The prevailing logic in the Middle East is that everything is predestined. If, for example, someone dies in a car accident, people simply believe it was the person’s fate, with the underlying logic that there was nothing the individual or society could have done to avoid it. If people in the West were following the same thinking, cars today would probably not have seatbelts and other safety systems, which are preventing countless deaths on the roads. 

The concept of predestination goes long back in time, in fact, all the way to ancient Mesopotamia and Assyria. In attempting to avoid evil omens or fate, the kings of that time would symbolically abdicate their throne to a substitute with no actual power and go into hiding. The substitute was put to death at the end of the ritual, and the actual king, having successfully transferred his doomed fate onto the scapegoat, would return to his throne. 

It’s therefore no wonder that the concept of predestination or divine fate is a deeply ingrained part of today’s Assyrian culture and way of thinking. Assyrians will even apply the concept on a collective level by ascribing our nation’s undesirable situation to fate, with statements such as the following; “We were once mighty but not anymore and this is simply how the world works.” 

The view that it’s not our turn anymore implies that Assyrians should accept how things are today because it’s merely our destiny. A logical consequence of this thinking is acceptance of and passivity toward the situation of our nation. If we believe it’s predestined, then there’s no meaning in trying to remedy the situation. 

The countless ethnic groups and nations that changed their fate by fighting their way out of oppression and occupation would probably disagree. So too would the iconic British wartime leader Winston Churchill. As his nation was facing the overwhelming military power of Nazi Germany in WWII, he insisted that the British needed to vigorously decide their own fate, proclaiming:

“Now we are the masters of our fate; that the task which has been set for us is not above our strength; that its pangs and toils are not beyond our endurance. As long as we have faith in our cause and an unconquerable willpower, salvation will not be denied us.”

The mindset of seeking to be the master of one’s fate is what distinguishes nations that are able to come back up on their feet from nations that don’t. It’s exactly this opposite concept of fate that we Assyrians need to adopt in order to advance our national cause. Simply put, we need to have the willpower to be the masters of our fate, or else others will decide it for us.   

One of the primary objectives of the Movement for New Assyria (MNA) is to make more Assyrians believe in our collective ability to decide our own future. All it requires is genuine effort and a kind of unconquerable willpower that made Churchill’s Britain and many other nations throughout history victorious in the face of setbacks, calamities, and pure evil. 

POST DATE: JANUARY 2023