28 - The Middle East: western missions and the Eastern churches, Islam and Judaism

Summary

Introduction

In the nineteenth century, the Middle East became the scene of intensive religious encounters between representatives of Christianity and Islam, and between Christianity and Judaism,as well as between those representing western forms of Christianity (Protestantism and Roman Catholicism) and the members of the Eastern churches. These encounters took place in a rapidly changing part of the world, where western influence by way of diplomatic and commercial relationships was strong and where mundane interests on both sides were thoroughly mixed with religious interests. French and British diplomatic relationships with the Ottoman empire, already strong in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in the nineteenth century helped to strengthen the constitutional rights of the minority communities of Jews and Christians, whereas western support (notably from Russia) of the separatist movements in the Greek, Balkan and Caucasian provinces of the Ottoman empire helped to reduce its size considerably, at the same time increasing the percentage of Muslim inhabitants of the remaining Ottoman state. The other important Middle Eastern state of the time, Persia, also experienced growing western influence, culminating in the ‘strangling of Persia’ by Russia and Great Britain at the end of the nineteenth century. Under Muhammed Ali (1805–48), Egypt gained independence from the Ottoman empire, but in 1882 became the first Middle Eastern state to be occupied by a western country, Great Britain.

Religion in the Middle East displayed great variety: about 75 per cent of the population belonged to Islam, rather evenly divided among Sunni and Shi’a, but including also groups like the ’Alawí in the Syrian provinces. In addition, northern Mesopotamia had its Yezidies, Lebanon its Druze, Palestine its Samaritans, Persia its Zoroastrians; this last country also witnessed in the 1840s the birth of the Baha’i faith.