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Today, the largest Middle Eastern Greek community resides in Cyprus and numbers around 810,000 [12] Cypriot Greeks constitute the only Christian majority state in the Middle East, although Lebanon was founded with a Christian majority in the first half of the 20th century.
The concept of an Arab Christian identity remains contentious, with some Arabic-speaking Christian groups in the Middle East, such as Assyrians, Armenians, Greeks and others, rejecting an Arab identity. Individuals from Egypt's Coptic Christian community and Lebanon's Maronite community sometimes assume a non-Arab identity. [32] [33]
Religion and ethnicity are somewhat intertwined in the region of the Middle East.Many Christian religious groups are, in fact, not only religious but ethnoreligious and ethnolinguistic in nature, with their usually non-Arab ethnic identity typically being of greater antiquity than the stage of Arabization in the history of the region.
Christianity has been, historically, a Middle Eastern religion with its origin in Judaism. Eastern Christianity refers collectively to the Christian traditions and churches which developed in the Middle East, Egypt, Asia Minor, the Far East, Balkans, Eastern Europe, Northeastern Africa and southern India over several centuries of religious antiquity.
Christianity in the Middle East is characterized by its diverse beliefs and traditions, compared to Christianity in other parts of the Old World. In 2010, Christians were estimated to make up 5% of the total Middle Eastern population, down from 20% in the early 20th century. [1] This was before the devastating civil wars in Syria and Iraq.
The largest Christian group in the Middle East is the originally Coptic-speaking, but now Arabic-speaking Coptic Orthodox Christian population. This Egyptian ethnoreligious community of Copts , is cited by the official census as consisting of 6–11 million people in past decade, [ 51 ] although Coptic sources cite the figure as being closer to ...
Christians in the United Arab Emirates account for 12.9% of the total population according to 2020 estimates. [1] The government recognises various Christian denominations. [2] Christians are free to worship and wear religious clothing, if applicable. The country has Catholic, Eastern, Oriental Orthodox and Protestant churches. [3]
The largest Christian denomination in Syria is the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch (officially named the Orthodox Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East), also known as the Melkite church after the 5th and 6th century Christian schisms, in which its clergy remained loyal to the Eastern Roman Emperor ("melek") of Constantinople.