Displaced Populations

The decline of Christianity in North Africa and West Asia raises serious concerns about its future longevity in the region. Christians have historically viewed themselves as culturally Arab and therefore integrated into the larger multi-religious society. Since 2003, however, increasing confessionalization has sharpened their outsider status as non-Muslim minorities. Some also face direct persecution, violence, and destruction of their cultural heritage, especially in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt. Christian communities have been displaced both physically, as refugees and emigrants, and socially, through increasing isolation. Christian displacement occurs for four primary reasons: intervention in their government by foreign states, growing disinterest in maintaining religious pluralism among Sunni Muslims, lack of ecumenical cooperation among Christian churches, and economic pull factors in foreign countries with established Middle Eastern diaspora populations.