michigan-bias-crimes-midwest-election/94744196/ 80 Gelardi, ‘When ICE Came’. 81 Zlatopolsky, ‘Which Christians Is Trump Willing to Protect?’ 82 Bill Kubata, ‘Protesters Gather in Front of Detroit Federal Building Calling for End of Chaldean Deportations’, Detroit Journalism Cooperative, 27 June 2017. 83 Reynolds, ‘Iraqi Christian Community That Supported Trump Angry over Threats of Deportation’. 84 Ibid. 85 Bush was retrospectively described in an Assyrian post as a ‘so-called “Christian President” whose policies ironically caused more death and destruction for the Christians of Iraq than all of three decades of Ba‘thism combined’ Wilfred BetAlkhas, ‘Obama and the Politics of the Nineveh Plains’, 12 November 2008, http:// roland-expert.livejournal.com/44207.html

Notes to pp. 189–92

275

  86 ‘Chaldeans Wonder Which Presidential Candidate Is Best’, Chaldean Caucus, 9 October 2008, http://www.chaldean.org/CommunityPages/ChaldeanJusticeLeague/ tabid/108/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/393/categoryId/11/Chaldeans-WonderWhich-Presidential-Candidate-Is-Best.aspx  87 Ibid.   88 Initially, Chaldean spokesmen in diaspora resented the prospect of war, but when it became certain, they supported it. Joyce Carr, ‘U.S. Chaldean Catholics from Iraq Speak Out on War with Saddam’, National Catholic Register, 1 December 2002, http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/us_chaldean_catholics_from_iraq_speak_ out_on_war_with_saddam. As an example of pro-war position, see the interview following a visit of a delegation of pro-war Iraqi expats, including Chaldean businessman Jacob Bacall, to George W. Bush in the White House in the immediate aftermath of occupying Iraq. The delegates eschewed the media question of the Iraqi deaths caused by US bombardments claiming that Saddam Hussein is using Iraqis as human shields. Another Iraqi delegate stressed, ‘It’s only the US and the coalition forces who can in fact chaperone the young democracy in Iraq.’ AP Archive, 4 April 2003, Washington, DC, http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/youtube/169f6e1f2 4f7ccfb7b7d980f77152f00 (transcript); https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPBpsh8Nuc (video).   89 James Gordon Meek, ‘Iraqis a Problem for W – Mich’, 17 October 2004, http://www. nydailynews.com/archives/news/iraqis-problem-w-mich-article-1.557417   90 James Campbell, ‘Iraqi Chaldeans in Detroit Solidly American’, 16 September 1990, https://www.upi.com/Archives/191990/09/16/Iraqi-Chaldeans-in-Detroit-solidlyAmerican/5730653457600/  91 Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 95.   92 E. Frances White, Dark Continent of Our Bodies: Black Feminism and the Politics of Respectability (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2001).   93 Sally Howell, ‘Rights Versus Respectability: The Politics of Muslim Visibility in Detroit’s Northern Suburbs’, in Muslims and Contemporary US Politics, ed. Mohammed Khalil (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, forthcoming).   94 Campbell, ‘Iraqi Chaldeans in Detroit Solidly American’.  95 Said, Orientalism, 26–7.  96 Sheehi, Islamophobia: The Ideological Campaign against Muslims, 151.   97 Kassab, ‘Statement of the Chaldean Federation’, 121.   98 Pamela Pennock, The Rise of the Arab American Left: Activists, Allies, and Their Fight against Imperialism and Racism, 1960s–1980s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 192–3.   99 Ibid., 201–2. 100 Campbell, ‘Iraqi Chaldeans in Detroit Solidly American’. 101 Baker et al., Preliminary Findings from the Detroit Arab American Study (DAAS), 15, 7. 102 Howell, ‘Rights Versus Respectability’. 103 Ibid. 104 See descriptions of the event in The Arab American News in these articles: Dawud Walid, ‘Islamophobia in Sterling Heights Demands Condemnation and Discussion’, 17 September 2015; Samer Hijazi ‘Chaldean-Arab Coalition Group Stalls’, Arab American News, 15 January 2016; Hassan Khalifeh, ‘Sterling Heights Settles Mosque Lawsuit Amid Residents’ Outcries’. 27 February 2017. 105 Khalifeh, ‘Sterling Heights Settles Mosque Lawsuit’.

276

Notes to pp. 192–98

106 CN (April 2017): 26. 107 Khalifeh, ‘Sterling Heights Settles Mosque Lawsuit’. 108 ‘An Open Letter to the Chaldean Community: Dialogue Is Needed’, The Arab American News, 11 September 2015. 109 Khalifeh, ‘Sterling Heights Settles Mosque Lawsuit’. 110 See, for example, Shi‘i Imam Hassan Qazwini’s sermon at al-Zahraa Islamic Centre in Detroit, in which he addresses the Chaldean opposition to the mosque project, 28 August 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f_ds1JW7oE 111 Hijazi, ‘Chaldean-Arab Coalition’. 112 Khalifeh, ‘Sterling Heights Settles Mosque Lawsuit’. 113 Vanessa Denha-Garmo, ‘Behind the Mosque’, CN (April 2017): 26–7. 114 Ibid. 115 Ibid. 116 Ibid. 117 These examples were collected and presented by Hassan Khalifeh in ‘Sterling Heights Settles Mosque Lawsuit’. 118 Komer David, ‘Sterling Heights Mosque Lawsuit’, 13 March 2017, https://www. scribd.com/document/341807362/Sterling-Heights-mosque-lawsuit#from_embed 119 AFLC website, 17 March 2017, http://www.americanfreedomlawcentre.org/about/ leaders/david-yerushalmi-esq/ 120 ‘Sterling Heights, Michigan Residents Sue City to Stop Construction of Mosque’, AFLC website. 121 Doron P. Levin, ‘West Bloomfield Journal; Jews and Ethnic Iraqis: A Neighborhood’s Story’, New York Times, 17 December 1990, http://www. nytimes.com/1990/12/17/us/west-bloomfield-journal-jews-and-ethnic-iraqis-aneighborhood-s-story.html 122 Bloomfield Hills is home to the Jewish Community Centre of Metropolitan Detroit, the Frankel Jewish Academy, a Jewish community high school, the museum of the Jewish Historical Society of Michigan, the Chaldean Shenandoah Golf and Country Club, the synagogue Temple Israel and the Chaldean Cultural Center, in addition to several Jewish and Chaldean retail businesses and law firms and public schools with high concentrations of Jewish and Chaldean students. Ibid. 123 Niraj Warikoo, ‘Jews, Muslims in Metro Detroit Address Hate Crimes: It’s Getting Scary’, Detroit Free Press, 4 October 2017, http://www.freep.com/story/ news/2017/10/04/muslims-and-jews-gather-detroit-combat-bias/723510001/. 124 ‘Ethnic and Minority Newspapers Explore Detroit Bankruptcy, Recovery’, JN, 4 April 2014, https://thejewishnews.com/2014/04/04/ethnic-and-minority-newspapersexplore-detroit-bankruptcy-recovery/. 125 Interview with Weam Namou, 15 October 2017. 126 JN, ‘About JN’ section, https://thejewishnews.com/about/ The JN defines itself as a ‘pro-Zionist newspaper… advocating positions that strengthen Jewish unity and continuity’, Detroit Jewish News. About JN. https://thejewishnews.com/about/ 127 CN/JN BCN section (December 2011): 3. 128 CN/JN (October 2011): 3. 129 Ibid., cover, 5, 6. 130 Ibid., 9. 131 Ibid., 10. 132 Ibid., 28. 133 Ibid., 12.

Notes to pp. 198–202

277

134 See, for example, the description of Aramaic in the Faith & Church Gallery of the CCC’s Museum. Ibid., 12. Other Jewish sources also described the Aramaic spoken by modern Assyrians as ‘the language of the Talmud’. J. J. Goldberg, ‘6th BOROUGH: Lost Tribes; Concerning a Chance Encounter between Two Old Neighbors; the Jews and the Assyrians’, The New York Jewish Week, 25 February 2000. Mango Languages, a Jewish owned programme, partnered with the CCF to create a ‘Soureth series’. According to Manna, Mango ‘took interest in preserving our language because their Torah is in Aramaic’, CN (September 2017): 18. 135 CN/JN (October 2011): 3, 6. 136 Ibid., 9. 137 Stacy Gittleman, ‘Jewish Community Stands together with Chaldeans over Deportation Issue’, JN (29 June 2017), https://thejewishnews.com/2017/06/29/ jewish-community-stands-together-chaldeans-deportation-issue/. 138 Samuel Smith, ‘Deportation of Iraqi Christians “Worse” Than Rejecting Jewish Holocaust Refugees, Chaldean Bishops Says’, The Christian Post, 16 June 2017. 139 Gittleman, ‘Jewish Community Stands together with Chaldeans’. 140 Ibid. 141 CN/JN (October 2011): 12. 142 CN/JN (August 2010): 28. 143 Thomas Erdbrink and Karin Brulliard, ‘US Zeal for Iran’s Non-Muslims Faulted’, Washington Post, 1 March 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ article/2008/02/29/AR2008022903488.html 144 CN/JN (August 2010): 28. 145 Ibid. 146 CN/JN (August 2011): 3. 147 CN/JN (October 2011): 11. 148 See Arab Detroit 9/11: Life in the Terror Decade for numerous examples. 149 CN/JN (August 2010): 28. 150 Goldberg, ‘6th Borough: Lost Tribes’,. Goldberg does not provide a source for his Greenberg quotes. 151 Robson, States of Separation, 11–12. 152 Ibid., 7–34. 153 In Egypt, British official discourse on the Copts as the only true descendants of the ancient Egyptians who were ‘uncontaminated by intermarriage with Arabs and negroes’, closely mirrored the colonial discourse on Chaldeans and Assyrians in Iraq. Robson, States of Separation, 9. 154 Ibid., 8. 155 Ibid., 9. 156 Ibid., 13. 157 Ibid., 141–2. 158 Ibid., 156–7. 159 Ibid., 143–4. 160 Another relevant Jewish genealogy, which falls outside of the framework of this chapter, arouse out of the domestic social experience of Jews in Iraq, who were integrated well into public sphere and civic society during the Hashemite period, until mainstream perceptions of Jews abruptly shifted from viewing them as native populations of Iraq to Zionist outsiders with the creation of the state of Israel. Together with the Chaldeans, Iraq’s Jews considered themselves ethnically Arab

278

Notes to pp. 203–06

for decades. See Orit Bashkin, New Babylonians and The Other Iraq: Pluralism and Culture in Hashemite Iraq (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009). 161 Robson, States of Separation, 144–5. 162 ‘The Future of the Nineveh Plain: A Proposal from Chaldean/Syriac/Assyrian Political Parties’, CSA position paper, 6–7 March 2017, http://adaktusson.eu/cms/ wp-content/uploads/2017/06/CSA-Position-Paper-30JUN17-final.pdf 163 Memo from the Political Bureau Baghdad to London, 11 March 1919. National Archives Kew Foreign Office 608/274. Cited in Robson, ‘Refugee Camps’, 246. Many Assyrians argue to this day that they are the victims of a political betrayal because the League of Nations’ documents and Article 62 of the 1920 Treaty of Sevres ‘prove’ that most of today’s Dohuk region was supposed to constitute the future homeland of the Assyrians. Aprim, ‘Assyria and Assyrians since the 2003 US Occupation of Iraq’; Robson, States of Separation, 89. 164 Robson, States of Separation, 164. 165 Kassab, ‘Statement of the Chaldean Federation’, 112–14. 166 Ibid, 121. 167 Boorstein, ‘The US House Just Voted’. 168 ‘America’s Chaldean Community Strives to Assist Iraqi Christian Natives’, CN/JN (October 2011): 9. 169 The Knights of Columbus itself owes its existence to Catholic immigrants’ campaign against the anti-Catholicism that was infused into the Protestant American Protective Association (APA), which had aimed to exclude Catholics from full US citizenship. Christopher Kauffman, Patriotism and Fraternalism in the Knights of Columbus: A History of the Fourth Degree (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 2001), 1–2. 170 Since 2014, the Knights have provided over $13 million in aid to Christians in Iraq. Matt Hadro, ‘Why the Knights of Columbus Will Resettle Iraqi Christians’, Catholic News Agency, 4 August 2017, https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/whythe-knights-of-columbus-will-resettle-iraqi-christians-in-their-homes-90657; ‘The Knights of Columbus Are Rebuilding a Christian Community in Iraq’, 5 August 2017, http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450189/knights-columbus-rebuildschristian-community-iraq 171 For example, Paul Bellamy and Karl DeRouen Jr. (eds.), International Security and the US: An Encyclopedia, vol. 1 (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2007), 366; Collin Hansen, ‘Iraqi Christians’ Path of Persecution’, Christianity Today, 8 August 2008, http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/2008/august/iraqichristians-path-of-persecution.html. Also, worthy of note in this context is how the media began to question former Chaldean deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz’s Christian credentials as the Ba‘thist regime began to falter. For example, Uwe Siemon-Netto, ‘Saddam’s loyal “Christian”’, UPI, February 2003, https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2003/02/17/Commentary-Saddams-loyalChristian/97731045521478/ 172 Goldberg, ‘6th Borough: Lost Tribes’. 173 ‘Chaldeans at AIPAC Do Not Speak for the Community’, Arab American News, 6 March 2015. 174 David Weiss, ‘A Remembrance of Good Neighbors Past’, CN (October 2011). 175 Smith, ‘Deportation of Iraqi Christians’. 176 ‘Coalition Promotes New Film about Genocide of Mideast Christians and Minorities’, JN (4 August 2017).

Notes to pp. 206–12

279

177 ‘Netanyahu Government Does Not Trump Zionist Principles’, 26 June 2017, http:// www.ameinu.net/newsroom/press-release/netanyahu-government-does-not-trumpzionist-principles-2/ 178 The resolution of 9 September 2016 began with the following justification: ‘The return of the displaced indigenous peoples of the Nineveh Plain, including those in Iraq, to their ancestral homeland should be a policy priority of US and the international community.’ ‘H.Con.Res.152 – Expressing the sense of Congress that the US and the international community should support the Republic of Iraq and its people to recognize a province in the Nineveh Plain region, consistent with lawful expressions of self-determination by its indigenous peoples.’ https:// www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-concurrent-resolution/152/allinfo#major-actions 179 ‘It is my sincere hope that this trans-partisan resolution will further compel the State Department to join the building international consensus in calling the horrific ISIS violence against Christians, Yezidis and others by its proper name: “genocide,”’ said the Republican US Rep. who had introduced the measure. Boorstein, ‘The US House Just Voted’. 180 Ibid. 181 Kubata, ‘Protesters Gather’. 182 Sheehi, Islamophobia: The Ideological Campaign against Muslims, 42. 183 ‘What Iraqi Christians Want the American Government to Know’, Christianity Today, 29 June 2017, http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/192017/june-web-only/ iraqi-christians-want-american-government-to-know.html 184 ‘Coalition Promotes New Film’. 185 Keith Feldman, ‘Zionism and Anti-Zionism: A Necessary Detour, Not a Final Destination’, American Quarterly 67, no. 4 (December 2015): 1070.

Chapter 8 – Chaldeanness: The Official Narrative and Its Changing Displays   1 Cited in Vanessa Denha-Garmo, ‘A Gift from the Community: Chaldean Cultural Center Is Worth the Wait’, CN (December 2016): 24–7.   2 Following the first Gulf War in 1991, Chaldeans featured in a host of media articles in which they expressed ‘torn feelings’ or expressed allegiance to the United States. See for example, ‘No-Win Predicament of Iraqi-Immigrant Merchants in Detroit’, 16 March 1991, http://articles.latimes.com/1991-03-16/business/fi-230_1_detroit-area, ‘Door Swings Open for Iraqis / 241 Chaldeans Wait to Be Granted U.S. Asylum’, 30 September 2000, https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Door-Swings-Open-for-Iraqis241-Chaldeans-wait-2736025.php   3 Natalie Y. Moore, ‘Chaldean Group Wants Library, Exhibits to Educate Next Generation’, The Detroit News, 2003.   4 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1995), 183.   5 Korie Wilkins, ‘Center to Preserve Chaldean Heritage’, Oakland Press, 12 May 2003, 14–15.   6 Saroky Romaya, ‘Chaldean Cultural Center’, n.d., http://www.chaldeanculturalcentre. org/news/CCCbyMaryRomaya.html.

280

Notes to pp. 213–21

 7 Ibid.  8 CN (May 2008): 30. Also this opinion recurred in a mail interview with Martin Manna, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce, June 2008. Manna’s reference was to DAAS and the 2000 US Census.   9 Baker et al., Preliminary Findings from the Detroit Arab American Study (DAAS), 6, 15–16. 10 Email interview with Martin Manna, 8 July 2008. 11 Denha-Garmo, ‘A Gift from the Community’. 12 In his novel, Ya Mariam (2012, translated as the Baghdad Eucharist, 2017), Sinan Antoon frames the sectarian violence of the post-2003 years within a debate between these two Chaldean perspectives. His two main protagonists represent the two polarized views. Youssef, an elderly man who lived during the secularized Arabization period in Iraq remembers the country as a pluralistic place and ascribes a temporary nature to the present sectarian persecution of Iraq’s Christian. His younger relative, Maha, on the other hand, presents the primordialist view common among the persecuted Christian communities today that Christian minorities have always been violated under Islam. 13 Timothy Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 60. 14 Andrew Shryock, Off Stage / On Display: Intimacy and Ethnography in the Age of Public Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 3. 15 Cited in ‘Chaldean Community Cultural Center’, Catholic Writings, 2004, http:// catholicwritings.blogspot.com/2004/06/chaldean-community-cultural-center.html (link no longer available). 16 Interview, Rosemary Antone and Josephine Sarafa (West Bloomfields: Michigan, 2006). 17 Brian Wallis, ‘Selling Nations: International Exhibitions and Cultural Diplomacy’, in Museum Culture: Histories, Discourses, Spectacles, ed. D. J Serman (London: Routledge, 1994). 18 Amer Fatuhi, ‘Babylon Museum: An Open Dialogue with the Historian Mr. Amer Fatuhi, Director of Babylon Museum Project’, 2006, www.kaldaya.net. Information was repeated on personal interviews with Amer Fatuhi, Sterling Heights, 2004–06. Unlike the CCC gallery project which materialized a decade later in 2017 when funds became available through CACC sponsorship, the Babylon Museum never materialized due to the relative socio-economic marginality of its visionaries. 19 Arlene Dávila, Latinos Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2001), 217. 20 Hall, ‘Ethnicity: Identity and Difference’, 16. 21 ‘Chaldean Household Demographics Survey’, 6. 22 Ibid., 7. 23 Ibid., 23. 24 Ibid., 26. 25 Ibid., 5. 26 In a question on how the survey determined the Chaldean demographics that would receive the questionnaires, Martin Manna indicated that the lists of households were obtained from the Chaldean News, the six Chaldean Catholic churches in Michigan, the Assyrian church and the Syriac church along with general school data with high Chaldean populations (Email interview with Martin Manna, 8 July 2008). 27 ‘Chaldean Household Demographics Survey’, 5. 28 CN (June 2008): 29–30.

Notes to pp. 221–32

281

29 Ibid., 30; David, ‘Behind the Bulletproof Glass’, 151–78. 30 CN (May 2005): 24–6; David, ‘Behind the Bulletproof Glass’. 31 George Knox, ‘The Chaldean Mafia: A Preliminary Gang Threat Analysis’, National Gang Crime Research Centre, Chicago, IL, 2008, http://www.ngcrc.com/ngcrc/ chaldprof.htm 32 Julie Freer, ‘Study to Provide Information on the Chaldean Community’, C and G News, 2005, http://www.candgnews.com/editorial/2005/april/13/beacon/chaldean%20 study_jcf.html 33 http://www.chaldeanculturalcentre.org/exhibits/comingtoamerica.html. 34 CN (March 2004, February 2005). 35 CN (June 2008). 36 CN (November 2007). 37 CN (May 2008): 30. 38 Interview, March 2006. 39 Interview, May 2006. 40 Deborah Najor-Alkamano, ‘Multiple Betrayals: Reflections on Chaldean Identity & Academic Constructions of Ethnicity’, Paper presented in Mapping Arab Diaspora Conference, Dearborn, Michigan, 2006. 41 CN (May 2006): 38. 42 Friends in Unity – Queer Chaldean Women Speak. Anonymous Letter to the Chaldean News. Interview with senders, February 2008. 43 Phone interview with Jacoub Mansour, Chaldean director of the Festival, July 2008. 44 Friends in Unity, ibid. 45 Ibid. 46 Weam Namou, ‘Can You Pray the Gay Way?’, CN (26 May 2018), https://www. chaldeannews.com/features-1/2018/5/26/can-you-pray-the-gay-away 47 Michael Zakar and Zach Zakar, Pray the Gay Way (Grand Rapids, MI: Zakar Twins, 2017). 48 Gelardi, ‘When ICE Came for the Chaldeans’. 49 Ibid., 15. 50 Marita Eastmond, ‘Stories as Lived Experience: Narratives in Forced Migration Research’, Journal of Refugee Studies 20:2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 248–64. 51 Stuart Hall, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’, in Identity, Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Johnathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990), 222–37. 52 Brian Graham, Gregory John Ashworth and John E., ‘The Uses and Abuse of Heritage’, in Heritage, Museums and Galleries: An Introductory Reader, ed. Gerard Corsane (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), 26–37.

Epilogue   1 For full text of the amended 2005 Iraqi constitution, as published in the official Iraqi Gazette No. 4012, 28 December 2005, see: http://aceproject.org/ero-en/regions/ mideast/IQ/Full%20Text%20of%20Iraqi%20Constitution.pdf/view  2 Said, Orientalism, 59.   3 Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, G.A. Res. 47/135, Annex, UN Doc, A/Res/47/135/Annex. (18 December 1992).

282

Notes to pp. 232–35

 4 Mahmood, Religious Difference in a Secular Age, 1–6.  5 Constitution of the Kingdom of Iraq, http://www.constitution.org/cons/iraq/ iraqiconst19250321.html. See also, Bashkin, New Babylonians, 59; The Other Iraq, 23.   6 A similar rhetoric of declaring Islam the official religion and guaranteeing the rights of minorities persisted in the interim constitution of 1970, even under the seemingly ‘secular’ rule of the Ba‘th Party. See Weekly Gazette of the Republic of Iraq, No. 10 (Ministry of Information, Baghdad, Iraq, 10 March 1971).   7 Joseph Yacoub, ‘Christian Minorities in the Countries of the Middle East: A Glimpse to the Present Situation and Future Perspectives’, in Syriac Churches Encountering Islam: Past Experiences and Future Perspectives, ed. Dietmar W. Winkler (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010), 176.   8 Ronen Zeidel poses these questions in the course of discussing the depiction of Christians in the post-2003 Iraqi novel. Zeidel, ‘The Iraqi Novel and the Christians of Iraq’, Journal of Levantine Studies, Van Leer Jerusalem Institute 4, no. 2 (Winter 2014): 113–41.  9 Hourani, Minorities in the Arab World, 1. 10 Examples include Makdisi, Artillery of Heaven; Robson, States of Separation; Mahmood, Religious Difference; Sharkey, American Evangelicals in Egypt; and Paul Sedra, ‘Writing the History of the Modern Copts: From Victims and Symbols to Actors’, History Compass 7, no. 3 (2009): 1049–63. 11 Sluglett, ‘From Millet to Minority’, 19–38. 12 Prominently scholars Saad Salloum and Daham al-‘Azzawi. 13 Girling, Chaldean Catholic Church, 112–13, 120–1. 14 Khater, Inventing Home; Gualtieri, Between Arab and White.

WORKS CITED Periodicals and Television Stations Arab American News Assyrian National News Agency (AINA) Bayn al-Nahrayn (Qalasuryaya). (1973–87) Chaldean Detroit Times. Amir Denha (ed.). (1990–2004) Chaldean Nation (June–September, 2002) Chaldean News. Vanessa Denha-Garmo (ed.). (2004–18). (CN) Detroit Free Press Detroit News Detroit Jewish News (JN) Ishtar Satellite TV Al-Mashriq. Hanna Yatooma (ed.). (1974–5) Rays of Light (Zahrire d-bahra) Voice of Truth (Qala d-shrara) Zinda Magazine

Surveys and Reports Annual Report of the American Board of Commissions for Foreign Missions. Vol. 30–2 (Boston, 1840). Baker, Wayne, Sally Howell, Amaney Jamal, Ann Lin, Andrew Shryock, Ronald Stockton and Mark Tessler, Preliminary Findings from the Detroit Arab American Study (DAAS) (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Institute for Social Research, 2004). Chaldean Federation of America, ‘Adopt-A-Refugee-Family Program’. http:// chaldeanfederation.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=62:adopta-refugee-family-program&catid=31:general&Itemid=46 Chaldean Federation of America, ‘CFA Begins Campaign to Secure U.S. Governmental and UN Support for Identification and Resettlement of Iraqi Refugees’. News release, 26 January 2007. http://solarflareservices.com/cfa/press/pr12697.html Chaldean Federation of America, ‘CFA Progress Report’. 30 April 2007. www.chaldeanfederation.org Chaldean Federation of America, ‘Chaldean Federation of America (CFA) Organizational History’. http://chaldeanfederation.org/history/index.html Chaldean Federation of America, ‘Statement of the CFA on the Iraqi Christian’s Plight to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary’. 2007. http://solarflareservices.com/cfa/news/ senate.html ‘Chaldean Household Demographics Survey’. Walsh College of Business and United Way for Southeast Michigan (Michigan: Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce, 2007).

284

Works Cited

‘Chaldeans in Southeast Michigan’ (University of Michigan-Dearborn, Kurt R. Metzger and Associates, Michigan, 2018). http://umdilabs.com/sites/default/files/Chaldean%20 Community%20Survey%20Jan%202018.pdf ‘Constitution of the Kingdom of Iraq’. 1925. http://www.constitution.org/cons/iraq/ iraqiconst19250321.html ‘Failed Responsibility: Iraqi Refugees in Syria, Jordan and Lebanon’. Middle East Report, 77 (International Crisis Group, 10 July 2008). ‘Freedom of Information and Expression in Iraq: A Commentary by Article 19 on the Report Submitted to the United Nations Human Rights Committee by the Government of the Republic of Iraq’ (London: Article 19, 1987). The Claims of the Assyrians before the Conference of the Preliminaries of Peace at Paris (Paris: Rosen, 1919). The Lausanne Telegraph, correspondence No. 353, cited and translated in ‘1923: Agha Petros and the Lausanne Telegraphs’. 15 January 1923. http://www.atour.com/ history/1900/20030929a.html The Missionary Herald: Reports from Northern Iraq, 1833–1870. Kamal Salibi and Yusuf Khoury (eds). 3 vols (Amman: Royal Institute for Inter-faith Studies, 1997). ‘Nineveh Plains Needs Assessment Report: The Case of ChaldoAssyrians and Other Minorities’. Assyrian Academic Society, Iraqi Sustainable Democracy Project (April, 2005). ‘Report by the Secretary General on the Future Organization of Refugee Work’ (Geneva: Series of League of Nations Publications, XIII. Refugees A28, 1930). Russian, Armenian, Assyrian, Assyro-Chaldean and Turkish Refugees: Report on the Future Organization of Refugee Work. League of Nations, Secretary-General (Geneva: Imp. Kundig, 1919–33 [1930]; 1921–30 [1928]). United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Background Information on the Situation of Non-Muslim Religious Minorities in Iraq, 1 October 2005. http://www. refworld.org/docid/4371cf5b4.html. USA v. Robert DeKelaita. Case: 17-1644 Document: 30 Filed: 17 November 2017, 1–9. US Government Publishing Office. https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCOURTSca7-17-01644/pdf/USCOURTS-ca7-17-01644-0.pdf

Books and Articles ‘1.5 Million Assyrian-Iraqis Fear Marginalization in Upcoming Iraq Elections’. Assyrian National News Agency (AINA). 30 December 2004. www.aina.org Abraham, Nabeel, and Andrew Shryock, ‘On Margins and Mainstreams’. Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream. Nabeel Abraham and Andrew Shryock (eds.) (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2000) 15–35. Abuna, Albert, Adab al-Lughah al-Aramiyyah (Aramaic Literatures. Beirut: Dar alMashriq, 1996). Acho, Andrew, ‘Chaldean History and Culture’ Faris Goryoka, Producer [Video recording] (Michigan, 1990). Afram, Ablahad, Tarikh al-Kildan. Vol. 1 (History of the Chaldeans. Dehok: Matba‘at Hawar, 2004). ‘AINA: Middle Eastern Christian Conference: Safeguard the Assyrians of the Nineveh Plains’. Christians of Iraq, 7 October 2004. www.christiansofiraq.com/Ainaconference.html.

Works Cited

285

Ainsworth, William Francis, Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Chaldea, and Armenia. 2 vols (London: John W. Parker, 1842). Alba, Richard D. and Victor Nee, Remaking the American Mainstream: Assimilation and the New Immigration (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). Aldrich, H. E. and R. Waldinger, ‘Ethnicity and Entrepreneurship’. Annual Review of Sociology. Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews Inc. 16 (1990) 111–35. Aljeoo, Nicholas, ‘Who Are the Assyrians?’ The Assyrian Australian Academic Society (TAAAS). Assyrian American National Federation, Inc. (AANF). www.aanf.org. Allott, Daniel, ‘Iraqi Christians Helped Donald Trump Win the White House. Now They’re Facing Deportation’. The Washington Examiner, 8 September 2017. http:// www.washingtonexaminer.com/iraqi-christians-helped-donald-trump-win-the-whitehouse-now-theyre-facing-deportation/article/2176817 Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1995). Antonius, George, The Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1938). Antoon, Sinan, I‘jam (translated as Diacritics, Beirut: Dar al-Adab, 2004). Antoon, Sinan, Ya Mariam (Beirut: Dar al-Jamal, 2012, translated as the Baghdad Eucharist, 2017). Antoon, Sinan, ‘Barbari fi roma’ (Barbarian in Rome), Jadaliyya, 9 April 2013. http://www. jadaliyya.com/pages/index/11129/. Aprim, Fred (ed.), ‘The Assyrian Continuity’. Assyrian American National Federation, Inc., 10 June 1999. www.aanf.org Aprim, Fred (ed.), ‘Assyrians in the World War I Treaties: Paris, Sèvres, and Lausanne’. Assyrian Star LVIII/1 (2006). http://www.aina.org/news/20060616121030.htm Aprim, Fred (ed.), ‘Assyria and Assyrians since the 2003 US Occupation of Iraq’. 7 March 2008. http://www.atour.com/government/docs/20080307a.html ‘The Article 125 Solution Reaffirmed by US Ambassador Ryan Crocker’. Iraq Democracy Project. http://www.iraqdemocracyproject.org/policy_alert_2.html Asmar, Maria Theresa, Memoirs of a Babylonian Princess. 2 vols (London: Henry Colburn, Publisher, 1844). Asmar, Maria Theresa, Prophesy and Lamentation; or, A Voice from the East: An Appeal to the Women of England (London: John Hatchard & Son Publishers, 1845). Assemani, Guiseppe, Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino-vaticana. 4 vols (Rome: Congregationis de Propaganda Fide, 1719–28). ‘Assyrian American National Federation, Inc. Constitution and Bylaws’. Assyrian American National Federation, Inc. (AANF), 2003. www.aanf.org Aswad, Barbara, ‘Arab Americans: Those Who Followed Columbus’. Middle Eastern Studies Association Bulletin 27 (1993) 522. Atraqchi, Frias al-, ‘Fighting Robs Iraq of Christian Heritage’. Aljazeera.net, 14 May 2006. Autobiography in the Middle of the 19th Century, 1820–1870. University Library of Autobiography, XIII (New York: F. Tyler Daniels Company, Inc, 1918). Aviv, Rachel, ‘Saddam Hussein’s Key to the City of Detroit’. Bidoun, Spring/Summer 2008. http://bidoun.org/articles/saddam-hussein-s-key-to-the-city-of-detroit ‘Azzawi, Abbas al-, ‘Asha’ir al-‘Iraq. 4 vols (The Tribes of Iraq. Baghdad: Matba‘at alMa‘arif, 1947). Baaba, Youel, An Assyrian Odyssey (Alamo, CA: Youel A. Baaba Library, 1998). Bacall, Jacob, Chaldeans in Detroit. Images of America Series (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2014).

286

Works Cited

Badger, George Percy, The Nestorians and Their Rituals. 2 vols (London: Joseph Masters, 1852). Barakat, Matthew, ‘Christian Slate Wins Narrow Plurality in US Expat Voting’. AINA (19 December 2005). http://www.aina.org/news/20051219152044.htm Baram, Amatzia, ‘Mesopotamian Identity in Ba‘thi Iraq’. Middle Eastern Studies 19: 4 (October 1983) 426–55. Baram, Amatzia, Culture, History, and Ideology in the Formation of Ba‘thist Iraq, 1968–89 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991). Baram, Amatzia, Saddam Husayn and Islam, 1968–2003: Ba`thi Iraq from Secularism to Faith (Baltimore, MD: Woodrow Wilson Center Press/Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014). Barkey, Karan, Empire of Difference: The Ottomans in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Basch, Linda, Nina G. Schiller, and Cristina Blanc, Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States (Langhorne, PA: Gordon and Breach, 1994). Bashkin, Orit, The Other Iraq: Pluralism and Culture in Hashemite Iraq (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009). Bashkin, Orit, New Babylonians: A History of Jews in Modern Iraq (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012). Basmachi, Faraj, Treasures of the Iraq Museum (Baghdad: al-Jumhuriyya Press, 1975–6). Batatu, Hanna, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq: A Study of Iraq’s Old Landed and Commercial Classes and of Its Communists, Ba‘thists, and Free Officers (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978). Baum, Wilhelm and Dietmar W. Winkler, The Church of the East: A Concise History (London and NewYork: Routledge Curzon, 2003). Baumer, Christoph, The Church of the East: An Illustrated History of Assyrian Christianity (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006). Bazzi, Michael M., Chaldeans Present and Past (San Diego, CA: St Peter Chaldean Catholic Church, 1991). Bazzi, Michael M., Baldat Telkeif, madhiha wa hadhiriha (Town of Telkeif, Its Past and Present, Michigan: St Joseph Chaldean Church; Mosul: Matba‘at al-Jumhuriyyah, 2003 [1969]). Becker, Adam, Revival and Awakening: American Evangelical Missionaries in Iran and the Origins of Assyrian Nationalism (Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago, 2015). Beggiani, Chorbishop Seely, ‘The Maronites in the United States’. n.d. http://www.stmaron. org/spirituality/online-articles/the-maronites-in-the-united-states/ Beggiani, Chorbishop Seely, ‘Maronites in America – Continuing the Legacy’. 3 November 2015. https://thehiddenpearl.org/2015/11/03/maronites-in-america-continuing-thelegacy/ Bell, Gertrude, Letter to her father, Sir Hugh Bell, Gertrude Bell Archive, 3 October 1920. http://gertrudebell.ncl.ac.uk/letter_details.php?letter_id=425. Bellamy, Paul and Karl DeRouen Jr. (eds.), International Security and the US: An Encyclopedia 1, 2007. Benedict XVI, Pope Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger. ‘Lecture of the Holy Father – Faith, Reason and the University, Memories and Reflections’. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 12 September 2006. http://w2.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/september/ documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg.html

Works Cited

287

Benjamen, Alda, ‘Assyrians in Iraq’s Nineveh Plains: Grass-Root Organizations and InterCommunal Conflict’. TAARII Newsletter (Spring 2011) 13–16. Benjamen, Alda, ‘Assyrians and the Iraqi Communist Party: Revolution, Urbanization, and the Quest for Equality’, Minorities and the Modern Arab World. Laura Robson (ed.) (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2016) 106–21. Benjamen, Alda, ‘In Northern Iraq, Ethnic Minorities Are Key to Rebuilding after ISIS’. World Politics Review, 10 November 2017. https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/ articles/23578/in-northern-iraq-ethnic-minorities-are-key-to-rebuilding-after-isis Bet-Alkhas, Wilfred, ‘Obama and the Politics of the Nineveh Plains’, 12 November 2008. http://roland-expert.livejournal.com/44207.html BetBasoo, Peter, ‘Assyrian Nationalism: A Mechanism for Survival’. AINA. n.d. http:// www.aina.org/articles/anamfs.htm Betts, Robert Brenton, Christians in the Arab East: A Political Study (London: SPCK Publishing, 1979). Bidawid, Mar Raphael I and Mar Dinkha IV, ‘Joint Patriarchal Statement’. Eastern Churches Journal 3: 3 (1996) 171–3. Bidawid, Mar Raphael I and Mar Dinkha IV, Joint Synodal Decree for Promoting Unity between the Assyrian Church of the East and the Chaldean Catholic Church, 15 August 1997. Bidawid, Yuhanna, ‘The Problems of Autonomy for Our Chaldean Syriac Assyrian People’ (Mashakil al-Hukm al-Thati), Kaldaya, 2006. ‘Bishop Gabriel Kassab Visits London’. Nineveh Online, 2005. http://www.nineveh.com/ Bishop%20Gabriel%20Kassab.html Bohrer, Frederick N., ‘Inventing Assyria: Exoticism and Reception in 19th-Century England and France’. Orientalism, Assyriology and the Bible. Steven W. Holloway (ed.) (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2006). Boorstein, Michelle, ‘The US House Just Voted Unanimously That the Islamic State Commits “Genocide”. Now What?’ The Washington Post, 15 March 2016. https:// www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/03/15/the-u-s-house-justvoted-unanimously-that-the-islamic-state-commits-genocide-now-what/?utm_ term=.472fcf30278a Braude, Benjamin, ‘Foundational Myths of the Millet System’. Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society. Vol. 1: The Central lands. Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (eds.) (London and New York: Holmes & Meier, 1982) 69–100. Bruner, Edward M., ‘Experience and Its Expressions’. The Anthropology of Experience. V. W. Turner and E. M. Bruner (eds.) (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986) 3–30. Bunkley, Nick, ‘Martin F. Manna: Advocate Expands the Influence of the Chaldean Community’. Detroit News, 2005. Budge, E. A. Wallis, The Monk of Kublai Khan, Emperor of China; or The History of the Life and Travels of Rabban Sawma, Envoy and Plenipotentiary of the Mongol Khans to the Kings of Europe and Markos Who as Yahbh-Allaha III Became Patriarch of the Nestorian Church in Asia (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1928). BüYüKsaraç, Güldem Baykal, ‘Trans-border Minority Activism and Kin-State Politics: The Case of Iraqi Turkmen and Turkish Interventionism’. Anthropology Quarterly 90: 1 (Winter 2017) 17–53. Campbell, James, ‘Iraqi Chaldeans in Detroit Solidly American’. United Press International, 16 September 1990. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1990/09/16/Iraqi-Chaldeans-inDetroit-solidly-American/5730653457600/

288

Works Cited

Carr, Joyce, ‘U.S. Chaldean Catholics from Iraq Speak Out on War with Saddam’. National Catholic Register, 1 December 2002. http://www.ncregister.com/site/article/ us_chaldean_catholics_from_iraq_speak_out_on_war_with_saddam ‘CASCA Advocacy Successful in Shining Light on Plight of Chaldean/Assyrian/Syriac People and Securing US Government Aid’. Zinda Magazine XIII: 19 (25 December 2007). Castles, Stephen, ‘The Factors That Make and Unmake Migration Policies 1’. International Migration Review 38: 3 (2004) 852–84. ‘Chaldean Americans in Michigan, Past and Present’, 1990 [Video recording]. ‘Chaldean Bishops’ Letter Undermines National Unity’. AINA (10 June 2003). http://www. aina.org/releases/iraqbishops.html ‘Chaldean Catholic Leaders Appeal to Prevent Iraq War’. National Catholic Reporter 39 (24 January 2003), 12. Chaldean Community Cultural Centre (Producer), Our Story: Chaldeans in Detroit [DVD] (Michigan, 2004). ‘Chaldean Community Cultural Centre Schematic Design: Content Development’ (Michigan: CCC, n.d.). ‘Chaldean Federation of America Asks President Bush to Mention Chaldeans in His Speeches on Iraq’. Chaldeans Online, 3 January 2003. http://www.chaldeansonline.org/ chaldeanews/cfa.html ‘Chaldean Groups Protest Lack of Chaldean Representation in Iraqi Ruling Council’. 14 July 2003. http://www.chaldeansonline.org/chaldeanews/cnc_cdu.html Chaldean National Congress. Political Constitution & Internal Organization. 29 April 2002. http://www.chaldeansonline.org/chaldean/chaldean_congress.html ‘Chaldean National Congress Demands Inclusion of Chaldeans in Iraq’s Leadership Council’. CN (2003). http://chaldeansonline.net/chaldeanews/iraq_council.html ‘Chaldean Seminary’. The Catholic Herald, 9 March 1962. ‘Chaldeans Wonder Which Presidential Candidate Is Best’. Chaldean Caucus. http:// www.chaldean.org/CommunityPages/ChaldeanJusticeLeague/tabid/108/articleType/ ArticleView/articleId/393/categoryId/11/Chaldeans-Wonder-Which-PresidentialCandidate-Is-Best.aspx ‘ChaldoAssyrians of Iraq and the Iraqi Interim Constitution’. Position Paper I. Assyrian Academic Society (AAS), March 2004. www.aas.net ‘ChaldoAssyrian Churches in Iraq’. Position Paper II. Assyrian Academic Society (AAS), May 2004. Chams El Din, Cherine, ‘Qadisiyat Saddam: The Gamble That Did Not Pay Off ’. Writing the Modern History of Iraq. Bocco Bozarslan, Sluglett and Tejel (eds.) (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2012) 269–86. Cheikho, Louis, Kildan al-qarn al-‘ishrin: dirasah mujmalah ‘ann al-Mujtama‘ al-kildani (Chaldeans of the Twentieth Century: A Comprehensive Study of Chaldean Society, 1992). ‘Chicago Assyrians and Turkmen Protest Lack of Voting Access’. AINA (14 February 2005). www.aina.org ‘Christians Fleeing Iraq’. Christian Century, February 2007. www.christiancentury.org Clifford, James, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). Coakley, J. F., The Church of the East and the Church of England: A History of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Assyrian Mission (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). Coakley, J. F., ‘The Church of the East since 1914’. Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 78: 3 (1996) 179–96.

Works Cited

289

Coakley, J. F., ‘The Patriarchal List of the Church of the East’. After Bardaisan: Studies on Continuity and Change in Syriac Christianity in Honor of Professor Han J. W. Drijvers (Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 1999) 65–83. Coakley, J. F., ‘Homan Hallock, Punchcutter’. The Journal of the American Printing History Association 46: 23 (2003) 2. Coakley, J. F., ‘Manuscripts for Sale: Urmia 1890–2’. JAAS 20: 2 (2006) 3–17. Coakley, J. F., The Typography of Syriac: A Historical Catalogue of Printing Types, 1537– 1958 (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll, 2006). Coke, Richard, Baghdad: The City of Peace (London: Thornton Butterworth, Ltd., 1935). Corbon, Jean, L’Eglise des arabes (Paris: (coll. Rencontres, 2), Éditions du Cerf, 1977). Corbon, Jean, ‘The Churches of the Middle East: Their Origins and Identity from Their Roots in the Past to Their Openness in the Present’. Christian Communities in the Arab Middle East: The Challenge of the Future. Andrea Pacini (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). ‘Criminal and Murderous Act against a Chaldean Nun in Iraq’. Chaldeansonline, 2002. http://www.chaldeansonline.net/chaldeanews/nun.html Cummins, J. S., Christianity and Missions, 1450–1800: An Expanding World (Aldershot and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate/Variorum, 1997). Dahya, Badr, ‘Pakistanis in Britain: Transients or Settlers?’ Race 13: 3 (1973) 241–77. Daniel, William, ‘Who Are Assyrians?’ Assyrian American National Federation, Inc. (AANF). www.aanf.org D’Avril, Adolphe, La Chaldée chrétienne, étude sur l'histoire religieuse et politique des Chaldéens unis et des Nestoriens, par Adolphe d'Avril (Paris: B. Duprat, 1864). David, Gary C., ‘Behind the Bulletproof Glass: Iraqi Chaldean Store Ownership in Metropolitan Detroit’. Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream. Nabeel Abraham and Andrew Shryock (eds.) (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2000) 151–78. Dávila, Arlene, Latinos Inc.: The Marketing and Making of a People (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2001). Davis, Eric, Memories of State: Politics, History, and Collective Identity in Modern Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). DeKelaita, Robert, ‘An Ancient People’s Last Stand: The Plight of the ChaldoAssyrians in Post-Saddam Iraq’. AINA (30 April 2004). http://www.aina.org/guesteds/ 20040614193356.htm DeKelaita, Robert, ‘On the Road to Nineveh Again’. CN (June 2006) 48. Delaney, Robert, ‘Local Chaldeans Urged to Vote in Iraqi Elections’. The Michigan Catholic (Archdiocese of Detroit, 21 January 2005). www.aodonline.org Denha-Garmo, Vanessa, ‘Saving the Language of Jesus: Teaching Aramaic Becomes a Community Priority’. CN (October 2016) 26–7. Denha-Garmo, Vanessa, ‘A Gift from the Community: Chaldean Cultural Center Is Worth the Wait’. CN (December 2016) 24–7. Denha-Garmo, Vanessa, ‘Behind the Mosque’. CN (April 2017) 26–7. Denha-Garmo, Vanessa, ‘New Research Shows Refugees Contribute $295M Annually to Michigan Economy’. CN (October 2017). https://www.chaldeannews.com/ features-1/2017/10/18/new-research-shows-refugees-contribute-295m-annually-tomichigan-economy Denha-Garmo, Vanessa, ‘Updated Survey Shares New Data about the Community in Metropolitan Detroit’. CN (1 March 2018). https://www.chaldeannews.com/ features-1/2018/2/26/chaldean-in-michigan ‘The Detroit Mafia’. D-Tales (31 January 2008). http://dtalesdtown.blogspot.com/2008/01/ detroit-mafia.html

290

Works Cited

Dias, Nélia, ‘The Visibility of Difference: 19th-Century French Anthropological Collection’. The Politics of Display: Museums, Science, Culture. Sharon Macdonald (ed.) (London and New York: Routledge, 1998) 36–52. Dinnerstein, L. and D. Reimers, Ethnic Americans: A History of Immigration (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). Doctoroff, Allene Miller, The Chaldeans: A New Ethnic Group in Detroit’s Suburban High Schools. 2 vols (Dissertation, University of Michigan, 1978). Donabed, Sargon, ‘Rethinking Nationalism and an Appellative Conundrum: Historiography and Politics in Iraq’. National Identities, Taylor & Francis Group 14: 4 (2012) 407–31. Donabed, Sargon, Reforging a Forgotten History: Iraq and the Assyrians in the Twentieth Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015). Dorst, John, The Written Suburb: An American Site: An Ethnographic Dilemma (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987). Eastmond, Marita, ‘Stories as Lived Experience: Narratives in Forced Migration Research’. Journal of Refugee Studies 20: 2 (2007) 248–64. Ellingwood, Ken, ‘Extremists Crack Down on Liquor Stores in Iraq’. Los Angeles Times (4 October 2004). Ellis, Kail C., The Vatican, Islam, and the Middle East: Contemporary Issues in the Middle East (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1987). Ellis, Tristram James, On a Raft, and Through the Desert: The Narrative of an Artist’s Journey through Northern Syria and Kurdistan, by the Tigris to Mosul and Baghdad, and of a Return Journey across the Desert by the Euphrates and Palmyra to Damascus, over the Anti-Lebanon to Baalbek and to Beyrout (London: Field & Tuer, 1881). Erdbrink, Thomas and Karin Brulliard, ‘US Zeal for Iran’s Non-Muslims Faulted’. Washington Post, 1 March 2008. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ article/2008/02/29/AR2008022903488.html ‘Ethnic and Minority Newspapers Explore Detroit Bankruptcy, Recovery’. The Jewish News, 4 April 2014. https://thejewishnews.com/2014/04/04/ethnic-and-minoritynewspapers-explore-detroit-bankruptcy-recovery/ Faist, Thomas, The Volume and Dynamics of International Migration and Transnational Social Spaces (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Faris, John D., ‘The Latin Church Sui Juris’. Juris 62 (2002) 280–293. HeinOnline. https:// heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/juristcu62&div=19&id=&pa ge= Fatuhi, Amer, Al-Kildan munthu bad’ al-zaman: bahth ‘ann al-hawiyya al-qawmiyya alkildiyya/al-kildaniyya, 5300 BC–Present (Chaldeans from the Beginning of Time to the Present, 5300–Present. Detroit, MI: Dar Nu‘man li-l-tiba‘a wa al-nashr, 2004). Fatuhi, Amer, ‘Babylon Museum: An Open Dialogue with the Historian Mr. Amer Fatuhi, Director of Babylon Museum Project’. 2006. www.kaldaya.net Feldman, Keith P., Shadow over Palestine: The Imperial Life of Race in America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015). Feldman, Keith P., ‘Zionism and Anti-Zionism: A Necessary Detour, Not a Final Destination’. American Quarterly 67: 4 (December 2015) 1067–73. Frahm, Eckart, ‘Images of Assyria in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Western Scholarship’. Orientalism, Assyriology and the Bible. Steven W. Holloway (ed.) (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2006). Frantzman, Seth, ‘Assyrian Christians Visit Israel, Inspired by Jewish History They Hope to Emulate Israel’s Resilience’. 18 July 2017. https://www.israelandstuff.com/assyrianchristians-visit-israel-inspired-by-jewish-history-they-hope-to-emulate-israels-resilience

Works Cited

291

Freedman, Samuel, ‘As Iraqi Christians in U.S. Watch ISIS Advance, They See “SlowMotion Genocide”’. New York Times, 6 September 2014. https://www.nytimes. com/2014/09/06/us/as-iraqi-christians-in-us-watch-isis-advance-they-see-a-slowmotion-genocide.html Freer, Julie, ‘Study to Provide Information on the Chaldean Community’. C and G News, 2005. http://www.candgnews.com/editorial/2005/april/13/beacon/chaldean%20 study_jcf.html ‘The Future of the Nineveh Plain: A Proposal from Chaldean/Syriac/Assyrian Political Parties’. CSA Position Paper, 6–7 March 2017. http://adaktusson.eu/cms/wp-content/ uploads/2017/06/CSA-Position-Paper-30JUN17-final.pdf Gaetan, Victor, ‘Christian Voters Triggered Trump’s Win’. National Catholic Register, 2 December 2016. Gallagher, Barbara George, Chaldean Immigrant Women, Gender and Family (Dissertation, Wayne State University, Detroit, 1999). Galleti, Miralla, Cristiani del Kurdistan, Assiri, Caldei, Siro-Cattolici e Siro-Ortodossi (Rome: Jouvence, 2003). Gans, Herbert J., ‘Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America’. On the Making of Americans: Essays in Honor of David Riesman. Herbert J. Gans (ed.) (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979) 193–220. Gaunt, David, Massacres, Resistance, Protectors: Muslim-Christian Relations in Eastern Anatolia during World War I (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2006). Gaunt, David, Naures Atto and Soner Barthoma, Let Them Not Return: Sayfo – The Genocide against the Assyrian, Syriac, and Chaldean Christians in the Ottoman Empire (New York: Berghahn Books, 2017). Gelardi, Chris, ‘When ICE Came for the Chaldeans’. Slate, 4 September 2017. http://www. slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/09/michigan_s_iraqi_chaldean_ community_is_fighting_to_protect_dozens_of_people.html Gelardi, Chris, ‘Giving Silence a Chance: The Importance of Life Stories for Research on Refugees’. Journal of Refugee Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 21:1:1 (2007) 117–32. GhaneaBassiri, Kambiz, A History of Islam in America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Ghorashi, Halleh, Ways to Survive, Battles to Win: Iranian Women Exiles in the Netherlands and US (New York: Nova Science Publishers, 2003). Girling, Kristian, The Chaldean Catholic Church: Modern History, Ecclesiology and ChurchState Relations (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018). Gittleman, Stacy, ‘Jewish Community Stands together with Chaldeans over Deportation Issue.’ JN (29 June 2017). https://thejewishnews.com/2017/06/29/jewish-communitystands-together-chaldeans-deportation-issue/ Glatz, Carol. ‘Elevation of Chaldean Patriarch Highlights Plight of Iraqi Christians’, 24 Nov 2007, https://www.persecution.org/2007/11/28/elevation-of-chaldeanpatriarch-highlights-plight-of-iraqi-christians/ Goldberg, J. J., ‘6th Borough: Lost Tribes; Concerning a Chance Encounter between Two Old Neighbors; the Jews and – the Assyrians’. The New York Jewish Week (25 February 2000). Goldblatt, Jeff, ‘7,000 Iraqi Refugees Expected to Resettle in the US within a Year’. Fox News (22 February 2007). www.FOXNews.com Goldstein-Sabbah S., and H. Murre-van Den Berg, Modernity, Minority, and the Public Sphere: Jews and Christians in the Middle East (Leiden: Brill, 2016). Graham, Brian, Gregory John Ashworth, and John E., ‘The Uses and Abuse of Heritage’. Heritage, Museums and Galleries: An Introductory Reader. Gerard Corsane (ed.) (London and New York: Routledge, 2005) 26–37.

292

Works Cited

Gualtieri, Sarah, Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009). Guriel, Joseph, Elementa Linguae Chaldaicae: Quibus Accedit Series Patriarcharum Chaldaeorum (S. Congregationis De Propaganda Fide, 1860). Haddad, Fanar, Sectarianism in Iraq: Antagonistic Visions of Unity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). Haddad, Robert M., ‘The Lebanese Experience and Muslim-Christian Relations’. The Vatican, Islam, and the Middle East. Kail C. Ellis (ed.) (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1987). Haddad, Sharkey, ‘The American Journey of a Chaldean from Iraq’. Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream. Nabeel Abraham and Andrew Shryock (eds.) (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2001) 205–17. Haddad, Sharkey, ‘Call Your Brother in Michigan’. The Sweetness of Freedom: Stories of Immigrants (Ann Arbor: Michigan State University Press, 2010) 271–95. Haddad, Yvonne Y. and John L. Esposito, Muslims on the Americanization Path? (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1998). Hadro, Matthew, ‘Why the Knights of Columbus Will Resettle Iraqi Christians’. Catholic News Agency, 4 August 2017. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/why-theknights-of-columbus-will-resettle-iraqi-christians-in-their-homes-90657 Hall, Stuart, ‘Cultural Identity and Diaspora’. Identity, Community, Culture, Difference. Johnathan Rutherford (ed.) (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990) 222–37. Hall, Stuart, ‘Ethnicity: Identity and Difference’. Radical America 23: 4 (1991) 9–20. Hall, Stuart, Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London: Sage & Open University, 1997). Hamilakis, Yannis. The Nation and Its Ruins Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in Greece, Classical Presences (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). Hanish, Shak, ‘The Chaldean Assyrian Syriac People of Iraq: An Ethnic Identity Problem’. Domes 17 (2008) 32–47. Hanish, Shak, ‘Christians, Yazidis, and Mandaeans in Iraq: A Survival Issue’. Digest of Middle East Studies 18: 1 (2009) 1–16. Hanish, Shak, ‘Autonomy for Ethnic Minorities in Iraq: The Chaldo-Assyrian Case’. Digest of Middle East Studies 20: 2 (2011) 161–77. Hansen, Collin, ‘Iraqi Christians’ Path of Persecution’. Christianity Today, 8 August 2008. http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/2008/august/iraqi-christians-path-ofpersecution.html Harris, Emily, ‘Europe Struggles with Influx of Iraqi Refugees’. NPR Morning Edition, 6 March 2007. Hazen, William, ‘Minorities in Revolt: The Kurds of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey’. The Political Role of Minority Groups in the Middle East. Ronal McLaurin (ed.) (New York: Praeger, 1979) 49–75. Healey, John, ‘The Church across the Border: The Church of the East and Its Chaldean Branch’. Eastern Christianity in the Middle East. Anthony O’Mahony and Emma Loosley (eds.) (London: Routledge, 2010) 42–55. Heinrichs, Wolfhart, ‘The Modern Assyrians – Name and Nation’. Semitica: Serta philological Constantino Tseretli dicta. Riccardo Contini (ed.) (Turin: Silvio Zamorani, 1993) 99–115. Henrich, Natalie and Joseph Henrich, Why Humans Cooperate: A Cultural and Evolutionary Explanation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

Works Cited

293

Hermansen, Marcia, Yvonne Y. Haddad, and Jane Idleman Smith, ‘Mission to America: Five Islamic Sectarian Communities in North America’ (Book Review). A Journal of Church and State 36: 3 (1994) 611. Hidirsah, Yakup, ‘Massacre of Christians in Mesopotamia and Kurds (Syriacs, Nestorians, Chaldeans, Armenians). A Documentary Study’ (Hannover, Germany, 1997). Hijazi, Samer, ‘Chaldean-Arab Coalition Group Stalls’. Arab American News, 15 January 2016. ‘The History’, Mother of God Church 50th Anniversary 1948–98: Celebrating the Historical Growth of the Chaldean Community in Mother of God Parish (Southfield MI, 1998). Hitti, Philip, The Syrians in America (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press LLC, 2005) 1924. Hobsbawm, Eric, ‘Introduction: Inventing Traditions’. The Invention of Tradition. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983) 1–14. Homeh, John, ‘The Untold Holocaust: Religious Persecution and Ethnic Genocide of Assyrians in the Middle East’. Assyrian Australian Academic Society. http://www.atour. com/~tvradio/video/TheUntoldHolocaust.html Hooghiemstra, Erna, ‘Migrants, Partner Selection, and Integration: Crossing Borders?’ Journal of Comparative Family Studies 32: 4 (2001) 601–28. Hourani, Albert, Minorities in the Arab World (London: Oxford University Press, 1947). Howell, Sally. ‘Cultural Interventions: Arab American Aesthetics between the Transitional and the Ethnic’. Diaspora. New York: Oxford University Press. 9: 1 (2000) 59–81. Howell, Sally. Old Islam in Detroit: Rediscovering the Muslim American Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). Howell, Sally. ‘Rights Versus Respectability: The Politics of Muslim Visibility in Detroit’s Northern Suburbs’, for Muslims and Contemporary US Politics. Mohammed Khalil (ed.) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, forthcoming). Howell, Sally, and Andrew Shryock, ‘Cracking Down on Diaspora: Arab Detroit and America’s “War on Terror”’. Anthropological Quarterly. Washington. 76: 3 (Summer 2003). Husayn, Faysal ibn al-, Faysal ibn al-Husayn: Fi khutabihi wa aquwalihi (Faysal ibn Hussayn: Speeches and Sayings. Baghdad: Mudiriyyat Di‘ayat al-umma, 1946). Husry, Khaldun S., ‘The Assyrian Affair of 1933 (I)’. International Journal of Middle East Studies 5: 2 (1974) 161–76. Husry, Khaldun S., ‘The Assyrian Affair of 1933 (II)’. International Journal of Middle East Studies 5: 3 (1974) 344–60. Hussein, Saddam. Hawla kitabat al-ta’rikh (On the Writing of History. Baghdad: Dar alHurriyya, 1979). Interim Constitution of 1970, Weekly Gazette of the Republic of Iraq 10 (Ministry of Information, Baghdad, 10 March 1971). ‘Iraq’. Proche-Orient Chrétien 39 (1989) 346–8. Iraqi Constitution 2005. http://aceproject.org/ero-en/regions/mideast/IQ/Full%20Text%20 of%20Iraqi%20Constitution.pdf/view ‘Iraqi Patriarch Louis Sako Nominated for 2018 Nobel Peace Prize’. Persecution: International Christian Concern, 9 March 2018. https://www.persecution. org/2018/03/09/iraqi-patriarch-louis-sako-nominated-2018-nobel-peace-prize/ Irvine, Judith T., and Susan Gal, ‘Language Ideology and Linguistic Differentiation’. Regimes of Language: Ideologies, Polities, and Identities. Paul V. Kroskrity (ed.) (Santa Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, 2000) 35–83.

294

Works Cited

Ishaya, Arianne, Familiar Faces in Unfamiliar Places: Assyrians in the California Heartland, 1911–2010 (Xlibris Co., 2010). Ishaya, Arianne, ‘Assyrian-Americans: A Study in Ethnic Reconstruction and Dissolution in Diaspora’. Nineveh Online, n.d. http://www.nineveh.com/ASSYRIAN-AMERICANS. html#_ftn1 Ismail, Yaquo bar Malek, Auraye w-try plase tbilaye, h.d., Aturaye men 1914 hal 1945 (Assyrians and the Two World Wars, i.e. Assyrians between 1914 and 1945) (Tehran: Matba‘at d-si’ta seprayta d-’allime Aturaye, 1964). Jabiro, Crystal Kassab, ‘Shenandoah Opens: Long-Time Vision Finally Becomes a Reality’. CN (January 2005) 28–9. Jabiro, Crystal Kassab, ‘Historic Home Has Chaldean Charisma’. CN (28 August 2015). http://www.chaldeannews.com/historic-home-has-chaldean-charisma/ Jamaili, Muhammad Fadhil al-, The New Iraq: Its Problems of Bedouin Education (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1934). Jammo, Sarhad, ‘Contemporary Chaldeans and Assyrians: One Primordial Nation One Original Church’. Chaldeans Online, 2000. http://chaldeansonline.net/chald.html Joseph, John, The Nestorians and Their Muslim Neighbors. A Study of Western Influence on Their Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Oriental Studies 20, 1961). Joseph, John, Muslim-Christian Relations and Inter-Christian Rivalries in the Middle East: The Case of the Jacobites in an Age of Transition (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983). Joseph, John, The Modern Assyrians of the Middle East: Encounters with Western Christian Missions, Archaeologists, and Colonial Powers (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2000). Karpat, Kemal, ‘The Ottoman Emigration to America, 1860–1914’. International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 17 (1985) 175–209. Kassab, Joseph, and Christopher Kauffman, Patriotism and Fraternalism in the Knights of Columbus: A History of the Fourth Degree (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 2001). Kayal, Philip M., ‘Religion and Assimilation: Catholic “Syrians” in America’. The International Migration Review 7: 4 (1973) 409–25. Kayal, Philip M. and Joseph M. Kayal, The Syrian-Lebanese in America: A Study in Religion and Assimilation (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1975). Kayyali, Randa, The Arab Americans. New Americans (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006). Kayyali, Randa, ‘US Census Classifications and Arab Americans: Contestations and Definitions of Identity Markers’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39: 8 (2013) 1299–318. Kayyali, Randa A., ‘Race, Religion and Identity: Arab Christians in the United States’. Culture and Religion 19: 1 (2018) 1–19. Kedourie, Elie, ‘Minorities’. The Chatham House Version and Other Middle-Eastern Studies (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1984) 286–316. Kelidar, A. R., ‘Religion and State in Syria’. Asian Affairs 5: 1 (1974) 16–22. Khalaf, Samir, Cultural Resistance: Global and Local Encounters in the Middle East (London: Saqi, 2001). Khalil, Samir al- (Kanan Makiya), Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). Khalifeh, Hassan, ‘Sterling Heights Settles Mosque Lawsuit Amid Residents’ Outcries’. Arab American News, 27 February 2017. Khater, Akram, Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870–1920 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001).

Works Cited

295

Khayyath, Georges Ebed-Jesus V, ‘Etat Religieux des dioceses formant le Patriarcat Chaldeen de Babylone au 1er janvier 1896’. Jean-Baptiste Chabot (ed.) Revue de l’Orient chrétien, Series 1, I/4 (1896) 433–53. Kieser, Hans-Lukas, ‘Muslim Heterodoxy and Protestant Utopia. The Interactions between Alevis and Missionaries in Ottoman Anatolia’. Die Welt des Islam 41 (2001) 89–111. Knox, George, ‘The Chaldean Mafia: A Preliminary Gang Threat Analysis’ (National Gang Crime Research Centre: Chicago, 2008). http://www.ngcrc.com/ngcrc/chaldprof.htm Komer, David, ‘Sterling Heights Mosque Lawsuit’. 13 March 2017. https://www.scribd. com/document/341807362/Sterling-Heights-mosque-lawsuit#from_embed Konja, Claire, ‘CALC Corner’. CN (July 2005) 18. Koser, Khalid, ‘Social Networks and the Asylum Cycle: The Case of Iranians in the Netherlands’. International Migration Review. New York: Centre for Migration Studies, Inc. 31: 3 (1997) 591–611. Kubata, Bill, ‘Protesters Gather in Front of Detroit Federal Building Calling for End of Chaldean Deportations’. Detroit Journalism Cooperative, 27 June 2017. Kuroki, Hidemitsu, ‘Mobility of Non-Muslims in 19th Century Aleppo’. The Influence of Human Mobility in Muslim Societies (New York: Routledge, 2003) 117–50. Labourt, Jérôme, ‘Chaldean Christians’. The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 3 (New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908). Lacey, Marc, ‘After the War: Vigilantes; Iraq’s Liquor Trade Becomes a Casualty of Postwar Chaos’. New York Times, 24 May 2003. Laing-Marshall, Andrea, Modern Assyrian Identity and the Church of the East: An Exploration of Their Relationship and the Rise of Assyrian Nationalism, from the World Wars to 1980 (Dissertation, University of St Michael’s College, Toronto, 2001). Lamprecht, Peter, ‘Iraq: Christians Debate Self-Autonomy to Halt Exodus’. Compass Direct (23 December 2006). News. http://www.compassdirect.org/en/display.php?page=new s&lang=en&length=long&idelement=4711&backpage=archives&critere=nineveh%20 plain&countryname=&rowcur=0 Larsen, Mogens Trolle, The Conquest of Assyria (London and New York: Routledge, 1996). Lattimer, Mark, ‘In 20 Years, There Will Be No More Christians in Iraq’. The Guardian, 5 October 2006. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/oct/06/religion.iraq Layard, Austen Henry, Nineveh and Its Remains: With an Account of a Visit to the Chaldæan Christians of Kurdistan, and the Yezidis, or Devil Worshippers; and An Enquiry into the Manners and Arts of the Ancient Assyrians. 2 vols (London: J. Murray, 1849). Layard, Austen Henry, Discoveries among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon: With Travels in Armenia, Kurdistan, and the Desert: Being the Result of a Second Expedition Undertaken for the Trustees of the British Museum (New York: Harper, 1853). Le Coz, Raymond, Histoire de l’Eglise d’Orient: chrétiens d’Irak, d’Iran et de Turquie (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1995). Levin, Doron P., ‘West Bloomfield Journal; Jews and Ethnic Iraqis: A Neighborhood’s Story’. New York Times, 17 December 1990. http://www.nytimes.com/1990/12/17/us/ west-bloomfield-journal-jews-and-ethnic-iraqis-a-neighborhood-s-story.html Levitt, Peggy, and Nina Glick Schiller, ‘Conceptualizing Simultaneity: A Transnational Social Field Perspective on Society’. International Migration Review. New York: Centre for Migration Studies, Inc. 38: 3 (2004) 1002–39. Lowe, Lisa, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1996). Lukitz, Liora, Iraq: The Search for National Identity (London: Routledge, 1995).

296

Works Cited

MacDonnell, Joseph, Jesuits by the Tigris: Men for Others in Baghdad (Boston, MA: Jesuit Mission Press, 1994). Mahmood, Saba, Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016). Majaj, Lisa Suhair, ‘Arab Americans and the Meaning of Race’. Postcolonial Theory and the United States: Race, Ethnicity and Literature. Amritjit Singh and Peter Schmidt (eds.) (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2000) 20–37. ‘Major Assyrian Chaldean Groups in US Urge Patriarchs to a Joint Meeting, Await Response’. Ζinda Magazine, 8 June 2005. http://www.zindamagazine.com/html/ archives/2005/6.18.05/index_sat.php Makdisi, Ussama, ‘Reclaiming the Land of the Bible: Missionaries, Secularism, and Evangelical Modernity’. The American Historical Review 102: 3 (1997) 680–713. Makdisi, Ussama, Artillery of Heaven: American Missionaries and the Failed Conversion of the Middle East (New York: Cornell University Press, 2008). Makdisi, Ussama, ‘The Limits of Anti-Secularist Critique’. Politics, Religion & Ideology 17: 1 (2016) 77–9. Malek, Yusuf, The British Betrayal of the Assyrians (Chicago, IL: The Assyrian National Federation and the Assyrian National League of America, 1935). Malick, David G., The American Mission Press: A Preliminary Bibliography (Atour Press, 2008). http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/atourpub. Manna, Martin, ‘The Nineveh Plains Solution: A Long-Term Solution’. CN (March 2014) 24. Manna, Martin, ‘Refugees for Prosperity’. CN (28 June 2018). https://www.chaldeannews. com/features-1/2018/6/28/refugees-for-prosperity Markoe, Lauren, ‘Chaldeans in US: Why Aren’t More Christians Speaking Out against Deportations to Iraq?’ National Catholic Reporter, 16 June 2017. https://www. ncronline.org/news/justice/chaldeans-us-why-arent-more-christians-speaking-outagainst-deportations-iraq Martin, Jean Pierre Paulin, La Chaldée: esquisse historique: suivie de quelques réflexions sur l’Órient (Imprimerie de la Civilta Cattolica, 1867). Massad, Joseph, ‘Palestine and the Limits of Racialized Discourse’. Social Text 34 (1993) 94–114. Masters, Bruce, Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Arab World: The Roots of Sectarianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Matar, Salim, Al-Dhat al-jariha: ishkalat al-hawiyyah fi al-‘Iraq wa al-‘alam al-‘arabi/ al-sharqani ([The Wounded Self: Identity Issues in Iraq and the Arab/Eastern World] Beirut: al-Mu’assasah al-arabiyyah li-l-dirasat wa al-nashr, 2000). Maundrell, Henry, A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, at Easter, A.D. 1697. To Which Is Added an Account of the Author’s Journey to the Banks of the Euphrates at Beer, and to the Country of Mesopotamia. Christian monitor, Boston (The Society for promoting Christian knowledge, piety and charity, New series. Boston, MA: S.G. Simkins, 1836). McKay, Hollie, ‘Genocide in Homeland Exposes Rift in Iraqi-American Christian Community’. Fox News, 21 July 2016. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/07/21/ genocide-in-homeland-exposes-rift-in-iraqi-american-christian-community.html Meade, C. Wade, Road to Babylon: Development of US Assyriology (Leiden: Brill, 1974). Meek, James Gordon, ‘Iraqis a Problem for W – Mich’. 17 October 2004. http://www. nydailynews.com/archives/news/iraqis-problem-w-mich-article-1.557417 Meisner, Jason, ‘Ex-immigration Lawyer Gets 15 Months for Bogus Asylum Claims’. Chicago Tribune, 22 March 2017. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ breaking/ct-immigration-lawyer-sentenced-met-20170322-story.html

Works Cited

297

Merguerian, Barbara J., ‘“Missions in Eden”: Shaping an Educational and Social Program for the Armenians in Eastern Turkey (1855–1895)’. New Faith in Ancient Lands Western Missions in the Middle East in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries. Studies in Christian Mission 32 (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2006) 241–61. Mérigoux, J. M., Va à Ninive! Un dialogue avec l’Irak (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2000) 445–75. Metzler, Natasha T., ‘More Iraqi Refugees Admitted in June’. Washington Post, 1 July 2008. Mikhail, Dunya, Yawmiyyat maujah kharij al-bahr [Diary of a Wave outside the Sea]. Elizabeth Ann Wilson (Tr.) (Cairo: Dar Ishtar li al-nashr al-mahduda, 1999). Mitchell, Timothy, Colonizing Egypt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991 [1988]). Moore, Natalie Y., ‘Chaldean Group Wants Library, Exhibits to Educate Next Generation’. The Detroit News, 2003. Morsy, Soheir, ‘Beyond the Honorary “White” Classification of Egyptians’. Race. Steven Gregory and Roger Sanjek (eds.) (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1994) 175–98. Moses, Alexander R., ‘Saddam Once Received Key to Detroit’. Zinda Magazine, March 2003. Mueller, Mark, ‘Iraqi Christians Fear Rise of Shi‘ites’. The Christian Century, 31 May 2003. Murphy, Caryle, ‘Evangelicals Building a Base in Iraq: Newcomers Raise Worry among Traditional Church Leaders’. Washington Post, 23 June 2005. Murre-van Den Berg, Heleen L., ‘Chaldeans and Assyrians: The Church of the East in the Ottoman Period’. The Christian Heritage of Iraq. Erica Hunter (ed.) (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2009) 146–64. Murre-van Den Berg, Heleen L., ‘Apostasy or “the House Built on Sand”: Jews, Muslims and Christians in East-Syrian Texts (1500–1850)’. Contacts and Controversies between Muslims, Jews and Christians in the Ottoman Empire and Pre-modern Iran. Camilla Adang and Sabine Schmidtke (eds.) (Istanbuler Texte Und Studien. Würzburg: Ergon in Kommission, 2010). Murre-van Den Berg, Heleen L., Scribes and Scriptures: The Church of the East in the Eastern Ottoman Provinces (1500–1850), Eastern Christian Studies 21 (Leuven, Bristol and Connecticut: Peeters, 2015). Murre-van Den Berg, Heleen L., ‘The Language of the Nation: The Rise of Arabic among Jews and Christians (1900–1950)’. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 43: 2 (2016) 176–90. Murre-van Den Berg, Heleen L., ‘Searching for Common Ground: Jews and Christians in the Modern Middle East’. Modernity, Minority and the Public Sphere (Leiden: Brill, 2016) 3–38. Naayem, Joseph, Shall This Nation Die? (New York: Chaldean Rescue, 1921). https:// archive.org/stream/shallthisnationd00naay Naber, Nadine C., ‘Ambiguous Insiders: An Investigation of Arab American Invisibility’. Ethnic and Racial Studies 23: 1 (2000) 37–61. Naber, Nadine C., Arab San Francisco: On Gender, Cultural Citizenship, and Belonging (Dissertation, University of California, Davis, 2002). Naber, Nadine C., ‘Muslim First, Arab Second: A Strategic Politics of Race and Gender’. The Muslim World 95: 4 (2005) 479–95. Naber, Nadine C., ‘Arab American Femininities: Beyond Arab Virgin/American(ized) Whore’. Feminist Studies 32: 1 (2006) 87–111.

298

Works Cited

Naby, Eden, ‘An Assyrian Odyssey Covering the Journey of Kasha Yacoub Yaure and His Wife Mourassa from Urmia to the Court of Queen Victoria (1879–1881) and the Exodus of Assyrians from Their Ancestral Home (1918)’. Youel Baaba Library, 2000. Review. Iranian Studies 36: 2 (2003) 287–9. Naff, Alixa, Becoming American: The Early Arab Immigrant Experience (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985). Najor, Deborah, ‘Bebe Khomee’. Indiana Review. Charles Baxter (ed.) Indiana. 12: 1 (Winter 1988) 14–19. Najor, Deborah, ‘Selma’s Weddings’. Michigan Quarterly Review. Anton Shammas (ed.) (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, Fall 1992) 607–16. Najor-Alkamano, Deborah, ‘Multiple Betrayals: Reflections on Chaldean Identity & Academic Constructions of Ethnicity’. Paper presented in Mapping Arab Diaspora Conference. Dearborn, Michigan, 2006. Namou, Weam, The Feminine Art (Troy, MI: Hermiz Publishing Inc., 2004). Namou, Weam, The Mismatched Braid (Troy, MI: Hermiz Publishing Inc., 2006). Namou, Weam, The Flavor of Culture (Troy, MI: Hermiz Publishing Inc., 2008). Namou, Weam, ‘Faith in God – and Government: Cardinal Delly Is at Peace with Iraq Situation’. CN (July 2011) 30. National Chaldean Museum of Babylonia for Heritage and Visual Arts (NCMB), 2013. http://chaldeanflag.com/museum/ ‘New Iraqi Census Officially Recognizes ChaldoAssyrians’. AINA (9 July 2004). http:// www.aina.org/releases/2004079004216.htm Nietzsche, Friedrich, ‘On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life’. Untimely Meditations. R. J. Hollingdale (Tr.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983 [1874]) 59–123. Nouri, Qais al-, Conflict and Persistence in the Iraqi Chaldean Acculturation (Dissertation, University of Washington, 1964). Ochs, E. and L. Capps, ‘Narrating the Self ’. Annual Review of Anthropology 25 (1996) 19–43. Odisho, Edward, ‘The Ethnic, Linguistic and Cultural Identity of Modern Assyrians’. Proceedings of the Second Annual Symposium of the Assyrian and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage Project. Held in Paris, France, 4–7 October 1999 (Helsinki: The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project 2001) 137–48. http://www.helsinki.fi/science/saa/ O’Driscoll, Dylan and Dave van Zoonen, ‘Governing Nineveh after the Islamic State: A Solution for All Components’. Middle East Research Institute Policy Paper 3: 2 (2016). O’Mahony, Anthony, ‘The Chaldean Catholic Church: The Politics of Church-State Relations in Modern Iraq’. Heythrop XLV (2004) 435–50. O’Mahony, Anthony, ‘Christianity in Modern Iraq’. International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 4: 2 (2004) 121–42. O’Mahony, Anthony, ‘Life and Death of a Patriarch: Mar Rouphael I Bidawid, Patriarch of Babylon, and the Chaldean Catholic Church in Iraq’. Sobornos 27: 1 (2005) 26–46. ‘On Vulnerable Grounds’. Human Rights’ Watch, 2009. Orfalea, Gregory, The Arab Americans: A History (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press, 2006). Oussani, Gabriel, ‘The Modern Chaldeans and Nestorians, and the Study of Syriac among Them’. Journal of the American Oriental Society 22 (1901) 79–96. Oussani, Gabriel, ‘An Historical Essay on the Assyro-Chaldean Christians’. Shall This Nation Die? Joseph Naayem (ed.) (New York: Chaldean Rescue, 1921) xv–xxvi. https:// archive.org/stream/shallthisnationd00naay

Works Cited

299

‘The Other Iraq War’. The Washington Times, 28 March 2005. https://www. washingtontimes.com/news/2005/mar/28/20050328-103929-3405r/ Pacini, Andrea, ‘Introduction.’ Christian Communities in the Arab Middle East: The Challenge of the Future. Andrea Pacini (ed.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) 1–24. ‘Papal Pilgrimage to Iraq’. Eastern Churches Journal 6: 3 (1999) 261–7. Pennock, Pamela E., The Rise of the Arab American Left: Activists, Allies, and Their Fight against Imperialism and Racism, 1960s–1980s (Chapel Hill: University of South Carolina Press, 2017). Perkins, Justin, A Residence of Eight Years in Persia among the Nestorian Christians (Andover: Allen, Morrill, and Wadwell, 1843). Perry, Tony, ‘Chaldean Priest in San Diego Still under Orders to Return to Iraq’. Los Angeles Times, 15 January 2015. http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-iraqiimmigrants-20150116-story.html Petrosian, Vahram, ‘Assyrians in Iraq’. Iran & the Caucasus. Brill. 10: 1 (2006) 113–47. Phares, Walid ‘Oppression of Middle East Christians: A Forgotten Tragedy’. n.d.. http:// www.chaldeansonline.net/Banipal/English/faris2.html ‘President Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points’. 1918. https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc. php?flash=false&doc=62# Prewitt, Kenneth, ‘The Census Counts, the Census Classifies’. Not Just Black and White: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity in the United States. Nancy Foner and George M. Fredrickson (eds.) (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2004) 145–164. Price, Charles, ‘Southern Europeans in Australia: Problems of Assimilation’. The International Migration Digest. 2: 3 (1968) 3–26. Pursley, Sara, ‘“Lines Drawn on an Empty Map”: Iraq’s Borders and the Legend of the Artificial State’. Jadaliyya, 2 June 2015. http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/21759/ lines-drawn-on-an-empty-map_iraq%E2%80%99s-borders-and-the Rabi, ‘Abdallah Murqus, Al-Kildan al-mu‘asirun wa al-bahth ‘ann al-hawiyya al-qawmiyya: dirasah sosioanthropologiyya (Contemporary Chaldeans and the Search for a National Identity: A Socio-anthropological study, Amman, 2001). Rasheed, Madawi al-, Iraqi Assyrians in London: The Construction of Ethnicity (Lampeter: Mellen, 1998). Rassam, Hormuzd, ‘Recent Assyrian and Babylonian Research’. Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute, or Philosophical Society of Great Britain 14 (London, 1880). Rassam, Hormuzd, ‘Biblical Nationalities Past and Present.’ Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archeology 8 (1885) 358–85. Rassam, Hormuzd, Asshur and the Land of Nimrod: Being an Account of the Discoveries Made in the Ancient Ruins of Nineveh, Asshur, Sepharvaim, Calah, 1897 (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, LLC, 2009). Rassam, Suha, Christianity in Iraq: Its Origins and Development to the Present Day (Herefordshire: Gracewing, 2005). Rawlinson, George, The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World; or, The History, Geography, and Antiquities of Chaldea, Assyria, Babylon, Media, and Persia, Collected and Illustrated from Ancient and Modern Sources. 4 vols (London: John Murray, 1862–7). Rawlinson, Henry C., Outlines of Assyrian History from the Inscriptions of Nineveh: The Twenty Ninth Annual Report of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain (London: John Parker & Son, 1852).

300

Works Cited

Reynolds, Dean, ‘Iraqi Christian Community That Supported Trump Angry over Threats of Deportation’. CBS NEWS, 25 July 2017. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iraqichristian-community-detroit-threats-deportation-trump/ Rieffer, Barbara Ann J., ‘Religion and Nationalism: Understanding the Consequences of a Complex Relationship’. Ethnicities (London and Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2003) 215–42. Robinson, Charles Henry, History of Christian Missions (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1916). Roberson, Ronald, ‘The Eastern Catholic Churches 2010’. Annuario Pontificio, 2010. Roberson, Ronald, ‘The Eastern Catholic Churches 2014’. Annuario Pontificio, 2014. http://www.cnewa.org/source-images/Roberson-eastcathstatistics/eastcatholicstat14.pdf Robson, Laura, ‘Introduction’. Minorities and the Modern Arab World. Laura Robson (ed.) (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2016) 1–16. Robson, Laura, ‘Refugee Camps and the Spatialization of Assyrian Nationalism in Iraq’. Modernity, Minority, and the Public Sphere: Jews and Christians in the Middle East. S. R. Goldstein-Sabbah and H. L. Murre-van Den Berg (eds.) (Leiden: Brill, 2016) 237–57. Robson, Laura, States of Separation: Transfer, Partition, and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016). Rohde Achim, State-Society Relations in Ba‘thist Iraq (London and New York: Routledge, 2010). Romaya, M. S., ‘Chaldean Cultural Center’. n.d. http://www.chaldeanculturalcentre.org/ news/CCCbyMaryRomaya.html Rosenberg, Matthew, ‘Iraqi Liquor Store Murders Raise Concern’. 20 January 2004. http:// www.rense.com/general48/ris.htm Roux, George, Ancient Iraq (Cleveland, OH and New York: World Publishing Company, 1964). Rubin, Milka, ‘The Language of Creation or the Primordial Language: A Case of Cultural Polemics in Antiquity’. Journal of Jewish Studies 49 (1998) 306–33. Rumbaut, Rubén G., ‘Ages, Life Stages and Generational Cohorts: Decomposing the Immigrant First and Second Generations in the US’. International Migration Review. New York: Centre for Migration Studies, Inc. 38: 3 (2004) 1160–205. Rutledge, Ian, Enemy on the Euphrates: The British Occupation of Iraq and the Great Arab Revolt, 1914–1921 (London: Saqi Books, 2014). Sabar, Yona, ‘From Tel-Kepe (A Pile of Stones) in Iraqi Kurdistan to Providence, Rhode Island: The Story of a Chaldean Immigrant to the US of America in 1927’. Journal of American Oriental Society 98: 4 (1978) 410–15. ‘Saddam Reportedly Given Key to Detroit’. Click on Detroit (26 March 2003). http://www. clickondetroit.com/news/2064887/detail.html ‘Safeguard the Assyrians of the Nineveh Plains’. AINA: Middle Eastern Christian Conference, 7 October 2004. www.christiansofiraq.com/Ainaconference.html Said, Edward, Orientalism (New York: Random House, Vintage Books, 1978). Sako, Luis, Christian-Muslim Dialogue: Theological Approaches in the Arabic Language in the ‘Abbasid Period (Kirkuk, 2009). Salaita, Steven, ‘Split Vision: Arab American Literary Criticism’. al-Jadid 32 (2000) 14. Samhan, Helen, ‘Not Quite White: Race Classification and the Arab-American Experience’. Arabs in America: Building a New Future. Michael Suleiman (ed.) (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1999) 209–26.

Works Cited

301

Sarafa, Josephine (ed.), ‘Chaldean Americans of Southeast Michigan’. (Detroit, MI: A Pamphlet Publication, n.d.). Sarafa, Josephine (ed.), ‘Chaldean Americans: Past and Present’. (Detroit, MI: A Pamphlet Publication of St. Thomas the Apostle Chaldean Catholic Diocese of America, n.d.). Sassoon, Joseph, The Iraqi Refugees: The New Crisis in the Middle East (I.B. Tauris, 2008). Scott, Eugene, ‘Trump Says He’s Fulfilled His Promises to Christians, But He Really Means White Evangelicals’. Washington Post, 15 October 2017. https://www.washingtonpost. com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/10/15/trump-says-hes-fulfilled-his-promises-to-christiansbut-he-really-means-white-evangelicals/?utm_term=.4e8799eec920 Sedra, Paul, ‘Writing the History of the Modern Copts: From Victims and Symbols to Actors’. History Compass 7: 3 (2009) 1049–63. Seferta, Joseph, ‘Iraq’s Catholic Exiles’. The Tablet, 4 September 2004. Selweski, Chad, ‘Large Chaldean Population in Sterling Heights to Take Part in Shaping New Iraq’. Macomb Daily, 4 January 2005. www.christiansofiraq.com/sterling.html Sengstock, Mary, ‘Telkaif, Baghdad, Detroit Chaldeans Blend Three Cultures’. Michigan History. Michigan Historical Commission, 54 (1970) 293–310. Sengstock, Mary, ‘Iraqi Christians in Detroit: An Analysis of an Ethnic Occupation’. Arabic Speaking Communities in American Cities. Barbara Aswad (ed.) (New York: Centre for Migration Studies, 1974) 21–38. Sengstock, Mary, Kinship in a Roman Catholic Ethnic Group (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1977). Sengstock, Mary, The Chaldean Americans: Changing Conceptions of Ethnic Identity (New York: Centre for Migration Studies, 1982). Sengstock, Mary, ‘Detroit’s Iraqi Chaldeans: A Conflicting Conception of Identity’. Arabs in the New World: Studies on Arab American Communities. Sameer Abraham and Nabeel Abraham (eds.) (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 1983) 136–46. Sengstock, Mary, Chaldeans in America (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2005). Shapiro, M., Violent Cartographies: Mapping Cultures of War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997). Sharkey, Heather J., American Evangelicals in Egypt: Missionary Encounters in an Age of Empire. Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). Shathaya, Gassan H., ‘For Assyrian/Chaldean National Rights in Beth Nahrain’. 1999. http://www.chaldeansonline.net/Banipal/English/ghassan2html (originally published in al-Muntada magazine, October 1998). Shathaya, Gassan H., ‘The Chaldeans/Assyrians under the Arab Ba‘th Regime of Iraq’. 1999. http://www.chaldeansonline.net/Banipal/English/ghassan3.html (originally published in al-Muntada magazine, December 1998). Shathaya, Gassan H., ‘Kildan Amrika wa mushkilat al-ta‘rib’. San Diego, Majallat al-kalimah 11 (2001) 52–3 (America’s Chaldeans and the problem of Arabization, Kalima Magazine). Shathaya, Gassan H., ‘One Nation-Two Names: The Chaldean/Assyrian Dilemma’. Chaldeans Online, 2001. http://www.chaldeansonline.net/ghassan/dilemmapart1.html Sheehi, Stephen, Islamophobia: The Ideological Campaign against Muslims (Atlanta, GA: Clarity Press Inc., 2001). Shimon, Samuel, ‘Iraqi fi Baris (Iraqi in Paris) (Cologne: Dar al-jamal, 2005). Shoumanov, Vasili, Assyrians in Chicago. Images of America Series (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2001).

302

Works Cited

Shryock, Andrew, ‘Ethnic Futures’. Arab Detroit: From Margin to Mainstream. Nabeel Abraham and Andrew Shryock (eds.) (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2000) 483–6. Shryock, Andrew, Off Stage/On Display: Intimacy and Ethnography in the Age of Public Culture (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004). Shryock, Andrew, ‘The Moral Analogies of Race: Arab American Identity, Colour Politics, and the Limits of Racialized Citizenship’. Race and Arab Americans before and after 9/11: From Invisible Citizens to Visible Subjects. Amaney Jamal and Nadine Naber (eds.) (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008). Siemon-Netto, Uwe, ‘Saddam’s Loyal “Christian”’. UPI, February 2003. https:// www.upi.com/Odd_News/2003/02/17/Commentary-Saddams-loyalChristian/97731045521478/ Sluglett, Peter, ‘From Millet to Minority: Another Look at the Non-Muslim Communities in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’. Minorities and the Modern Arab World (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2016) 19–38. Smith, Eli, H. G. O. Dwight and Josiah Conder, Missionary Researches in Armenia: Including a Journey through Asia Minor, and into Georgia and Persia, with a Visit to the Nestorian and Chaldean Christians of Cormiah and Salmas (London: G. Wightmann, 1834). Smith, Samuel, ‘Deportation of Iraqi Christians “Worse” Than Rejecting Jewish Holocaust Refugees, Chaldean Bishops Says’. The Christian Post, 16 June 2017. Sollors, Werner, Beyond Ethnicity (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). Sollors, Werner, The Invention of Ethnicity (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). ‘Sounds of Silence: Iraqi Assyrians Speak the Language Jesus Spoke – but for How Long?’ Assyrian National News Agency (AINA). www.aina.org Southgate, Horatio, Narrative of a Visit to the Syrian Jacobite Church of Mesopotamia; with Statements and Reflections upon the Present State of Christianity in Turkey, and the Character and Prospects of the Eastern Churches (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1844). Stafford, Ronald S., The Tragedy of the Assyrians (London: Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1935). ‘Sterling Heights, Michigan Residents Sue City to Stop Construction of Mosque’. AFLC, 17 March 2017. http://www.americanfreedomlawcenter.org/press-release/sterling-heightsmichigan-residents-sue-city-to-stop-construction-of-mosque/ Stewart, Desmond and John Haylock, New Babylon: A Portrait of Iraq (London and Glasgow: Collins Clear-Type Press, 1956). Stiffler, Matthew, Authentic Arabs, Authentic Christians (Dissertation, University of Michigan, 2010). Suleiman, Michael, ‘Arab-Americans and the Political Process’. The Development of ArabAmerican Identity. Ernest McCarus (ed.) (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1994) 37–60. Susa, Ahmad, Hadharat al-‘Arab wa Marahil Tatawwuriha ‘Ibr al-‘Usur (Arab Civilization and the Stages of Its Development throughout the Ages, Baghdad, 1979). Tamimi Amir al-. ‘Iraqi-Born Attorney Specializes in Helping Refugees’. The Summit, 20 February 2012. http://gcsummit.com/2012/02/20/iraqi-born-attorney-specializes-inhelping-refugees/ ‘TCA Awards $100,000 Grant to Chaldean Federation of America’. Turkish Coalition of America, 2009. http://www.turkishcoalition.org/TCAAwards$100,000GranttoChaldea nFederationofAmerica.html

Works Cited

303

Terry, Janice J., ‘Community and Political Activism among Arab Americans in Detroit’. Arabs in America. Michael Suleiman (ed.) (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1999) 241–54. Teule, Herman, ‘Christianity in Iraq: The Development of Secular Christian Political Thinking’. One in Christ 45: 2 (2011) 312–20. Teule, Herman, ‘Christians in Iraq: An Analysis of Some Recent Political Developments’. Der Islam 88: 1 (2012) 179–98. Teule, Herman, ‘Christians in Iraq: An Analysis of Some Recent Developments’. Christsein in Der Islamischen Welt. Festschrift Für Martin Tamcke Zum 60. Geburtstag. Sidney H. Griffith and Sven Grebenstein (eds.) (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2015) 587–94. Tfinkdji, Joseph, L’Église chaldéenne catholique, autrefois et aujourd’hui. Extrait de l’Annuaire pontifical catholique de 1914 (Paris: Bureaux des études ecclésiastiques, 1913). Tölölyan, Khachig, ‘Elites and Institutions in the Armenian Transnation’. Diaspora (New York: Oxford University Press) 9: 1 (2000) 107–36. Tumas, Tuma, ‘Awraq Tuma Tumas’. Thikrayat (Tuma Tumas’ Papers, in Memoirs), 2006. http://www.al-nnas.com TuSmith, Bonnie, All My Relatives: Community in Contemporary Ethnic American Literature (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1993). Ufheil-Somers, Amanda, ‘Iraqi Christians: A Primer’. Middle East Research and Information Project. MER 267 – Christians 43, 2013. http://www.merip.org/mer/ mer267/iraqi-christians-primer Vine, Aubrey R., The Nestorian Churches: A Concise History of Nestorian Christianity in Asia from the Persian Schism to the Modern Assyrians (London: Independent Press Ltd., 1937). Visser, Reidar, Basra: The Failed Gulf State: Separatism and Nationalism in Southern Iraq (Münster: Lit., 2005). Wacker, Grant, ‘The Waning of the Missionary Impulse: The Case of Pearl S. Buck’. The Foreign Missionary Enterprise at Home: Explorations in North American Cultural History. Daniel H. Bays and Grant Wacker (eds.) (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2003). Walid, Dawud, ‘Islamophobia in Sterling Heights Demands Condemnation and Discussion’. 17 September 2015. Wallis, Brian, ‘Selling Nations: International Exhibitions and Cultural Diplomacy.’ Museum Culture: Histories, Discourses, Spectacles. D. J. Serman (ed.) (London: Routledge, 1994). Wanderbush, Walt, ‘The Iraqi Diaspora and the US Invasion of Iraq’. Diaspora Lobbies and the US Government. Josh DeWind and Renata Sugera (eds.) (New York University Press, 2014) 211–35. Warikoo, Niraj, ‘More Iraqi Refugees Permitted Metro Detroit: Many May Settle in Area’. Night Ridder Tribune Business News, 15 February 2007. Warikoo, Niraj, ‘Area Middle Eastern Leaders Got Face-time with Trump in Novi’. Detroit Free Press, 1 October 2016. http://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/2016/10/01/ area-middle-eastern-leaders-got-face-time-trump-novi/91357724/ Warikoo, Niraj, ‘Michigan Had Highest Number of Bias Crimes in Midwest PostElection’. Detroit Free Press, 1 December 2016. http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/ michigan/2016/12/01/michigan-bias-crimes-midwest-election/94744196/ Warikoo, Niraj, ‘Jews, Muslims in Metro Detroit Address Hate Crimes: It’s Getting Scary’. Detroit Free Press, 4 October 2017. http://www.freep.com/story/news/2017/10/04/ muslims-and-jews-gather-detroit-combat-bias/723510001/

304

Works Cited

Watenpaugh, Keith David, ‘The League of Nations’ Rescue of Armenian Genocide Survivors and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism, 1920–1927’. American Historical Review 115: 5 (2010) 1315–39. Watenpaugh, Keith David, Bread from Stones: The Middle East and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015). Waters, Mary C., Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). Weiss, David, ‘A Remembrance of Good Neighbors Past’. CN (October 2011). Werbner, Pnina, ‘The Materiality of Diaspora – Between Aesthetic and “Real” Politics’. Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies. New York: Oxford University Press. 9: 1 (Spring 2000) 5–20. Werda, Joel, Flickering Light of Asia: Or, the Assyrian Nation and Church. Publisher unknown, 1924 (AINA). http://www.seyfocenter.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/ Joel-E-Werda-The-Flickering-Light-of-Asia-The-Assyrian-Nation-and-Church-1924. pdf). ‘What If I Am Not Chaldean Assyrian?’ Zinda Magazine, 9 March 1998. www. zindamagazine.com ‘What Iraqi Christians Want the American Government to Know’. Christianity Today, 29 June 2017. http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2017/june-web-only/iraqi-christianswant-american-government-to-know.html White, E. Frances, Dark Continent of Our Bodies: Black Feminism and the Politics of Respectability (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2001). ‘Who Are the Chaldeans?’. n.d. http://www.chaldenasonline.net/chald.html Wien, Peter, ‘From Forty-One to Qadisiyyat Saddam: Remarks on an Iraqi Realm of Memory’. Writing the Modern History of Iraq. Bocco Bozarslan, Sluglett and Tejel (eds.) (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2012) 105–18. Wigram, William Ainger, The Assyrians and Their Neighbors (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1929). Wilkins, Kori, ‘Center to Preserve Chaldean Heritage’. Oakland Press (12 May 2003) 14–15. Wilmshurst, David, The Ecclesiastical Organisation of the Church of the East 1318–1913 (Lovanii: Peeters, 2000). Wilmshurst, David, The Martyred Church: A History of the Church of the East (London: East & West Publishing, 2011). Wilson, Samuel G., ‘Conversion of the Nestorians of Persia to the Russian Church’. The Times, 3 July (1899) 752. Wosh, Peter, Spreading the Word: The Bible Business in 19th-Century America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994). Yacoub, Joseph, ‘Christian Minorities in the Countries of the Middle East: A Glimpse to the Present Situation and Future Perspectives’. Syriac Churches Encountering Islam: Past Experiences and Future Perspectives. Dietmar W. Winkler (ed.) (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2010) 176. Yinger, J. M., ‘Ethnicity’. Annual Review of Sociology 11 (1985) 151–80. Younan, Ignace, ‘Les chrétiens sous le poids de l’Islam dominant: Entre peur et compromis’. Actualité religieuse dans le monde 15: 51 (1991) 19. Zeidel, Ronen, ‘The Iraqi Novel and the Christians of Iraq’. Journal of Levantine Studies, The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute 4: 2 (Winter 2014) 113–41. Zhou, Min, ‘Revisiting Ethnic Entrepreneurship: Convergences, Controversies, and Conceptual Advancements’. International Migration Review. New York: Centre for Migration Studies, Inc. 38: 3 (2004) 1040–74.

Works Cited

305

Zlatopolsky, Ashley, ‘Which Christians Is Trump Willing to Protect?’ The Atlantic Daily, 29 June 2017. Zubaida, Sami, ‘Contested Nations: Iraq and the Assyrians’. Nations and Nationalism (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press) 6: 3 (2000) 363–82. Zubaida, Sami, ‘The Fragments Imagine the Nation: The Case of Iraq’. International Journal of Middle East Studies 32: 2 (2000) 205–15. Zucchino, David, ‘Chicago Lawyer Finds Mission in Helping Iraqi Christian Refugees’. Los Angeles Times (28 April 2008). https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2008/0428/ p02s01-usju.html ‘1.5 Million Assyrian-Iraqis Fear Marginalization in Upcoming Iraq Elections’. Assyrian National News Agency (AINA). 30 December 2004. www.aina.org

INDEX 9/11 attacks 164, 190, 219 1946 Arab Awakening (Antonius) 115 Abbas, Shah 48 Abdelahad, Elias 14 Abraham, Nabeel 21, 26, 239 n.3, 260 n.3, 264 n.37, 266 n.77 Acho, Wendy 223 Adapt-A-Refugee-Family programme 140, 166, 204 Agha Petros. See Elias, Petros Aghajan, Sarkis 178, 180, 183 Ahl al-Bayt (Shi‘a) 193 Ainsworth, William Francis 30–1, 64, 245 n.43 Akhawiyyat al-Mahabba 158 Akkadians 21, 36, 108 al-Ahali group 94 al-Husry, Sati‘ 99–100 al-Mashriq (The Orient) 114, 116, 143 al-Sadr, Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir 107 American Arab Chamber of Commerce 223 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) 58, 60 American diaspora 2, 5–6, 8, 12, 18, 38, 77, 98, 110, 115, 120, 127, 161, 165, 168, 178, 182, 235 symbolic authority 165–6 American Freedom Law Centre (AFLC) 193–4 American Islamic Community Centre (AICC) 192–4 American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) 205 American missionaries 30–1, 46, 59–60, 214 contributions to press 64 American Oriental Society 54 American Presbyterian missions 13, 32–3

American Protestant missions 10, 13, 43–4, 52, 59, 61, 80, 87 Anderson, Hans Christian 64 Anglican Church 23, 51, 62, 151, 217 Anglicanism 31, 58, 69 Anglicans 31, 46, 50, 58, 60, 62–3, 65 1829 version of Four Gospels 60 museum culture, rise of 59–60 An Historical Text Book and Atlas of Biblical Geography (Coleman), 66 Anti-Defamation League 191, 204 Antiochian Syrian Orthodox Church 153 Antone, Rosemary 211, 214, 217, 225 Antoon, Sinan 5, 240 n.13, 280 n.12 appellations 3–4, 7, 19, 23, 27–30, 38, 40, 45, 54, 236–8 Arab American Institute (AAI) 118, 148 Arab Awakening: The Story of the Arab National Movement (Antonius) 100 Arab Ba‘th Movement 100 Arab culture 1, 6 Arab National Party 100 Arab World Festival in Detroit 226 Arab world identitarian crisis 20 internecine conflicts 117 language-based nationalist movements 100 perception of Chaldeans 206, 226 religious minorities 47, 110, 120, 209, 232–4 Arabic-Islamic heritage 6 Arabo, Mark 205 Arabs 201 Chaldeans as 208–9, 213, 222, 225–6, 234 Christian 233 Islam and 200 Iraqis 190 Kurds and 180, 202 minorities 196

Index Muslims 191, 219 racial difference 203 Aramaic language 6, 21, 36, 38, 59 CACC logo in American flag 144 Catholics, speaking 3 ethnicity and 146 Euro-American consolidation 59 Jesus and 22, 52, 54–5 Phoenician-based writing system 21 revival of moral gestures 142–3 Syriac alphabets 22 archaeological missions 12, 44, 51, 69, 74, 154 Armenian Genocide 13, 18, 80–1, 200 Asmar, Maria Theresa 64–5, 68, 73, 251 n.97 Autobiography in the Middle of the 19th Century, 1820–1870 216–17 Asshur and the Land of Nimrod (Rassam) 70 Assyrian Church collaboration with Chaldean Church 160–1 ecclesiastic identities 160, 169 Mesopotamian symbolism 151–2 US-based 163 Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM) 39–41, 102–3, 178, 181 Assyrian Empire 21, 33, 36–8, 44, 83, 203 Assyrian Foundation of America 118 Assyrian National Associations of America 178 Assyrian Pentecostal Church 20 Assyrian Universal Alliance (AUA) 40, 99, 118 Assyrians 1915 massacres 178 ancient 20, 29, 33, 35–6, 67, 70 appellations dispute 19–21, 30–6 Ba‘th Party 97–9 Christian haven’ project 181–4 Churches 10, 20, 23, 34 civilization 215 consolidation of titles 38–42 cultural and political rights 94 early-Christian context 22–3 ethnic origin and cleansing 4–5, 10, 45 ethnonational separatism 201

307

exiles 91–3 foreign protection 25 genocides 81–7 hyphenated appellations 38–42 identities 8, 20, 35, 37, 47, 52, 74 inscriptions 55 Iraqi Communist Party and 93–7 massacres 13 monumental history 36–8 nationalism 57 nationhood, concept of 32–6, 95, 114–15, 176–7, 201–4 non-Catholic 24 Old World homes 11–12 patriarchal succession 26, 29 post-war diaspora 115 pre-Christian context 21–2 publications 114 refugee camps 93, 176–7 umbrella designation 39 Assyrians and Their Neighbors, The (Wigram) 66–7 Assyrians Mesopotamia delegation 177 Atatürk, Kemal 99 Attalla, Zia 241 n.35 Audo, Thomas 57 Aziz’, Tariq 158 Ba‘quba camp 176 Ba‘th Party/Ba‘thist rule. See also Iraqi Ba‘th Party (IBP) Arabization policies in Iraq 39 Arabization under 103, 107, 163, 164 Assyrians and 97–9 Chaldeans and 97–9 Cheikho’s tenure 155–8 Christians under 205 conceptual threats 41 educational restrictions 104 Hussein’s rule 16 Iraqi Communist Party vs 97 Mashru‘ i‘adat kitabat al-tarikh (rewriting Iraqi history) 107–8 Mesopotamian antiquities 106–9 national and religious identities 97 nation-state-building 107 pan-Arabism campaign 108, 179 property rules 106 Qassim’s rule 97

308

Index

Qur’an study in schools 104 seizure of power in 1968 204 Sunni–Shi‘i ecumenism 107 Syriac reading in schools 105 targhib wa tarhib (enticement and terror) 107 US alliance 159, 164 Baaba, Youel 248 n.2, 248 n.11 Babylon Festival 107 Babylon Museum of Native Iraqis 219 Babylonian New Year celebration 223 Bacall, Jacob 241 n.35, 260 n.9, 268 n.35, 269 n.36, 275 n.88 Badger, Georgy Percy 28–32, 58, 65, 244 n.22, 244 nn.29–30, 245 n.34, 245 nn.40–1, 245 n.50, 249 n.26, 249 n.35, 249 n.39, 250 n.64 Baram, Amatzia 240 n.16, 246 n.70, 256 n.72, 256 n.74, 257 n.80, 257 n.81, 258 nn.107–8, 259 n.113, 259 n.116 Barazani, Massoud 107, 160 Barzani, Nejervan 183 Batatu, Hanna 94 Baum, Wilhelm 243 n.3, 244 n.20, 244 n.27, 249 n.23, 249 n.36 Baumer, Christopher 241 n.24, 242 n.38, 253 n.18, 255 n.40, 268 n.25 Bays, Daniel H 250 n.67 Becker, Adam 33, 45, 59, 65, 240 n.12, 241 n.22, 245 n.46, 246 n.56, 246 n.58, 246 n.66, 248 n.5, 248 n.7, 248 n.12, 248 n.15, 248 n.19, 248–9 n.20, 249 n.22, 249 n.46, 250 n.59, 250 n.61, 250 n.68, 251 n.74, 251 n.92, 251 n.103, 251 n.106, 252 nn.108–9, 253 n.9, 253 n.16, 254 n.36 Belfour Declaration 1917 203 Benedict XVI, Pope 151, 159 Benjamen, Alda 94, 178 Benjamin, Adam 185 Betkolia, Yonathan 199 Bible Book of Acts (2:1-13) 59 Genesis 54 Hebrew 21, 66 Victorian chronology 53 Bidawid, Patriarch Rafael 19, 77, 103, 106, 155, 157–60, 162 Bidawid, Toma 162

Bino, George 112 Declaration of Intention from 1905 113 Boji, Francis 166, 193, 214 Botta, Paul Emil 34, 61, 71 Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) 172 British Vice-Consul (Mosul) 58 Bruner, Edward M. 7, 240 n.17 Budge, Wallis 244 n.14 Building Community Issue (BCI) 197–8, 205 Burby, Joseph 166 Bush, George W. 141, 147, 182, 189–90, 207 Byzantine Church 23 Caballero, Raimunod Diosdado 54 Cairo Conference 102 Canaanite movement 67 Catholic (s) Iraqi immigrants 2 Maronites 67, 114 Syrians 29 Catholicism/Catholic Church American Diaspora 6 Assyrian refugees 177 Chaldean Church 89, 100, 151, 220, 222 concept of natio 29 Eastern Christians to 31, 45–6, 50, 87–8 fifteenth century 4 globalization principle 160 ideology 160 patriarch 26, 49 Protestant missionaries conflict with 73 publications 58, 60 pure Christianity, prior to 52 schismatic conversions 9–11, 23–4, 26 Syrian 63 Census Bureau (CB) 117–18, 188 Chabot, Jean-Baptiste 240 n.7 Chaldean Account of Genesis (Smith) 55 Chaldean American Chamber of Commerce (CACC) 130, 133–4, 138–44, 148, 166, 181, 199, 213, 215, 223, 226, 228 Chaldean-American Church 159, 162 Chaldean American Ladies of Charity (CALC) 137–41, 165–7, 211 Chaldean American Reaching and Encouraging (CARE) 137–8, 143

Index Chaldean/Assyrian 40, 77, 160 demography in Iraq (2003) 173 ecumenism 160–1 Jewish genealogies 202–3 2010 Baghdad church massacre 175 Chaldean Assyrian Syriac Council of America (CASCA) 138, 141–2, 181, 183 Chaldean Centre of America 163 Chaldean Church Arabism, ideology 155 consolidation of power 168–9 delocalization concept 161 dioceses of Alqosh 96 Erbil and Sulaymaniya establishment 96 mass exit 154 Mesopotamian-Aramaic culture 161 political affiliations 95–6 pro-Arab tendencies 187 sui juris 156, 168 transnational politics 164–7, 184 Vatican dynamics 167–8 Chaldean Community Foundation (CCF) 133, 138–9, 141, 145 Chaldean Cultural Center (CCC) 138–9, 147, 211–12, 214–17, 220–3 Chaldean Detroit Times 114, 163 Chaldean Federation of America (CFA) 40, 138–44, 148–9, 182–7, 190, 204, 213, 226 Chaldean Heritage Association 165 Chaldean Household Demographics Survey 166, 213 Chaldean-Iraqi Association of Michigan (CIAM) 138–9, 162, 165, 195 Chaldean News (CN) 126, 128, 138, 140, 166, 193, 197, 222, 225, 226, 242 n.49, 262 n.3, 263 n.17, 264 n.33, 265 n.63, 266 n.72, 266 n.73, 266 n.80, 266 n.84, 266 n.86, 268 n.35, 269 n.39, 269 nn.41–3, 270 n.51, 271 n.14, 272 n.39, 272 n.43, 273 n.65, 276 n.106, 276 n.113, 276 n.127, 276 n.128, 277 n.134, 277 n.135, 277 n.141, 277 n.142, 277 n.144, 277 n.146, 277 n.147, 277 n.149, 278 n.168, 278 n.174, 279 n.1, 280 n.8, 280 n.28, 281 n.30, 281 nn.34–7, 281 n.41, 281 n.46

309

Chaldean for Kids (Shamoun and Arabo) 145 Chaldeanness American identity 208, 223, 225–6 Arab identity 225 counter-narratives 222–8 official version 227 Queer 225–7 Chaldeans. See also Chaldeanness ancient history 223 anti-Muslim position 208 Arab identity 99–106 Assyrian genocides 81–7 auto-ethnographic endeavours 214 Ba‘th Party 97–9 Christian identity 212–15 collective identity 96–7 cross-boundary activities 149–50. See also transnational ties diasporic media 217 doctrinal and political issues 25–7 early Christian context 22–3 ecumenism 160–1 English-speaking 165 ethnographic history 3, 22 Euro-American missions 154 family, concept of 123 historical contact 2–3 Iraqi Communist Party 93–7 ICE raids 207–8 identity discourses 1–3, 22, 37 ideological shift 191 interchangeability of titles 27–32 as Iraqi citizens 97–8 Iraqi Communist Party and 93–7 Islamophobic tendencies 194, 196, 225 jaliya 1 Jewish analogy 195–6, 198, 208–9 marriages 123–4 monumental history 36–8 opposition to Obama 189 post-2003 status 173–4 pre-Christian context 21–2 Project Bismoutha’ (Healing) 197 pro-Trump campaign 188 religious minority in Iraq 87–90 sectarian violence of 1915–18 113–19 social life 121–2 socio-political network 166–7

310

Index

trust in Western imperialism 188–91 urban intellectuals 96 voting Trump 189 war on terror 173, 189 Chaldeans since the Early Beginning of Time (Fatuhi) 37 Chaldean Syriac Assyrian People/Council (CSA) 178, 180 ChaldoAssyrians 38–42, 181–2 ChaldoAssyrians Yes, Arabs No (Putrus) 39 Charter One Bank 166 Cheikho, Paul 155–9, 163 Christian genocide 198–200 Christian Peace Conference 190 Church of England 25, 33, 44, 51, 58, 65 Church of the East 2, 4, 9–10, 13, 19–35, 46, 48–51, 54, 61, 63, 73 Assyrian 161 Catholicism 87–8 consolidation 91 East Syriac Patriarch of 169 ethnic consciousness 77 millet system 80 Nestorian 92 official union with Catholic Church 151 sister churches 159 Clifford, James 173 Clinton, Hillary 188 Coakley, J. F. 61, 250 n.68, 250 n.72, 251 n.75, 251 nn.82–3, 251 n.86, 252 n.117, 256 n.55, 268 n.24, 268 n.27 Coke, Richard 249 n.25 Coleman, Lyman 66 Consultations conference of 1994 160 Constitution, Iraqi 41, 82, 97, 178–9, 231–2, 247 n.85, 256 n.60, 281 n.1, 282 n.5 Conversion to Anglicanism 31, 58, 69, 245 n.46 to Assyrians 45 to Catholicism 4, 10, 23–5, 29, 31, 44–6, 48–50, 55, 63, 65, 83, 87, 100, 154, 177, 254 n.37 to Chaldeans 28–9, 46, 49 to Islam 106, 256 n.74 to Protestantism 58 to Syriac 10 Coptic Christians 67, 205

Corbon, Jean 100, 161 Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) 193 Council of Ephesus 23, 160 Council of Florence 151 Council of Trent/Trent Council 28–9 Country Fresh Dairy 166 Cummins, J. S. 251 n.96 cuneiform writing 32, 53–4, 59, 61 Dalman, Gustaf 54 Davis, Eric 108, 243 n.52, 246 n.70, 255 n.43, 259 nn.111–12, 259 n.114 DeKelaita, Robert 181, 184–6, 247 n.80, 272 n.43, 273 n.52 Delly, Emmanuel-Karim III (Chaldean Patriarch) 138–9, 151, 159, 166, 174 Denha Garmo, Vanessa 242 n.49, 264 n.49, 266 n.84, 273 n.65, 276 n.113, 279 n.1, 280 n.11 Denha, Amir 163 Detroit Arab American Study (DAAS) 146, 192, 213 Dias, Nélia 68, 252 n.110 Dinkha IV, Mar Khnanya 160 Dinkha, Simon 26–7 Donabed, Sargon 240 n.12, 246 n.57, 247 n.78, 254 n.27, 258 n.92 DTE Energy 166 Duval, Rubens 34 Dwight, H.G.O. 30 Eastern Christians Anglo-American missions 51–2 archaeological discoveries 52–3 conversion to Catholicism 45–6 missionaries’ attention 58 modern dialect 60 non-Arab historical roots 119 Eastern Protestantism 52 Eastern Syriac vernaculars 59–62 Eastmond, Marita 228 Elias, Petros 38–9 Encyclopedia of Modern Iraq 98–9 Eugene IV, Pope 151 Europe Assyrian refugees 178 citizenship and nationhood policies 201

Index diasporas 19 excavations 44, 54–6 Jewish problem 198, 201 Middle Eastern migrants 122, 128 museum culture 59 Protestants 76 refugee camps 14 secularism 64–7, 176 xenophobic political atmosphere 202–3 Evangelical missions, protestant claims 201 Faisal II, King of Iraq 92, 100, 163–4 Faris, John D. 223, 245 n.36 Fatuhi, Amer 37–8, 215, 219, 223, 225, 247 n.73, 280 n.18 Feldman, Keith 209 First World War 4–5, 10, 13, 34–5, 45, 48, 51, 77, 80–2, 89, 102, 111, 152, 176, 201–4 firstness, visual display Chaldean National Calendar 216 Ishtar Restaurant in Sterling Heights 224 Memoirs of a Babylonian Princess 216–17 Pray the Gay Way 227 Sennacherib, Assyrian King 216 St Joseph in Ankawa, Iraq 218 Fortenberry, Jeff 207 Fourth Assembly of the Council of Churches 158 Frahm, Eckart 249 nn.43–5 Francis, Pope 167 Gallagher, Barbara G. 241 n.36, 242 n.44 Galleti, Miralla 28 Gans, Herbert J. 243 n.50 Garmo, Pastor George 165 Garmo, Steven 141 genocide Armenian 13, 18, 47, 80, 102, 200 Assyrian 81–7 Christian 198–200, 206–9 ISIS 205 Jewish 195 survivals 78, 81–7 George, Michael 213 Ghanima, Joseph VII 155

311

Ghanima, Yusif 90 Ghorashi, Halleh 243 n.52 Girling, Kristian 28–9, 93, 103, 240 n.8, 240 n.11, 241 n.20, 241 nn.28–9, 241 n.31, 241 n.33, 244 n.25, 245 n.33, 245 n.38, 254–5 n.37, 255 nn.40–1, 255 n.48, 256 n.56, 256 n.57, 265 n.59, 256 nn.65–6, 258 n.93, 258 n.95, 268 n.14, 268 n.22, 269 n.49, 270 n.53, 275 n.91, 282 n.13 Grant, Asahel 26, 30, 32 Greater Syria immigrants from 111 Iraqi educational system 100 territorial national identities 112 US culture encounter with Eastern Christian populations 111 Greenberg, Hayim 201 Greenstein, Eugene 206, 209 Gualtieri, Sarah 112, 235, 242 n.43 Gulf Wars (first and second) 12, 14, 16, 106, 129, 150, 153, 158, 163–4, 173, 190, 195 Guriel, Joseph 54, 249 n.48 Haddad, Fanar 16, 243 n.51 Haddad, Robert M. 249 n.29 Haddad, Sharkey 104, 142–3, 258 n.98, 266 n.77 Hall, Stuart 228, 239 n.5, 280 n.20, 281 n.51 Hamilakis, Yannis 250 n.59 Hammurabi’s Code of Laws 211 Hanish, Shak 243 n.6, 244 n.8, 247 n.81, 270 n.10, 272 n.34, 272 n.35, 272 n.37 Hanna, Elias 94 Hariri, Fawzi 178 Harris, Emily 242 n.47 Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) 199–200, 204–5 Henrich, Joseph 239 n.1, 262 n.7, 263 n.14, 264 n.30 Henrich, Natalie 239 n.1, 262 n.7, 263 n.14, 264 n.30, 265 n.56 Heinrichs, Wolfhart 33, 246 n.59, 246 n.62 Herodotus 34, 52–3 Histories 34 Hidirsah, Yakup 242 n.41, 260 n.12

312

Index

Historical Text Book and Atlas of Biblical Geography, An (Coleman) 66 Hnan-Isho II 24 Hobsbawm, Eric 5, 43, 240 n.15 Holloway, Steven W. 74, 249 n.43, 250 n.55, 252 n.129 Holocaust Memorial Centre 200 Holocaust Memorial Museum 205 Holy See 28–9, 156, 159, 168, 244 n.25 Hormizdas, John 26 Hourani, Albert 35, 244 n.11 Household Survey 146, 186, 213, 220, 223, 242 n.49 Howell, Sally 190, 260 n.4, 261 n.27, 261 n.31, 275 n.93 Hugo, Victor 64 Hunter, Erica 243 n.3 Hussein, Saddam 16, 104, 108, 163–4, 190, 246–7 n.70, 259 n.111, 275 n.88 Ibn al-’Ibri 25 Ibn Yohannan, Slewa 23 Ibrahim, Pastor Ibrahim 123, 140, 165 Institutionalized Persons Act 192 Iraq. See also Hussein, Saddam; Iraqi Ba‘th Party (IBP); Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) acts of terrorism against diasporic members 164 Apostolic See 160 Assyrian communities 160 Assyrian exiles 91–3 Assyrian refugee camps 204 borders with Turkey 102 British Mandate 189 Chaldean/Assyrian population (2003) 175 Chaldean culture, destruction of 211 Chaldean dioceses 152, 154 Chaldean as religious minority 87–90 Christian migration 157, 162 donation to Chaldean Churches in US 163 inter-ethnic violence 173 Islamic fundamental terrorism 192 Jewish exodus (1948–70) 204 oil boom 155 pan-Arab identity 101 Pope Paul II’s ‘biblical pilgrimage’ 158

sectarianism 209 self-rule or autonomy 203 Shi‘i community 193 Transitional Administrative Law 179 US occupation 103–4, 151, 173–4, 181, 189, 211 violence against minorities 2003 205 Iraq–Iran war 129, 153, 155, 173, 231 Iraqi Artists’ association 223 Iraqi Ba‘th Party (IBP) 97–9, 103–4, 106–9, 164 Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) 93–4, 97, 102, 164 Iraqi Petroleum Company (IPC) 93, 157 Iraqi Transitional Administration Law 40 Islamic Society of North America 197 Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) genocide of religious groups 205–7 infiltration of the Nineveh Plains 167 killing of Muslims and mosque destructions 193 Sterling Heights’ incident 193–4, 207, 209 Islamophobia 2, 9, 118–19, 149, 173, 190–4, 196, 206, 208 Ismael, David Malek 99 Israel disenfranchisement of Palestinian Christians 206 ethnic ‘homelands’: 200–3 Jewish diaspora’s discursive relationship 207 Jewish genocide 209 nationhood analogy 204 Jammo, Sarhad 1, 41, 168, 239 n.1 Jerusalem Program 206 Jewish Holocaust 172, 198–200 Jews American 202, 219 Canaanite movement 67 Chaldean partnership with 195–6, 198, 208–9 Detroit Jewish News (JN) 195, 197 Iraqi 88, 195, 234 Israeli 95 millets 79 ‘Project Chessed’ (Kindness) 197

Index religious identity in Europe 176 Trump administration’s campaigns 199 Jim Crow laws 112 Joseph, John 22, 28, 32, 240 n.12, 244 n.10, 255 n.54 Julius III Pope 26 Kajo, Stephen 240 n.8 Kalasho, Nadine 227 Kanna, Yonadam Yousef 178 Kassab, Joseph 188 Kathawa, Anthony 188, 208 Kayal, Joseph 152–3 Kayal, Philip 123, 152–3 Kedourie, Elie 248 n.19 Kennelly, Matthew 184 Kesto, Klint 205 Khater, Akram 115 Khayyath, Georges Ebed-Jesus V. 240 n.7, 241 n.21, 254 n.35 Khitat al-Sham (Kurd-‘Ali) 100 Khoury, Yusuf 244 n.15 Kieser, Hans-Lukas 248 n.20 Knights of Columbus 205 Koda, Gorial 163 Kory, Daisy 241 n.35 Kurd-‘Ali, Muhammad 99–100 Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) 16, 174, 178–89, 183 Kurdistan Communist Party 39 Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) 178 Kurds 2–3, 30, 50, 171, 175, 179, 201–2, 204–5 appellation discourses 92 denominational alignment 85–6 ethnic identity 96–7, 101 IBP’s campaign against 102–3 Kurdish uprising 106 sectarian violence 180 separatist struggle 102 Kurzmann, David 198 Labourt, Jerome 241 n.25 Larsen, Mogens Trolle 243 n.4, 246 n.64, 249 n.42, 250 n.53, 250 n.50, 250 n.60, 252 n.111, 252 n.114, 252 n.121, 252 n.123 Lausanne Treaty 102

313

Layard, Austen Henry 12, 31–2, 34, 53–6, 61, 68–73, 241 n.34, 245 n.40, 245 n.44, 245 n.46, 251 n.105, 252 n.122, 252 n.126 Le Coz, Ramond 244 n.9 League of Nations 13, 39, 47, 176, 203–4, 232 Lee, E.S. 241 n.37 Levin, Carl 199 lobbying 137, 174, 181, 188, 195, 203 Safe Haven Project 181–4 Los Angeles Times 186 Macdonald, Sharon 252 n.110 Madnhaya 60 Mahmood, Saba 97, 248 n.18, 248 n.20, 249 n.21, 253 n.3, 253 n.6, 253 n.17, 256 n.70, 282 n.4 Makdisi, Ussama 248 n.6, 248 n.8, 248 n.20, 256 n.69, 259 n.2, 282 n.10 Malik, David G. 251 n.78 Manna, Martin 181, 187–8, 193, 199, 208, 213, 215, 228, 266 n.73, 273 n.66, 277 n.134, 280 n.8, 280 n.10, 280 n.26 Maqdasi, Abba Jeremiah 54 Mar Addai II 32, 98, 169, 245 n.53 Mar Shimun XXIII 86, 91, 98 Mar Thoma Darmo 98 Marougi, Kas 241 n.35 Maze, Bradley 199 Meade, Wade C. 249 n.49, 250 n.55 Memoirs of a Babylonian Princess (Asmar) 64–5 Mende, Donald 194 Merguerian, Barbara J. 248–9 n.20 Mesopotamia achievements 57, 215 ancient civilization 63, 120, 215 antiquities 67, 106–9, 217, 222–3 Arab counterparts 44 Aramaic-speaking settlers 38 archaeological discoveries 53, 56, 61, 66, 72–3, 219 Chaldeans of 102, 119, 154, 161, 213 Christian immigrants 55, 112–13 Christian missions 47–51, 74, 89, 114 delegations 177 excavations 58–9, 64, 73, 176

314

Index

Jewish and Chaldean persecution 199 Latinized first-names 69 local identity 70, 101, 110 Muslims 69 social uniqueness of the Christian groups 66 symbolism 152 Western acculturation 70 Mesopotamia Learning Studio and Art Gallery 223 Metzger, Kurt 242 n.49, 273 n.65 Metzler, Natasha T. 242 n.48 Middle East antagonism issues (Christian vs. Muslim) 181–2 Christian identities 153 demographic rearrangements 202 Jews as only non-Muslim minority 205 millet system 109–10 sister Churches 160 transnational family 122–3 Trump’s declaration 208 migration 51, 88, 96, 101, 110–11, 114–15, 117, 120–2, 124, 127–9, 157, 226–7, 235 Mikhail, Dunya 1, 5, 11, 239 n.2, 241 n.30 Mill, John Stuart 64 millet system 44, 69 Moss, Kary 199 Mother of God parish 123–4, 138–40, 142, 161–3, 165, 198 Muise, Robert 194 Murre-van Den Berg, Heleen L. 73, 86, 109, 241 n.25, 243 n.3, 246 n.69, 252 n.115, 252 n.127, 254 n.32, 255 n.38, 256 n.68, 257 n.83, 257 n.84, 259 n.119, 259 n.120 Museum of the Bible Foundation 171 Muslims Arab 178, 191, 209, 219 Christian marriages 106 demographics 116 Eastern Christian attitude towards 70, 72 evangelization 45–6 institutional assessment 68 ISIS killing of 193, 205 of Mesopotamia 69

millet 79 Orientalism 43, 68, 231 religious liberty 106 Sterling Heights incident 222 Naayem, Joseph 240 n.7, 242 n.38, 255 n.40 Naber, Nadine 243 n.52, 260 n.10, 261 n.26 Naby, Eden 248 n.11 Najor, Deborah 126, 146, 225 ‘Ruffling Feathers: Teacher Challenges the Mainstream View.’ 225 Najor, Monsignor Ablahat 164–5 Namou, Weam 126, 175, 197 Naoum, Wisam 189, 227 Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan and on the Site of Ancient Nineveh (Rich) 52 National Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council 197 Nebuchadnezzar (Babylonian monarch) 73, 106, 246 n.70 Nee, Victor 243 n.50 Nestorian Stele 63 Nestorians doctrinal and political issues 25–7 historical contact 23–5 interchangeability of titles 27–32 schism 23–4, 31 Nestorians and Their Muslim Neighbors, The (Joseph) 32 Nestorius 23–4, 31, 48 Netanyahu, Benjamin 206 Newman, John 64 Nietzsche, Friedrich 41, 247 n.86 Nineveh Council of America (NCA) 138, 141–2 Nineveh and Its Remains (Layard) 12, 56, 71, 73 Nineveh Plains archaeological campaigns 70 Aramaic sources 35 Chaldeans 55, 83, 87, 93, 102, 157 Christian territorial claims 47, 49 ethnic ‘homelands’: 200–3 evangelical visions 201, 203 ISIS infiltration 167, 194, 198 Kurdish parties 182 lobbying 137, 174, 181, 188, 195, 203 Operation R-4 184, 186

Index settlement Project 141, 149, 174–80, 184, 205 US financial assistance 207 Warda’s campaign 183 non-Catholicism 6, 24–6, 30–1, 51, 60, 63, 79, 100 Norgrove, Jeffrey 194 O’Mahony, Anthony 158, 253 n.21 Odisho, Edward 37–8 Old Assyrians 21. See also Akkadians Old Testament 21, 25–6, 53–5, 58 Mesapotamian excavations 58–9 On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life (Nietzsche) 41 Operation R-4 137, 140, 149, 184–7 Orientalism American society 54 Arab identities 190 binary concept 73–6 congregations 158 early 27, 73 East and West, conceptual division 152 premodern societies 66 Said’s depiction 43, 231 social context 114, 123 Victorian context 74 Ottoman Empire 6, 25, 29, 44, 48, 65, 74, 77–81, 88, 93, 99, 102, 111–12, 117, 120, 159, 177, 201, 203 Our Lady of Chaldeans Cathedral 165 Oussani, Gabriel 240 n.7, 242 n.38, 254 n.35, 255 n.40 Palaiologos, Manuel II (Byzantine emperor) 151 Paris Peace Conference 39, 82, 102, 177 Parley, Peter 66 Paul II, Pope John 158, 160 Pence (vice president) 208 Perkins, Justin 29–31, 50, 250 n.73, 251 n.104 Petrosian, Vahram 242 n.45, 253 n.1 Philos Leadership Institute 171 Piddyon Shevuyim 204 Pius VIII Pope 26 Pray the Gay Way (Zakar twin authors) 227

315

Prophecy and Lamentation; or, A Voice from the East (Asmar) 64 Protestantism American 58 Eastern 52, 89 higher learning institutions in Middle East 62 proto- 63 Syriac Bibles 59 white ‘ethno-religion’ 66 Putrus, Agha 38–9 Qasim, Abd al-Karim 96, 164 Qazaz, Sa‘id 164 racialization classification 112, 117, 219 Islamic 159, 196 religious difference 176–7, 201 Ranger, Terence 240 n.15 Rasheed, Madawi al- 129, 240 n.12, 263 n.26 Rassam, Hormuzd 31, 58, 64, 68–70, 72, 245 nn.46–7, 252 n.116, 252 n.119 Rassam, Suha 248 n.13, 252 n.131, 258 n.100, 268 n.18 Ravenstein, Ernest 241 n.37 Rawlinson, George 54, 56, 249 n.44 Rawlinson, Henry 54, 61, 249 n.43 Rays of Light (Zahrire d-bahra) 34, 57 refugees 2, 4, 9, 15, 35, 77, 80–3, 95, 102, 135–6, 176–8, 183–7, 197–205, 227 Reis, Toma 162–3 Religious Land Use 192 Rice, Condoleezza 204 Rich, Claudius James 52 Roberson, Ronald G. 241 n.32, 242 n.45 Robinson, Charles Henry 248 n.14, 249 n.34, 251 n.93 Robson, Laura 115, 202, 242 n.40, 242 n.42, 248 n.9, 253 n.15, 254 n.24, 254 n.25, 261 n.15, 271 n.17, 271 n.18, 271 nn.20–1, 271 n.26, 277 n.151, 277 n.153, 278 n.161, 278 n.163, 278 n.164, 282 n.10 Roman Catholic Church 9–10, 16, 20, 24–9, 48, 58, 63, 92, 151, 160, 214, 217

316

Index

Roman Empire end of Nestorianism 24 in Persia 23 Romaya, Mary Saroki 211 Roosevelt, Theodore 202 Roux, Georges 36–8, 247 n.72 Royal Geographic Society 30 Rubin, Milka 248 n.7, 249 n.41 Russian Empire 11, 33 Sabeans 31 Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of Faith 54 Safe Haven Project 181–4 Said, Edward 43, 74, 240 n.18, 248 n.3, 252 n.128, 252 n.130, 275 n.95, 281 n.2 St Ephrem church 161 St Paul Chaldean Assyrian Church 165 St Thomas Chaldean Catholic Church 164, 197 Sako, Louis Raphael I 100, 159, 167–9 Salibi, Kamal 244 n.15, 245 n.35, 245 n.48 Samhan, Helen 118 San Remo Agreement 102 Sarafa, Josephine 219, 241 n.36, 280 n.16 Sassoon, Joseph 240 n.9 Sauma, Rabban bar 24 Schmidtke, Sabine 252 n.115 Second Vatican Council 96, 156 Seleucia-Ctesiphon 26 Semitic languages American mission’s interest 60–1 ancient-modern link 67 Sengstock, Mary 109, 123, 132, 134, 190, 241 nn.36–7, 259 n.117, 260 n.3, 262 n.6, 262 n.7, 263 n.20, 263 n.24, 263 n.28, 264 n.30, 264 n.34, 264 n.39, 264 n.40, 264 n.42, 264 n.47, 264–5 n.50, 265 n.52, 265 n.60 Sennacherib (Assyrian King) 215 Shakkaks 39, 177 Shallal, Michael 194 Sharabi, Hisham 111 Shari‘a law 79, 96, 106 Sharkey, Heather 103, 252 n.112, 258 n.98, 266 n.77, 282 n.10 Shathaya, Gassan Hanna 38, 41, 243 n.7, 247 n.75, 266 n.83 Sheehi, Stephen 191, 208

Shi‘a 148, 193, 204 Shi‘ism 2, 5, 95, 107, 148, 174–5, 181, 192–3, 276 n.110 Shimon, Samuel 5, 240 n.14 Shimun, Patriarch Eliya IX 50 Shoumanov, Vasili 242 n.39 Shryocks, Andrew 239 n.3 Shwartz, Honigman Miller 199 Siculus, Diodorus 243 n.4 Simon VIII 26. See also Sulaka, Yuhannan Sixtus V Pope 27 Smith, Eli 30 Smith, George 55 Sollors, Werner 1, 239 n.4 Soro, Bawai 198, 206 Sound System of Modern Assyrian, The (Neo-Aramaic, Odisho) 37 Southgate, Horatio 30, 245 n.42 Stafford, Ronald S. 86, 244 n.18, 249 n.38, 253 n.23, 254 n.28 Stiffler, Matthew 153 Sulaka, Yuhannan 26 Sykes-Picot secret agreement 102, 117 Syriac 20, 32–3, 40. See also Greater Syriac alphabets 22 literature, missionary efforts 58–63 Syrian Catholics 29 Syrian Orthodox or Jacobites 61, 88, 97, 152 Syrian Social Nationalist Party 100 Taylor, Michael 194 Telon, George 94 Temple Israel 196, 199 Temporary Iraqi Ruling Council 41 Teule, Herman 109 Thomas, Patriarch Emanuel II 155 Traité de grammaire syriaque (Duval) 34 transnational ties Chaldean patriarchs 154–5 community based organization 138–42 elite networks 136–8 ethnicity 130–6 generational remittances 124–7 marriages 127–30 moral gestures 142 Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Chaldea and Armenia (Ainsworth) 64

Index Treasures of the Iraq Museum (Anderson) 107 Trojan War 55 Trump, Donald 188, 208, 227 anti-Muslim agenda 188 travel ban 187, 189 Turkish War of Independence 102 Turks 201 Turner, V. W. 240 n.17 Twenty-Two Plain Reasons for Not Being a Roman Catholic 60 Ufheil-Somers, Amanda 240 n.9 umbrella designation 37, 39, 47, 80, 92, 117, 133–4, 178–9 Uniate groups 22–3, 30 United Chaldean Democratic Party (UCDP) 41 United Jewish Foundation of Metropolitan Detroit 197 United States. See also American diaspora; American missionaries evangelical print culture 59–60 United Way for Southeast Michigan 166 Unity and Freedom’ (Kheith Kheith Allap II or Khuyada w Kheirutha Athorayta) 94 Universal History on the Basis of Geography (Parley) 66 US (United States) Arab-American community 111, 116–20, 153, 190–2, 206 Arab-Muslim ‘cognitive link,’ 119 Arabic-speaking Catholic communities 152 assistance to religious minorities in the Nineveh Plains 182, 207 born Syrian population, demography 115–16 Chaldean agenda 206 ‘Chaldean/Assyrian/Syriac.’ Census 213 Chaldean–Jewish union 209 Chaldean religious institution 153–4, 161–9 Eastern Christianity 162 Eastern Christians, racial status 112 evangelical connotations 188 history of racism 208 immigration policies 117, 185

317

Iraq occupation 103–4, 151, 173–4, 181, 189, 211 Iraqi-Christian diaspora 163 Islamophobia 119, 173, 190–4 Maronite parishes and missions 153 non-Muslim refugees’ status 205 Operation R-4 184–7 Out-of-Country Voting Program 147–8 Republican administration 204–5 Syrian identity 111–12 trans-partisan resolution 207 Ussher, James 53 Victorian era discovery, notion of 51–3 firstness perception 53–6 museum culture 59, 80 Orientalism contexts 74 scientific forms of racism 66 Semitic language speakers 67 Vine, Aubrey 23, 27, 52, 244 n.12, 244 n.16, 244 n.26, 246 n.65, 249 n.37, 249 n.40, 251 n.102 Voice of Truth (Qala d-shara) 57 Wacker, Grant 250 n.67, 250 n.71 Walid, Dawud 193 Walsh College of Business 166 Warda, Pascale 183 Warikoo, Niraj 79, 242 n.46, 274 nn.76–7, 276 n.123 Waters, Mary C. 243 n.50 Western Islamophobia 206 West Syrian Orthodox 23 White, E. Frances 190 Wigram, William Ainger 66, 67, 73, 245 n.37, 252 n.107, 252 n.125 Wilmshurst, David 28, 83, 87, 241 n.21, 241 n.23, 241 n.25, 241 n.28, 242 n.38, 245 n.32, 249 n.28, 249 n.31, 253 n.19, 253 n.22, 254 n.26, 254 n.33, 254 n.35, 254 n.37, 255 n.52, 257 n.76, 258 n.91, 271 n.22 Wilson, Arnold 110 Wilson, Woodrow 202 winged bulls 35, 55, 59, 75 Winkler, Dietmar W. 243 n.3, 244 n.20, 244 n.27, 249 n.23, 249 n.36, 267 n.3, 282 n.7

318 Wolff, Joseph 60 Wosh, Peter 251 n.76 xenophobia 115, 202 Xenophon 28, 52–3, 243 n.4 Yacoub and Mourassa 43–4 Yaldo, Father Basel 151 Yasso, Reverent Jacob 163 Yerushalmi, David 194 Yeshua, Mar Abd 31 Yezidis 39, 56, 177, 207 destruction 1970s–1980s 103 Yohannan, John 45

Index Yono, Salman 190 Youkhana, Nora 227 Yousif, Yousif 185 Yusuf, Yusuf Salman (Fahd) 94 Zeno, Emperor 24 Zinda (online Assyrian magazine) 40 Zionism 8, 67, 175, 199, 201–3, 206–7, 209 Zionist Organization of America – Michigan Region (ZOA-MI) 206 zoning, legislation 192, 196 Zow‘a. See also Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM) 102