Why does Christianity not play much of a role in the Middle East

Great Debates
1

Christianity came into existence in the Middle East in the 1st century AD. However, while the Jews and Muslims have been fighting in the region since time eternal and continue to do so, Christians seem to have no role outside of the occasional story about how they face persecution from one of the two predominant religions in the area - quite the opposite for a religion that thrives throughout the rest of the world as the predominant religion and one whose history is known for coming into areas and taking them over.

I realize that Arab Muslims took things over in the 7th Century but in all that time since why has Christianity been content to be a third party while it flourished almost everywhere else, especially when the religion was born there? This place of origin thing is pretty important to the Jews, for example.

Also, do Christians who are in the region in modern times take any positions in the many battles between the Jews and Muslims? Do they fight in the battles?

2

I take it you’ve never heard of the Crusades?

3

I’m not aware of Christians being persecuted by Jews in the Middle East.

Besides, Christianity is really a European religion. It may have germinated in the Middle East, but it was transplanted to Europe and grew there. Sure, there are significant Christian communities scattered throughout the Middle East (notably in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Iraq), but they didn’t have any cohesion, and they are are much, much smaller in number than the vast swathes of Christians one finds historically in Europe.

4

They were in the Middle Ages for sure.

This website is certainly biased and I am loathe to consider American Christians when they claim persecution because that seems to be something they see when it doesn’t exist in many cases but maybe it’s worth a look.

I am aware that Muslims do far more persecution than Jews in the Middle East. I am not sure that there are never cases when the ultra Orthodox Jews treat Christians badly, however.

5

Palestinian Christians would certainly disagree.

When they join in the fight, they generally side with the Muslims as Leila Khaled, George Habash and plenty of other PFLP figures can attest.

6

Of course, but that’s kinda my point: The Crusades spread Christianity everywhere… But not where it all started. Your own cite shows that, for example, the Ninth Crusade was a dismal failure from the Christian perspective.

7

Because the equally aggressive and intolerant Islam attained dominance there first. Christianity attained dominance in places where it could overwhelm the local followers of other beliefs, and had either centuries to utterly crush their cultures and persecute them out of existence (as in Europe), or the opportunity to outright exterminate the local population and replace them with Christians (as in the Americas).

8

It still answers your original question, however. You asked:

“I realize that Arab Muslims took things over in the 7th Century but in all that time since why has Christianity been content to be a third party.”

The Crusades illustrate that, over a period of several hundred years, the Catholic Church and various Christian nations in Europe tried, repeatedly, and at times very hard, to change the religious equation in the Middle East. The fact that they did not succeed, in the long term, does not change the fact that they were not “content to be a third party”, as you put it.

9

That’s a ridiculous statement.

The simpler answer is Christians are a minority in the Middle East. Muslims aren’t.

10

Well, if you consider the 1940s “time eternal” I suppose. :rolleyes:

11

So why did they fail there and succeed everywhere else? You are hung up on semantics with the one word “content.” Fine, they were not content. But they failed regardless. Why?

12

Except that Christianity didn’t exceed everywhere else. As John Mace noted upthread, it succeeded well in Europe, and then went with European colonists elsewhere (which explains its dominance in the Americas and Australia).

In much of the rest of the world, by the time the European countries got around to colonizing (and sending out missionaries), other dominant religions were already there (Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.) Certainly, there are Christians in all of those areas, at some level, but the religion goes hand-in-hand with the culture. In the Americas and Australia, the Europeans established their culture, and Christianity was part of it.

13

Burning heretics and slaughtering the godless seems pretty intolerant to me, doubt there was much difference until recently historically.

14

The Romans completely evicted the Jews from Palestine by about 160AD.

From then until the 20th contury the Jews nowhere lived in concentrations
large enough in the Middle East to contest sovereignty with either Christians,
or with Muslims who almost completely replaced the Christians ca.650AD &ff.
Therefore it is incorrect to say Jews and Muslims have been fighting there
“since time eternal”. They have only been fighting there since the Jews began
returning to Palestine ca. 1920 &ff.

As for the Christians, the Muslim just beat them militarily, fair and square.
The remnant Byzantine Empire did hold out in what is now Asiatic Turkey until
1456, but the rest was lost by 700, not counting temporary limited recovery
during the Crusades.

Muslim overlordship policy allowed Christians and Jews to practice their religions,
provided they paid taxes which the Muslims did not have to pay. I believe
revenue from non-Muslims allowed Muslims to live tax-free for perhaps 200-300
years. However, most of the descendants of the originial inhabitants seem to
have converted to Islam volutarily.

15

Der claimed that Muslims were “equally aggressive and intolerant” as Christians.

Do you really want to compare the treatment of Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, and Hindus under Islamic rule to that of Muslims under Christian rule.

I’m certainly not an apologist for Islam as my username indicates but Medieval Christianity was vastly more tolerant, though hardly perfect than Medieval Christians.

Christians viewed Muslims as infidels who were to be slaughtered. Muslims did not feel that way about Christians.

16

And now, the roles are largely reversed.

So, in conclusion, they’re both worthless.

17

It would be easier to just admit an error.

But, it’s a minor point. You ask why Christianity plays a minor role in the Middle East. Why should it not? Christianity is a minority religion in the Middle East. What % of the population in the M.E. is Christian?

18

They did? What is your definition of “everywhere”?

19

Dear god where do I even begin.

  1. Jews and Muslims have not been fighting over the “middle east” for the longest time. Titus and Hadrian pretty much eliminates Jewish communities from the levant and N Africa (Alexandria excepting), and the population did not recover until modern times.

2). Christianity was dominant in some parts of the middle east, N Africa and the Levant to be exact. Even after the Muslim conquest, as Bernard Lewis (no apologist for Islam or muslims) Christianity remained the dominant religion in those areas till at least the middle ages, conversions were not pushed and at times discouraged. In other parts of the middle east, arch as Mesopitamia, Arabia and Iran, Christianity never caught on as much. Remember these areas were also ruled by the Persians or fought over for them by the Romans and Christianity was seen very much as the enemy faith and the Sassanids especially tended to clamp down on it ( as an aside the Sassanids also surpressedBuddhism which is why that religion never made inroads in the middle east and these actions incidentally also helped to reduce and cripple Buddhism in Afghanistand and what is now Pakistan).

  1. Re Jiziya, I will point out that i) an easy way to avoid jiziya was to agree to let your community be liable for military service and ii) this was mostly an Ummayad dynasty thing and the Abassaids who took over in the 8th century had a professional army and were less interested in such things.
20

Christianity is the majority in the following nations:

Pitcairn Islands (details) 50 100.0%
Vatican City (details) 2,800 100.0%
Greece (details) 11,204,000 99.7%
Romania (details) 20,930,000 99.5%
Papua New Guinea (details) 6,800,000 99.2%
Ecuador (details) 14,099,000 99.0%
Armenia (details) 3,250,000 98.7%
Equatorial Guinea (details) 683,000 98.6%
East Timor (details) 1,152,000 98.4%
American Samoa (details) 70,000 98.3%
Moldova (details) 3,503,000 98.3%
Malta (details) 408,000 98.0%
Venezuela (details) 28,340,000 98.0%
Colombia (details) 44,502,000 97.6%
Zambia (details) 12,939,000 97.6%
Guatemala (details) 14,018,000 97.5%
Mexico (details) 107,095,000 97.5%
Grenada (details) 101,000 97.3%
Bolivia (details) 9,730,000 97.0%
Puerto Rico (details) 3,878,000 97.0%
San Marino (details) 31,000 97.0%
Paraguay (details) 6,260,000 96.9%
Greenland (details) 55,000 96.6%
Bahamas (details) 350,000 96.3%
British Virgin Islands (details) 23,000 96.0%
Poland (details) 36,526,000 95.7%
Congo, Democratic Republic of (details) 68,558,000 95.6%
Micronesia, Federated States of (details) 106,000 95.4%
Dominican Republic (details) 9,734,000 95.2%
Barbados (details) 244,000 95.0%
Cape Verde (details) 487,000 95.0%
Iceland (details) 300,000 95.0%
Portugal (details) 10,110,000[31] 94.7%
Seychelles (details) 80,000 94.7%
Cook Islands (details) 19,000 94.3%
Falkland Islands (details) 3,000 94.3%
Ireland (details) 4,220,000 94.1%
Faroe Islands (details) 46,000 94.0%
Peru (details) 27,635,000 93.8%
Rwanda (details) 9,619,000 93.6%
Serbia (details) 9,138,000 93.5%
Philippines (details) 90,530,000 93.1%
Argentina (details) 37,561,000 92.7%
Croatia (details) 4,107,000 92.6%
Panama (details) 3,057,000 92.0%
Ukraine (details) 41,973,000 91.5%
Congo, Republic of (details) 3,409,000 90.7%
Anguilla (details) 15,000 90.5%
Brazil (details) 175,501,000 90.4%
Aruba (details) 98,000 90.1%
Andorra (details) 78,000 90.0%
Angola (details) 17,094,000 90.0%
Lesotho (details) 1,876,000 90.0%
Namibia (details) 1,991,000 90.0%
Nicaragua (details) 5,217,000 89.6%
Dominica (details) 59,000 88.7%
Georgia (details) 3,930,000 88.6%
Uganda (details) 29,943,000 88.6%
Italy (details) 53,230,000[30] 87.8%
Liechtenstein (details) 32,000 87.8%
Monaco (details) 29,000 87.7%
Honduras (details) 6,660,000 87.6%
Chile (details) 14,930,000 87.2%
Luxembourg (details) 437,000 87.0%
Slovakia (details) 4,730,000 86.5%
Norway (details) 4,195,000 85.6%
Kenya (details) 34,774,000 85.1%
Cuba (details) 9,523,000 85.0%
Zimbabwe (details) 10,747,000 85.0%
Lithuania (details) 2,827,000 84.9%
Costa Rica (details) 3,912,000 84.3%
Bulgaria (details) 6,364,000 84.0%
Haiti (details) 8,527,000 83.7%
Denmark (details) 4,610,000 83.1%
Austria (details) 6,970,000 83.0%
Hungary (details) 8,260,000 82.7%
Swaziland (details) 994,000 82.7%
El Salvador (details) 5,073,000 81.9%
South Africa (details) 40,243,000 81.7%
Finland (details) 4,347,000 81.0%
Tonga (details) 84,000 81.0%
Belarus (details) 8,600,200 80.0%
Malawi (details) 12,538,000 79.9%
Slovenia (details) 1,610,000 79.8%
Cyprus (details) 863,000 79.3%
Switzerland (details) 6,172,000 79.3%
Spain (details) 38,568,000 79.2%
Montenegro (details) 500,000 78.8%
Germany (details) 58,400,000 77.9%
Palau (details) 16,000 77.9%
Canada (details) 26,401,000 77.1%
Belize (details) 247,000 76.7%
South Sudan (details) 6,250,000 76.2%
Burundi (details) 7,662,000 75.0%
Antigua and Barbuda (details) 66,000 74.0%
Cayman Islands (details) 42,000 73.8%
Sweden (details) 7,148,000 73.0%
United States (details) 229,220,000 73.0%
Australia (details) 16,345,000 72.3%
Gabon (details) 1,081,000 72.0%
Botswana (details) 1,416,000 71.6%
United Kingdom (details)[35] 42,079,000 71.58%
Russia (details) 105,775,000 70.3%
Cameroon (details) 13,390,000 69.0%
Ghana (details) 16,741,000 68.8%
Bermuda (details) 46,000 67.0%
Jamaica (details) 1,784,000 65.3%
Macedonia, Republic of (details) 1,334,000 65.1%
Ethiopia (details) 54,978,000 64.5%
Belgium (details) 6,860,000 64.1%
France (details) 41,000,000 64%
Lebanon (details) 2,995,000 63.0%
Eritrea (details) 3,310,000 62.9%
Tanzania (details) 27,118,000 62.0%
New Zealand (details) 2,926,000 61.3%
Uruguay (details) 2,127,000 58.4%
Fiji (details) 498,000 58.3%
Trinidad and Tobago (details) 774,000 57.6%
Netherlands (details) 9,350,000 57.4%
Latvia (details) 1,280,000 57.2%
Guyana (details) 434,000 57.0%
Mozambique (details) 13,120,717 56.1%
Bosnia and Herzegovina (details) 2,120,000 52.0%
Nigeria (details) 80,103,000 51.2%
Central African Republic (details) 2,302,000 51.0%
Kazakhstan (details) 8,152,000 51.0%
Suriname (details) 308,000 50.3%

The map at the Wiki page shows that Christianity is doing pretty well for itself outside of the Middle East, Asia and parts of Northern Africa.

So no, Christianity isn’t everywhere… But it’s in a shitload of places. Yet not the place where the religion first started! I find this interesting. Don’t you?