The Sad Erasure of Christianity from Arabia

Most Muslims would regard me as a Kafir, a conscious non-adherent of Islam. This derogatory term is often translated as “pagan,” “rejector,” “denier,” “disbeliever” or—most infuriating—“infidel.” I am no infidel, as I hold warmly to the Christian faith. I call them infidels.

Islamic history, in my view, has been a matter of revision and backfilling (Christians have done it too, but not to the same extent), and most of all, oral and written tradition. The Muslims have engaged in some lousy historiography, resulting in a big mismatch between official Islamic history and the factual record. Here are a few items to keep in mind:

• Its original “holy city” was not Mecca, but Petra in present-day Jordan. Petra sits more than 2,100 miles north of Mecca.

• The first Arabic reference to Muhammad is an inscription dated 691 A.D. at the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. Caliph Abd al-Malik ordered that this famous mosque be constructed to signal religious triumphalism over the Jews (it was built on the site of the Temple Mount, sacred to them) and Christians.

• The first biography of Muhammad was not written until 750 A.D., 118 years after his death. In it, his primacy was vastly expanded.

• Islam was a bland monotheism until the arrival of more martially inclined Arabs who made every effort to repudiate Nicene Christianity. They saw the need for a religion that could motivate and pay for their endless wars against non-Arabs.

• Most of the Quranic narratives highlighting the life and words of Muhammad derived not so much from life in 7th century Arabia as from Jewish and Zoroastrian sources. They supplied the framework for Islam’s legal tradition of Shar’ia.

As to whether the so-called prophet was given divine revelations by the angel Gabriel in a cave outside of Mecca, who the heck knows? I am inclined to doubt it. I certainly do not believe that in 621 A.D. he flew on the back of a winged horse to Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, up to heaven to consult with “Allah” and then back—all in a single night.

At any rate, I was born into a Christian family, attended a series of Protestant churches during my youth in Dallas and am a committed believer. To the extent that Islam purports to refute the Christian Gospel, I cannot join its ummah.

While some might say I paint with an overly broad brush, I do think that Islam was and is about the sword, whereas Jesus was and is the prince of peace. But he was no wimp, as indicated by his vigorous action with the money-changers in the temple; there are times when it is necessary to stand and fight. Three of my biggest heroes are Charles Martel (a.k.a. “the Hammer”), Jean de Valette and John III Sobieski. Would that the earliest Christians in the Arabian peninsula had been more willing to go toe-to-toe with those who sought to obliterate them.

Yet another thing I find offensive is the concept of jāhilīyah—that is, the “age of ignorance” which is said to have prevailed in Arabia before the advent of Islam in 610 A.D. Anything that preceded Muhammad’s revelations, it holds, is of no value and should be discarded. Polytheists, tree worshippers, animists, pagans and various barbarous peoples flourished there as elsewhere. But I would submit that not everybody living in that vast region lacked spiritual wisdom. For example, Jews had moved to Arabia when the Kingdom of Judah fell in 568 B.C. More came after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman emperor Titus in 70 A.D., followed by survivors of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 136 A.D. and those who migrated as part of the Himyarite Kingdom around 380 A.D., having suffered persecution by Shapur II, the Sasanian king of Persia.

(I will pause here and acknowledge that Muslims accord a measure of respect to Jews and Christians as fellow “People of the Book.” Always regarding themselves as first among equals, however, they were not shy about dominating Jews and Christians, treating them as dhimmis and charging the jizya tax whenever possible.)

The Apostle Paul spread Christianity north and west—mostly to Syria, Galatia, Asia Minor, Thrace, Macedonia and Italy. But there is non-Biblical evidence that he made one journey south. Interestingly enough, it was to Petra, Islam’s “holy city” before that honor was shifted to Mecca!

The Jews of Arabia could not have been shocked when Christians also started filtering in. They first came along trade routes from Egypt, Persia and Syria in the late 2nd or early 3rd century. Some may have been proselytizing, while others just wanted a place to call home after enduring persecution; they, too, had suffered under Shapur II. Christian councils were held in Bosra and Petra in 246 A.D. and 247 A.D., respectively, for the purposes of eliminating heresy and ironing out doctrinal issues.

As you may surmise, a variety of Christian sects operated in Arabia in those early years. They included Gnostics, Nestorians and Monophysites. Several Arabian tribes, such as the Banu Taglibs, Nabataeans, Lakhmids, Salihids and Kindites, adopted unorthodox versions of the faith.

Most Christians were in the southwest in what is modern-day Yemen, some along the Persian Gulf and virtually none in the heartland. They could also be found in what we now call Oman, Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Bahrain. The latter was the site of a monastery set up by a man named Abdisho around 390 A.D. Where Christianity thrived most was in the city of Najran, on the border of present-day Saudi Arabia and Yemen. But life for the faithful was precarious even before Muhammad came on the scene. In 524 A.D., Dhu Nawas, a Jewish Himaryite king, persecuted them, and urged them to abandon Christianity and embrace Judaism. They refused, and a mass murder—perhaps as many as 20,000 victims—ensued.

The Najran martyrs (the most famous among Catholics being St. Aretas) are praised in the Quran. Muhammad is said to have signed a treaty with the survivors, guaranteeing them security for “their lives, their religion and their property.” I am not sure how to square that with his three Quranic declarations that all non-Muslims had to evacuate the Arabian peninsula. Some did (mostly to Syria or southern Iraq), some lived on as crypto-Christians, and some gave up and converted.

Christianity persisted in Najran as late as the 9th century. Elsewhere, remnants of the faith may have lingered into the 13th century. The Wahhabis, led by Muḥammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahhāb at-Tamīmī, brought about a ferociously conservative reform of Islam 500 years later. Utterly free of doubt, they refused to let “Kafirs” live among them.

I realize that there are about 1.8 million Christians in Saudi Arabia today—guest workers from the Philippines, Canada, the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Italy, Greece, Korea, Ireland, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, China, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and several sub-Saharan African countries. But they are in no way allowed to worship or show their faith. The Kingdom’s Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (the “religious police”) is tasked with ensuring that Islamic injunctions are followed closely, which includes a ban on the practice of any faith other than Islam. While the CPVPV’s powers have been curtailed in the last few years, it is still around and still feared.

Mecca, Saudi Arabia….