For being well into the 21st century, there is still an enormous amount of ignorance, which is paradoxical if we consider how advanced the circulation of information has become today. We live in an era of almost perfect globalization: what happens in China is known in the Middle East, in Europe, and in the Americas virtually at the same instant. News crosses continents in seconds, debates go viral in minutes, and access to knowledge has never been broader.
And yet, prejudices as basic as they are dangerous persist.
To get straight to the point: there are Arab Christians and European Muslims. So why do we continue to confuse religion with ethnic origin or nationality? Why, for so many people, does “Arab” remain an automatic synonym for “Muslim”?
I have often heard phrases such as, “Oh, he’s Arab, so he must be Muslim.” This statement, as common as it is incorrect, reveals an extreme oversimplification of deeply diverse cultural, historical, and religious realities.
The Arab world, for example, has been home to Christian communities for two thousand years. In countries such as Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, or Jordan, there are ancient churches that predate even many modern European states. Arab Christians are not a recent exception: they are a foundational part of the history of Christianity—they are its ORIGIN.
It is worth remembering that Christianity did not originate in Europe. It was born in a very specific place in the Middle East: Palestine.
Jesus, his apostles, and the first disciples were Semites; they spoke Aramaic and lived under Roman occupation. The expansion of Christianity initially took place in Asia and the eastern Mediterranean, not in the West.
Saint Paul, a key figure in that expansion, traveled to cities such as Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Philippi, Thessalonica, and Rome. It was these urban centers of the Greco-Roman world that allowed the Christian message to gradually spread toward Europe.
In other words, Europe was not the cradle of Christianity, but rather “evangelized territory.”
In fact, for centuries the Roman Empire persecuted Christians before finally adopting the religion in the 4th century. It was Rome’s imperial structure—with its roads and ports—that facilitated the spread of Christianity across the European continent.
That is why it is striking that today, from certain sectors of Europe or America, the Middle East is viewed as if it were foreign or incompatible with Christianity, when in reality it was its place of origin.
Likewise, Islam is not an exclusively Arab religion. It is a global faith. Indonesia is the country with the largest Muslim population in the world, and it is not Arab. There are millions of Muslims in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Russia, China, the Balkans, and Latin America. Being Muslim does not define a language or a nationality.
Islamophobia arises precisely from this ignorance: from reducing complex human beings to simple stereotypes, from associating a religion with violence, backwardness, or fanaticism, while ignoring that more than one and a half billion Muslims live their faith in ways as diverse as Christians or Jews in any other tradition.
Europe often proudly recalls its role in the evangelization of the Americas. But it is rarely mentioned that Europe itself was evangelized, and that this faith arrived from lands that are today mostly Muslim or Arab.
History is far more intertwined than simplistic narratives allow us to see.
That is why today, more than ever, there is something urgent on this planet: to recognize the humanity of others, to understand history, and to accept that the world does not fit into quick labels.
In times of instant information, ignorance is no longer an excuse. It is a choice.
