**Religious Ideology

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**Introduction: The Middle East is the birthplace of three major religions—Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam—and remains the main location of their holy sites.
Throughout history, it has also consistently been the region of the world in which religion has
most affected the political and social com-ponents of nations as well as the self-definitions of
peoples.Since the founding of Islam in the seventh cen-tury A.D., the two major religions in
the Middle East have been Islam and Christianity.Christians, the effects of the divisions into
several different groups—the main categories being Catholic and Greek Orthodox—For
Muslims, the long-standing dispute between Sunnis and Shias has become a cen-tral
feature of life, politics, and even warfare in the region.

**Religious Ideology: religious ideology means

"the beliefs and practices of that religion support powerful groups in society, effectively
keeping the existing ruling class, or elites, in power."

Islam is the most prevalent religion in the contemporary Middle East.

Smaller minority religions, such as the Baháʼí Faith, Druze,Alawites, Bábism, Yazidism,
Mandaeism, Yarsanism, Samaritanism, Ishikism, Ali-Illahism, Yazdânism and Zoroastrianism
are also present in the Middle East region.
Three of the world's major religions -- the monotheist traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and
Islam --were all born in the Middle East and are all inextricably linked to one another.

**Islam:Islam began in present-day Saudi Arabia, the home of the religion’s two holiest
sites—Mecca and Medina.
Both Sunnis and Shias agree on the story of how Islam began. In 570, Muhammad ibn
Abdallah, the founder of Islam, was born into the clan of Hashim, a somewhat poor relation
of the powerful Quraysh tribe in Mecca in the Arabian population. In middle East countries
most popular ideology is islam.In
Saudi Arabia,Iran,Syria,Iraq,Egypt,Jordan,Yemen,Lebanon,Kuwait,Oman are basically
islamic province but there are ideological differences here like Shia Islam,Sunni Islam

** Shia Islam: One of the major differences between Shias and Sunnis has been the Shia
reverence for their imams.
In addition to Mecca and Medina, Shias consider the burial spots of their imams as holy
sites, notably Karbala and Najaf in Iraq, where Ali and Hussein were buried. This practice
has been frowned upon by Sunnis, who are suspicious of anything that might seem to
involve worshipping mortals. Eighty percent of all Shias are T welvers, espe-cially in the
large Shia communities of Iran, Iraq,and Lebanon.

***Sunni Islam: Sunni Muslims have accepted the first four caliphs, including Ali, as the
rightful successors to Muhammad. In contrast to Shias, Sunni Muslims have not worshipped
human beings aside from the Prophet Muhammad, Sunni religious teach-ers have
historically been subordinate to the state, and lay persons are permitted to be prayer leaders
and preachers.
Syria has been home to one of the region’s most religiously diverse com-munities. The
country has always had a Sunni Muslim majority, which is currently 74 percent of the
population.
In Egypt, the vast majority of citizens have been Sunni Muslims.

***Sufism: Sufism is a common, though distinctly minority, practice transcending Shia and
Sunni Islam.Sufism has an 800-year history of taking a mystical viewpoint.It could be
considered the opposite extreme from Wahahbism.overall, has been especially popular in
Egypt, Syria, Turkey, and Iraq.

** Christianity in the Middle East:

Christianity, the second major religion in the Middle East, has, like Islam, also been divided
among different groups on both theological and communal ground.
Christians, the effects of the divisions into several different groups—the main categories
being Catholic and Greek Orthodox—

When the Muslims conquered the region in the seventh century, there were an estimated 15
million Christians there—9.1 million in Iraq, 4 mil-lion in Syria, and 2.5 million in Egypt. By
the early twenty-f i rst century, that number was between 10 and 15 million.In Syria, 33
percent of the community was Christian by 2006 that number had dropped to 10 percent; in
Iraq, the community went from 5.8 percent in 1970 to less than 3 percent in 2004 after the
fall of Saddam Hussein.Lebanon lost its traditional Christian majority after its civil war in the
1970s and 1980s.For cultural reasons Chris-tians have been more willing to go elsewhere
and have found it easier to do so than their Muslim counterparts.

**Judaism: all the Jews in the Middle East live in Israel, which is the world’s only nation with
Judaism as its governing religion.

Conclusion: Islam and Christianity have long been the two major religions in the Middle East.
Iraq under Saddam Hussein and his pre-decessors, religiosity was largely repressed by a
highly centralized and secular state.