Arab History - Religion

Religion

Arab Muslims are generally Sunni or Shia, one exception being the Ibadis, who predominate in Oman and can be found as small minorities in Algeria and Libya (mostly Berbers). Arab Christians generally follow Eastern Churches such as the Coptic Orthodox, Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic churches and the Maronite church and others. In Iraq most Christians are Assyrians rather than Arabs, and follow the Assyrian Church of the East, Syriac Orthodox and Chaldean Church. The Greek Catholic churches and Maronite church are under the Pope of Rome, and a part of the larger worldwide Catholic Church. There are also Arab communities consisting of Druze and Baha'is.

Before the coming of Islam, most Arabs followed a pagan religion with a number of deities, including Hubal, Wadd, Allāt, Manat, and Uzza. A few individuals, the hanifs, had apparently rejected polytheism in favor of monotheism unaffiliated with any particular religion. Some tribes had converted to Christianity or Judaism. The most prominent Arab Christian kingdoms were the Ghassanid and Lakhmid kingdoms. When the Himyarite king converted to Judaism in the late 4th century, the elites of the other prominent Arab kingdom, the Kindites, being Himyirite vassals, apparently also converted (at least partly). With the expansion of Islam, polytheistic Arabs were rapidly Islamized, and polytheistic traditions gradually disappeared.

Today, Sunni Islam dominates in most areas, overwhelmingly so in North Africa. Shia Islam is dominant in southern Iraq and Lebanon. Substantial Shi'a populations exist in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, northern Syria, the al-Batinah region in Oman, and in northern Yemen. The Druze community is concentrated in Lebanon, Israel and Syria. Many Druze claim independence from other major religions in the area and consider their religion more of a philosophy. Their books of worship are called Kitab Al Hikma (Epistles of Wisdom). They believe in reincarnation and pray to five messengers from God.

Christians make up 5.5% of the population of the Near East. In Lebanon they number about 39% of the population. In Syria, Christians make up 16% of the population. In British Palestine estimates ranged as high as 25%, but is now 3.8% due largely to the vast immigration of Jews into Israel following Israel's independence, and the 1948 Palestinian exodus. In West Bank and in Gaza, Arab Christians make up 8% and 0.8% of the populations, respectively. In Egypt, Christians number about 10% of the population. In Iraq, Christians constitute today up 3-4%, the number dropped from over 5% after Iraq war, a few of these are Arabs. In Israel, Arab Christians constitute 2.1% (roughly 9% of the Arab population). Arab Christians make up 8% of the population of Jordan. Most North and South American Arabs are Christian, as are about half of Arabs in Australia who come particularly from Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinian territories. One well known member of this religious and ethnic community is Saint Abo, martyr and the patron saint of Tbilisi, Georgia.

Jews from Arab countries – mainly Mizrahi Jews and Yemenite Jews – are today usually not categorised as Arab. Sociologist Philip Mendes asserts that before the anti-Jewish actions of the 1930s and 1940s, overall Iraqi Jews "viewed themselves as Arabs of the Jewish faith, rather than as a separate race or nationality". Also, prior to the massive Sephardic emigrations to the Middle East in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Jewish communities of what are today Syria, Iraq, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt and Yemen were known by other Jewish communities as Musta'arabi Jews or "like Arabs". Prior to the emergence of the term Mizrahi, the term "Arab Jews" was sometimes used to describe Jews of the Arab world. The term is rarely used today. The few remaining Jews in the Arab countries reside mostly in Morocco and Tunisia. From the late 1940s to the early 1960s, following the creation of the state of Israel, most of these Jews fled their countries of birth and are now mostly concentrated in Israel. Some immigrated to France, where they formed a large Jewish community, that outnumbered Jews in the United States, but relatively small compared to European Jews. See Jewish exodus from Arab lands.