Before the coming of
Islam, most Arabs followed a religion featuring the worship of a
number of deities, including Hubal, Wadd, Al-Lat, Manat, and Uzza,
while some tribes had converted to Christianity or Judaism, and
a few individuals, the hanifs, had apparently rejected polytheism
in favor of a vague monotheism. The most prominent Arab Christian
kingdoms were the Ghassanid and Lakhmid kingdoms. With the expansion
of Islam, the majority of Arabs rapidly became Muslim, and the pre-Islamic
polytheistic traditions disappeared.
At present, most Arabs are Muslims. Sunni Islam dominates in most
areas, overwhelmingly so in North Africa; Shia Islam is prevalent
in Bahrain, southern Iraq and adjacent parts of Saudi Arabia, northern
Yemen, and southern Lebanon, as well as parts of Syria. The tiny
Druze community, belonging to a secretive offshoot of Islam, is
usually considered Arab, but sometimes considered an ethnicity in
its own right.
Reliable estimates of the number of Arab Christians, which in any
case depends on the definition of "Arab" used, vary. According
to Fargues 1998, "Today Christians only make up 9.2 per cent
of the population of the Near East". In Lebanon they now number
only about 40 per cent of the population, in Syria they make up
about 10 to 15 per cent, in the Palestinian territories the figure
is 3.8 per cent, and in Israel Arab Christians constitute 2.1 per
cent. In Egypt, they constitute 5.9 per cent of the population,
and in Iraq they presumably comprise 2.9 per cent of the populace.
Most North and South American Arabs (about two-thirds) are Arab
Christians, particularly from Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon.
Arabic-speaking Jews - mainly Mizrahi Jews and Yemenite Jews -
are today usually not categorised as Arab. Prior to the emergence
of the term Mizrahi, the term "Arab Jews" (Yehudim ‘Áravim,
?????? ?????) was used to describe Jews of Arab world. The term
is rarely used today. The few remaining Jews in the Arab countries
reside mostly in Morocco. Between the late 1940s and early 1960s,
following the creation of the state of Israel, most Arabic-speaking
Jews left their countries of birth. Most are now concentrated in
Israel, but many also live in France (see Jewish exodus from Arab
lands).
Etymology
| Traditional
genealogy | History
| Religions
| Who is an
Arab?
|