Faiths of the region

This corner of the world is the birthplace of three of the world's major religions and home to many more communities than outsiders expect. You cannot follow the politics without a basic map of who believes what. This chapter gives you that map. It describes beliefs and communities plainly, without judging any of them.

Why religion matters here

In much of this region, religion is not only a private belief. It is also a community identity that often determines which laws govern your marriage, which political bloc represents you, and which neighbourhood you grew up in. That is partly a legacy of the Ottoman millet system (previous chapter), which organised society by faith. So when the news mentions a "Sunni party" or a "Maronite president," it is describing this community dimension, not only theology.

Islam

Islam began in Arabia in the 600s CE and is the majority faith in every country in this book except Israel. Muslims follow the Quran, which they believe is the word of God revealed to the Prophet Muhammad, and the example of the Prophet. Core practices include the declaration of faith, daily prayer, charity, fasting in the month of Ramadan, and, for those able, the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.

Sunni and Shia

The single most useful religious distinction to learn is Sunni versus Shia.

The split began as a political question after Muhammad's death in 632: who should lead the Muslim community? Most accepted the first elected caliphs; this majority became the Sunnis (today roughly 85 to 90 percent of all Muslims). A minority held that leadership belonged to Muhammad's family line through his cousin and son-in-law Ali; they became the Shia. Over centuries the two developed somewhat different law, ritual, and clergy.

Don't be confused: Sunni and Shia are not at permanent war. For most of history most Sunnis and Shia lived side by side. The sharp "Sunni vs Shia" framing in today's news is largely about the modern political rivalry between Sunni-led Saudi Arabia and Shia-led Iran, each backing allies across the region. Ordinary belief and everyday coexistence are a separate matter from that geopolitical contest.

Two more Islamic terms worth knowing:

• Sufism is the mystical, inward tradition within Islam (both Sunni and Shia), focused on the direct experience of God, often through poetry, music, and orders of devotees. It is widespread and culturally rich across the region.
• Wahhabism / Salafism is a strict, puritanical Sunni reform movement that began in 18th-century Arabia and became closely tied to the Saudi state. It is covered in the Saudi Arabia chapter.

Christianity

Christianity began here, in Roman-ruled Judea, and the region's Christians are among the oldest continuous Christian communities on earth, predating Islam by centuries. They are a shrinking but historically central minority, especially in the Levant. The main churches you will hear about:

• Maronite Catholics, centered in Lebanon, in communion with Rome but with their own ancient traditions. They are central to Lebanese history and politics.
• Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholic (Melkite) communities across Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and Jordan.
• Armenian churches (Apostolic and Catholic), with communities across the region, many descended from survivors of the 1915 genocide.
• Syriac and Assyrian churches, among the oldest of all, some still using dialects of Aramaic, the language Jesus is thought to have spoken.
• Copts, the large Christian community of Egypt (just outside this book's set of countries but important to the regional picture).

Christians have lived among Muslim majorities for some 1,400 years. The experience has ranged widely across time and place, from long stretches of practical coexistence and shared culture to periods of pressure, discrimination, and violence. The 20th and 21st centuries, with their wars and the rise of extremist groups, have driven heavy Christian emigration from several countries. How this coexistence works in practice is explored most fully in the Lebanon chapter.

Judaism

Judaism is the oldest of the three faiths and is rooted in this land; Jerusalem is its holiest city. For most of the last two thousand years Jews lived as a dispersed minority (the diaspora), including long-established Jewish communities across the Middle East and North Africa. In the modern era the Zionist movement sought a Jewish national home in the land of historic Israel, which led to the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 (see the Israel chapter). After 1948, most Jews of the surrounding Arab countries left or were forced out and resettled, many in Israel.

Smaller communities you should recognise

The region's diversity goes well beyond the big three:

• Druze. A distinct faith that grew out of Islam about a thousand years ago, with secret teachings and a strong communal identity. Druze live mainly in Lebanon, Syria, and Israel, and have often played an outsized political and military role.
• Alawites. A minority offshoot related to Shia Islam, concentrated in coastal Syria. The ruling Assad family was Alawite, which made the community central to Syria's modern politics and civil war.
• Yazidis. A small, ancient religion of mainly Kurdish-speaking people in the Syria-Iraq borderlands. They were targeted for genocide by ISIS in 2014.
• Baha'i. A faith that began in 19th-century Persia and teaches the unity of religions; its world center is in Haifa, in Israel.

Don't be confused: minority does not mean marginal. Several of these small communities, the Maronites in Lebanon, the Alawites in Syria, the Druze in more than one country, have held political or military power far beyond their numbers. Counting heads does not tell you who holds influence.

With the faith map in hand, we can start the regional story where four of our countries overlap: the Levant. 👉