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The Islamization of Egypt occurred after the seventh-century Muslim conquest, in which the Islamic Rashidun Caliphate seized control of Egypt from the Christian dominated Byzantine Empire. Egypt and other conquered territories in the Middle East gradually underwent a large-scale conversion from Christianity to Islam , motivated in part by a ...
Christian influences in Islam can be traced back to Eastern Christianity, which surrounded the origins of Islam. [1] Islam, emerging in the context of the Middle East that was largely Christian, was first seen as a Christological heresy known as the "heresy of the Ishmaelites", described as such in Concerning Heresy by Saint John of Damascus, a Syriac scholar.
The book consists of two parts, an analysis, which aims to paint a broad picture of the conversion of the Near East to Islam, and an appendix containing selected primary sources. The book focuses only upon the Christian communities in Iran, Mesopotamia, Armenia, Anatolia, the Levant, Egypt, Libya and the Maghreb. [4]
Under Egyptian law, religious minorities, including those who leave Islam, have equal rights with Muslims. Article 64 of the Egyptian Constitution states that freedom of belief is absolute.
The vast majority of Egyptian Christians are Copts who belong to the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, an Oriental Orthodox Church. [2] [3] As of 2019, Copts in Egypt make up approximately 10 percent of the nation's population, [4] with an estimated population of 9.5 million (figure cited in the Wall Street Journal, 2017) [5] or 10 million (figure cited in the Associated Press, 2019). [6]
The share of Christians in the Egyptian population has according to official statistics been declining with the highest share reported in the past century being in 1927, when the official census put the percentage of Egyptian Christians at 8.3%. In each of the seven subsequent censuses, the percentage shrank, ending at 5.7% in 1996. [8]
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Religion in Egypt consists of Islam (mostly Sunni Muslim) 80–90%, Coptic Christians 10–20% and other Christians 1%. [ 127 ] [ 128 ] [ 56 ] As Egypt has modernized with new forms of media and the Egyptian press was liberalized in the 2000s, Coptic Christianity has become a main topic of religious controversy. [ 129 ]