The Aryans didn't assert the Jesus wasn't God. They just had a different understanding of what that means. The main issue between Arius and the Niceens was that the latter taught that Jesus is co-eternal with God, while Arius taught that God the Father created Jesus. This doesn't negate Jesus the Logos, the holy spirit of humanity and the world, there at the creation of man. Its just saying that this manifestation of God needn't have existed separately in any way from God at the "in the beginning" part of the story. Even describing it is really difficult and creates problems. Its like, if you have Christ in your heart, then you're part of Christ's body - well, that's a mangled way of saying you're part of God. You're a son of God, striving to live up to the ideal of The Son of God (paradoxically called the son of man), because a piece of God is adventuring through your story as you. And I think the Aryans disputed the sinlessness of Mary, which if true, would have compounded the church's hate for them. 

So far, I really like Arius and his doctrine. I'm not committing to it, but its interesting. The early church actually had something like a crusade to the north to kill the Aryans, who had way more converts in the barabarians than the official church had. And the Orthodox still hates them! Its amazing.