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Concept
Christianity in the Middle East
Summary
Christianity, which originated in the Middle East during the 1st century AD, is a significant minority religion within the region, characterized by the diversity of its beliefs and traditions, compared to Christianity in other parts of the Old World. Christians now make up approximately 5% of the Middle Eastern population, down from 20% in the early 20th century. Cyprus is the only Christian majority country in the Middle East, with Christians forming between 76% and 78% of the country's total population, most of them adhering to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Lebanon has the second highest proportion of Christians in the Middle East, around 40%, predominantly Maronites. Egypt has the next largest proportion of Christians (predominantly Copts), at around 10% of its total population. Copts, numbering around 10 million, constitute the single largest Christian community in the Middle East.
The Eastern Aramaic speaking Assyrians of northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey, and parts of Iran have suffered both ethnic and religious persecution for many centuries, such as the 1915 Genocide that was committed against them by the Ottoman Turks and their allies, leading many to flee and congregate in areas in the north of Iraq and northeast of Syria. The great majority of Aramaic speaking Christians are followers of the Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic Church, Syriac Orthodox Church, Ancient Church of the East, Assyrian Pentecostal Church and Assyrian Evangelical Church. In Iraq, the numbers of Christians has declined to between 300,000 and 500,000 (from 0.8 to 1.4 million before 2003 US invasion). Assyrian Christians were between 800,000 and 1.2 million before 2003. In 2014, the Chaldean and Syriac population of the Nineveh Plains in northern Iraq was scattered to Dohuk, Erbil and Jordan due to ISIS forcing the Assyrian and Syriac Christian community out of their historical homeland, but since the defeat of the Islamic State in 2017, Christians began to slowly return.
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