Islam: the Cultural Aramaization of the Arabs - By Prof. Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
...We insisted on the Aramaean identity of the Arabic speaking people in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, SE Turkey, SW Iran, Kuwait, Qatar and the Emirates. We highlighted the fact that the arabization that followed the islamization in these parts of the Middle East was limited only to linguistic level, whereas at the racial – ethnic level any amalgamation led to total absorption of the few Arabs (of the area of Hedjaz) among the vast Aramaean masses.
...Suddenly, through what may be believed by many as Divine Intervention and Prophetic Mission, or through what may be interpreted by many as a colossal work of an erudite college of Savants around a high Person of Intuition, another world, namely Islam, came to the Arabs. Through Coran and the interpretations offered by the Hadiths of the Prophet, Jonas, Abraham, the Flood, Jesus, Moses, Solomon, David, Pharaonic Egypt, Alexander the Great, Jews and Nebukadnezzar, the Concept of the End of Time (Al Yom al Ahar), Jesus, and so many topics from the aforementioned milieu invaded the daily life, the thoughts, the subjects of concern and discussion, the beliefs and the faiths of the Arabs.
How can we interpret Islam, if not as the Ultimate De-Arabization of the Arabs?...
...When it was propagated outside the peninsula, Islam was originally viewed as another Christological dispute, another Christological system as a prolongation of Nestorianism. Not only we have sources testifying to this, but we can - through common sense - safely conclude that if Islam transferred among Arabs what constituted the cultural milieu for Aramaeans, Egyptians, Greeks, Jews and Romans (as we explained), then automatically it would look as another interpretation, as a recapitulation of the milieu’s elements among the peoples to whom the elements and the milieu had already been known. If we read the Medieval Greek Historian Theophanes or the famous Chronicon Paschale, we automatically realize this reality.
Islam would stay as part of Eastern Christianity, if the Roman Emperors accepted Muslims within their territory in the 7th and 8th centuries, as they had done with ‘Monophysitic’ and ‘Nestorian’ Christians. But the Constantinople emperors were tired after centuries of terrible Christological conflicts, so they accepted the secession rather easily, losing therefore all their Asiatic provinces at the south - east of Taurus and Anti-Taurus Mountains, and all their African provinces.
Of course, the great easiness by which Aramaeans accepted Islam in all the Roman and Persian provinces they were living (the area that corresponds to modern Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, SE Turkey, SW Iran, Kuwait, Qatar and the Emirates) testifies to a. the Aramaic indignation with the two capitals, Constantinople and Ctesiphon, and b. the extreme vicinity of the topics, the beliefs, and the elements of Islam, as well as of Islam itself, as an entire system that gradually became theirs for their utmost majority.
What the scarce Arab armies brought to Jerusalem, Antioch, Damascus, Edessa (Urfa), Amida, Nasibina, and Ctesiphon during the brief period 638 – 641 was just a new interpretation of elements known and believed, shared and evaluated. That is why that system, once accepted by Aramaeans, became truly a viably existing religion, able to be diffused to further provinces of the Roman Empire and the collapsing Sassanid Iran. And the early Aramaean proselytes guaranteed the victory of the Islamic armies in Nihavend and Merv (in Iran) and in Alexandria (in Egypt).
Modern scholars, presenting events through viewpoints shaped after preconceived schemes and political needs, failed so far to answer the following two questions:
- For God’s sake, why a ‘Nestorian’ Aramaean of Ctesiphon, who had been prosecuted for almost 300 years under various Shapurs and Khusraws, would not accept the new interpretation (which was Islam) of the cultural – historical – religious elements of his heritage, and not fight the Persian administration of his own country, taking revenge for three centuries of persecution?
- For God’s sake, why a ‘Monophysitic’ Aramaean of Damascus, who had been prosecuted for almost 300 years under various Constantines and Justinians, would not accept the new interpretation (which was Islam) of the cultural – historical – religious elements of his heritage, and not fight the Roman administration of his own country, taking revenge for three centuries of persecution?...
