Christian Arabs

Image source: incommunion.org

It's important to remember that many Arabs were Christians centuries before Muhammad was even born, so Arabic was indeed a "language of the Christians" before it became known as "the language of Islam". Most Arab Christians use the name “Allah” (الله) for God as well (although the Christian view of God/Allah is of course vastly different from the Islamic one). So when we criticise Islam and Muslims or their religious beliefs and practices we should keep in mind that it is not the Arab language (or the Arab ethnicity) or indeed the name “Allah” that offends us, but rather the religion called Islam, that Muhammad made up, blending Jewish, Christian and Pagan beliefs and then adding his own twisted ideas. Christian Arabs are not our enemies, they are our allies.

"The earliest Arab Christians belong to the pre-Islamic period. There were many Arab tribes that adopted Christianity. These included the Nabateans and the Ghassanids, who were of Qahtani origin and spoke Yemeni Arabic as well as Greek. These tribes received subsidies and protected the south-eastern frontiers of the Roman and Byzantine Empires in north Arabia. However, a number of minority Christian sects were persecuted as heretic under Roman and Byzantine rules.

The tribes of Tayy, Abd Al-Qais, and Taghlib were also known to have included a large number of Christians prior to Islam.

The southern Arabian city of Najran was also a center of Arab Christianity." [1]

"Arab Christians (Arabic: مسيحيون عرب‎‎ Masīḥiyyūn ʿArab) are Arabs of the Christian faith. They are descended from ancient Arab Christian clans that did not convert to Islam, such as the Kahlani Qahtani tribes of Ancient history of Yemen (i.e., Ghassanids, and Banu Judham) who settled in Transjordan and Syria, as well as Arabized Christians, such as Melkites and Antiochian Greek Christians. Arab Christians, forming Greek Orthodox and Latin Christian communities, are estimated to be 520,000[1]–703,000 in Syria, 221,000 in Jordan, 127,000 in Israel and around 50,000 in Palestine. [...]

The first Arab tribes to adopt Christianity were likely Nabataeans and Ghassanids. During the fifth and sixth centuries, the Ghassanids, who adopted Monophysitism, formed one of the most powerful confederations allied to Christian Byzantium, being a buffer against the pagan tribes of Arabia. The last king of the Lakhmids, al-Nu'man III ibn al-Mundhir, a client of the Sasanian Empire in the late sixth century, also converted to Christianity (in this case, to the Nestorian sect)." [2] ____________ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Arab_Christians [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_Christians