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?