mizzLebanese,
First of all, this is your first post on this forum, I think, so I would be happy to welcome you. Pari egak
Please take time to introduce yourself.
(We all are normal people here, not robots, let me assure you )
Second of all, kindly browse this forum's materials to find out what Hamshentsi's are about. You asking an interesting political question, but as you probably notice we don't have a topic called "Politics" on this forum. The reason is that political discussions are outside of our focus here. There are better boards for this.
Actually only part of us (most) is Muslim, residing primarily in Turkey, the other part is Christian residing primarily in South Russia and Abkhazia. There are many Hamshentsi's in both groups who, for whatever reason, actually not adher to any religion and are practically atheists or agnostics. They may have Armenian, Russian or Turkish names, yet they don't beleive in God and don't go to any place of worship.
Like most of my countrymen, I happen to be a Christian, member of the Armenian church. But there are others on this board who are Muslims. We don't even use same language:
Bash-Hemshinli from Turkey, for example don't use Armenian dialect anymore, they speak a dialect of Turkish with a large number of words borrowed from Armenian. There are also
Hopa-Hemshinli who speak a very interesting Armenian dialect of Hamshen yet don't read or write in Armenian letters, they only use modified Turkish-Latin alphabet. There are some of us here from Russia who feel more comfortable using Russian for discussions, so be it. But it is not an "all the same" deal. I hope I answered your question.
Please use this board to learn about the culture and history of Hamshen annd kindly obstain from political discussions.
Again, thanks and welcome!
Posted: 26 Jan 2007, 01:35