what religion was there before islam in the middle east?

Answer 1

Christianity.

Answer 2

In Saudi Arabia where Islam developed it was primarily pagan with scattered communties of Christians and Jews.

The original Kabala was a pagan site until Mohammed purified it.

The religion of the rest of the middle east was Christianity - with the Nestorian sect being a rather large percent, Judaism and Zorasterism with some pagan holdovers.

Answer 3

Hi, as you can see from all the answers, there were many religions in the "Near East" before Islam. However, it is important to distinguish these religions from common terms. For example, Christianity as most people point out was a major religion, but it was not the Roman church or even the Orthodox church of Byzantium. Rather there were regional churches that sometimes predated the larger churches like the Armenian Church - http://www.armenianchurch.org/ and The Coptic church of Egypt - http://www.copticchurch.net/ One of the larger and widespread of the Asian churches was/is the Nestorian http://www.nestorian.org/ which spread all the way (on the silk road) to China. Most of these Christian communities welcomed the Islamic conquerors because in its early days, Islam was a religion that practiced tolerance (as opposed to the established churches that tried in enforce orthodoxy.)
The answerer "Aphrodite" mentioned Zoroastrianism which was the ancient religion of Persia, but from around the year 300, an gnostic off-shoot of Zoroastrianism called Manicheaism http://essenes.net/bnei3.htm spread across Mesopotamia and across Central Asia into China. it is also important to remember that before the coming of Islam, Buddhism was a major religion in what is now Afghanistan - http://web.singnet.com/~sidneys/afghanitan.htm Finally, there were very ancient folk religions some of which still exists like Yazidism http://lexicorient.com/e.o/uyazidism.htm which combined various aspects of Islam, Buddhism, Manicheaism with older religious practices.
So there were many religions in this region, most of which continue to exist.

Answer 4

Christianity and Zoroastrianism (the religion of the Persians) would have been the main two, as the two main powers in the region at the time of the rise of Islam were The Byzantine (Roman) and Sassanid Persian Empires.

Answer 5

Before islam and christianity people would invent other gods. People love to invent gods. But an old friend Seneca once said “Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.”

Answer 6

Long before Islam, there was Judaism, followed by Christianity,
(Jesus was a Jew, BTW). then, sometime before the year 500 A.D. came the birth of the prophet Mohammed, and Islam..

Answer 7

Judaism got here first. From it stemmed Christianity (they think of Christ is their Savior--Jews have faith they are nevertheless waiting for theirs). approximately 600 years after Jesus 'died', Islam became into formed, and their prophet is Mohammed, who authored the Quran and further approximately monotheism in the Arab international locations. "Allah" became into certainly worshiped as a god, yet so have been many others on the time. So a connection with Allah in the old testomony may well be completely logical. the three faiths are wide-unfold because of the fact the Abrahamic faiths, because of the fact all of them stem from an identical source, have very comparable teachings, and their holy books reference lots of an identical human beings (Abraham being one in each of them).

Answer 8

~What time frame and what region. There were dozens. There still remain several, including Judaism, Christianity (of numerous sects), Hindu, multiple variations of Islam and others. If you want me to do your homework for you, at least ask a sensible question with stated parameters.

Answer 9

Judaism, Christianity, various pagan religions.

Answer 10

Judaism