ARAB CHRISTIANITY

When we think of the Arab world, we tend to think of an Islamic world. But there is still a sizable Arab Christian population. The entire Middle East and Egypt - and even parts of the Arabian Peninsula - were Christian long before they were Muslim.

There are approximately 41 million Christians in the Arab world, of a total Arab population of 328 million. Thus, 12.5% of the Arab population are Christians. Most Christian Arabs are found in Egypt, then Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. Christians in Syria are at risk of persecution by elements of the anti-Assad forces who recently came to power.

The largest number of Christians in the Arab world are to be found in Egypt:  approximately 16 million (out of a population of 82 million). These are Coptic Christians.  Like the pre-Islamic Christians of the Arabian Peninsula, they are Miaphysite Christians.* During the 5^th century they adopted the vernacular Egyptian language, Copt, as the Egyptian Church’s language, rather than Greek, the official language of the Byzantine empire, when their quarrel with the Orthodox imperial church proved to be intractable. 

(The Ethiopian Church is also a Miaphysite church. Until as recently as the 1950s, the Archbishop of the Ethiopian Church was - by ancient tradition - a bishop from the Egyptian Coptic church).

Lebanon has the highest percentage of Christians, at just over 40% of the population.

In much of the Arab world, Christians are suffering ever-increasing persecution. Ancient Christian communities are being broken up and dispersed. Many thousands of Christians have had to flee Iraq since the western invasion of that country. Sporadic persecution of Christians in Egypt is becoming more frequent.

Most Christian Arabs of the Middle East belong to one of the autonomous particular churches in communion with the Bishop of Rome (the Pope), collectively making up the Eastern Catholic Church. For example, the Maronites of Lebanon are in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. The Eastern Catholic Churches adhere to their own traditional liturgical rites, which would strike a Latin rite Catholic as distinctly foreign, and they are led by their own Patriarchs. Those Arab Christians who do not belong to the Eastern Catholic Church, may be members of churches in communion with the Greek Orthodox Church.

The Roman Catholic Church has a Vicariate Apostolic of Northern Arabia, located in Bahrain, which covers Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia - although there exist no churches in Saudi Arabia.

In what was once, historically, an important centre of Christianity - Saudi Arabia - there are officially no Saudi Christians. The earliest mention of Christians in the Arabian world is found in the New Testament, when the Apostle Paul refers to his journey in Arabia following his conversion (Galatians 1:15 – 17). 

By the 4^th century, a great many Christians lived in Egypt, and there were significant numbers in the Sinai peninsular, Mesopotamia and the Arabian peninsular (Modern-day Saudi Arabia, and the Yemen). One of the earliest church buildings discovered by archaeologists, the Jubail Church, built in the 4^th century, is located in modern Saudi Arabia. Modern south-western Saudi Arabia, and parts of Yemen, were strongly Christian during Islam’s early years.  

Many Arab tribes adopted the Christian faith. These included the Nabateans and the Ghassanids (of Qahtani origin). The Ghassanids, having migrated to present day Jordan and Syria from the Arabian Peninsula, established a (Miaphysite) Christian kingdom reaching from Syria to the Red Sea. They were for a time a useful buffer against the Sassanian (Persian) threat to the Eastern Roman empire, but they were unable to resist the onslaught of Islam in the 7^th century.    

In the early 6^th century, Miaphysite Christians fleeing state persecution within the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire, gathered around the city of Najran (now in south-western Saudi Arabia), where there was already a Christian community. In around 525 AD, a local Christian ruler, Abraha, established a wealthy Miaphysite Christian kingdom in southern Arabia (a kingdom referred to in the Koran as “Sheba”). 

In the same decade that Mohammed, the founder of Islam, was born (approximately 570 AD), the famous and economically vital Marib dam, upon which the region’s agricultural prosperity relied, was breached, and the complex and sophisticated culture of the region collapsed. No longer backed by a powerful and wealthy state, Christianity in the region gradually withered. Even so, Islam was unable to gain total religious dominance over the regions’ people until as late as the 10th century.

The lowest number of Christians to be found in the Arab world is in Saudi Arabia (before the onset of Islam, the home to hundreds of thousands of Christians). Officially, there are no Saudi Christians whatsoever. The dominance of the hardline Wahhabi sect in Saudi Arabia means that despite Islamic Sharia law granting Christians the right to practice their religion free of interference or persecution, on payment of the Jizyah (religious tax), Christians have no rights whatsoever in Saudi Arabia. Christian worship is outlawed in Saudi Arabia, except in private homes or at the embassies of Christian countries. Christian clergy are forbidden entry to Saudi Arabia. Objects associated with the Christian faith, such as the Bible, crucifixes, Christian iconography etc., are banned from entering the country. Should a Muslim in Saudi Arabia convert to the Christian faith, he has committed the crime of apostasy, for which the official punishment today is death - at the hands of the secular authorities.

And it is these people, the Saudis, who fund hardline Wahhabi centres in Britain in the guise of Muslim community centres and mosques, and whom our government regards as sound allies and welcome friends to Britain. We may require oil from the Saudis, and perhaps we need Saudi Arabia as a counter-balance to Iran, but we require nothing else from them, least of all their particularly harsh, intolerant, medieval version of Islam.  

*Miaphysite Christians believe that Christ has but one nature, rather than the dual natures - both wholly Man, and wholly God - that the Orthodox Church of the time believed (and which mainstream churches of today continue to believe).