In a recent article, we cited the strong reaction that Ieronymos, Archbishop of Athens and All Greece, had to Egypt’s now-rescinded court decision to turn St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai — a UNESCO World Heritage site—into a museum. At one point, he warned:
The Egyptian government has effectively chosen to dismantle every notion of justice and, with a single stroke, attempt to erase the very existence of the Monastery — abolishing its religious, spiritual, and cultural function.
Erase. That is the key word.
Erasure has long defined the Islamic approach to pre-Islamic civilizations. Historically — and as we’re witnessing now — Islam has not simply appropriated the lands of others; it has actively sought to erase the memory of those who came before.
What’s Going On
At this very moment, for instance, Muslim-majority Azerbaijan is systematically erasing the Christian heritage of Artsakh and other Armenian lands it recently seized through war. Churches are being demolished, crosses removed, cemeteries desecrated, and propaganda spread to claim these lands which have been Christian for nearly two millennia were always Turkic or even proto-Muslim. (I’ve discussed this is several Stream articles, see here, here, here, and here.)
This method of conquest and subsequent historical erasure is not incidental; it’s strategic. By rewriting the past, Islam legitimizes its place in the present. Thus, the idea that the Muslim world has always been Muslim persists widely.
Consider a revealing example: A 2023 report quotes a young Palestinian Christian lamenting:
In view of the economic hardships and political instability, the occupation and rising fundamentalism where we Christians face extreme difficulties and feel unwelcome, why not pack our bags and return to Europe?
Return to Europe? Does he not realize he already lives in Christianity’s birthplace? That his ancestors were Christian centuries before Islam existed? How can such foundational facts be lost on someone like him?
Joseph Hazboun, quoted in the same report, offers an explanation:
This is due to misinformation in the Palestinian curriculum, which cites that Palestinian history begins with the Arab conquest of Palestine, without any indication of the first seven centuries of Christianity in the Holy Land. Religious instruction in Christian schools and parishes focuses on faith-building rather than historical awareness, resulting in widespread ignorance of early Christian history in the region.
Canceling Christians
This erasure is not unique to Palestine. Across the Middle East, public education routinely downplays — or outright erases — Christian heritage while whitewashing Islam’s role. During a 2016 conference in Amman, Dr. Hena al-Kaldani said:
“There is a complete cancelation of Arab Christian history in the pre-Islamic era … many historical mistakes, and unjustifiable historic leaps in our Jordanian curriculum. Tenth-grade textbooks omit any mention of church history in the region.”
Where Christianity is mentioned, it’s often mischaracterized as a Western imposition or colonial relic. The goal is clear: make indigenous Christians feel alien, and make Muslims view them as intruders.
Kamal Mougheet, a retired Egyptian teacher, echoes this:
It sounds absurd, but Muslims more or less know nothing about Christians, even though they make up a large part of the population and are the original Egyptians … Egypt was Christian for six or seven centuries before the Muslim conquest around 640. The sad thing is that history books skip from Cleopatra [30 BC] to the Muslim conquest of Egypt [640 AD]. The Christian era was gone. Disappeared. An enormous black hole.
A 2023 report affirms this:
The [Egyptian] education program is devoid of any mention of other faiths or religions — no lessons on Egyptian Christian or Jewish historical figures, no mention of non-Muslim holidays, and nothing about Coptic history, despite the prominent role of the Coptic Church.
Even in the relatively tolerant 1940s and ’50s, my own parents, who are Coptic Christians from Egypt, recalled that schools ignored Hellenism, Christianity, and the Coptic Church. A thousand years of pre-Islamic history vanished from the curriculum. History began with the pharaohs and jumped straight to the seventh-century Arab “opening” of Egypt — never a “conquest,” always a euphemistic fath (opening).
Widespread Deception
This pattern holds across the region. Sharara Yousif Zara, a former official in Iraq’s Ministry of Education, said:
It’s the same situation in Iraq. There’s almost nothing about us [Christians] in our history books — and what little there is is completely inaccurate. Nothing about us predating Islam. The only Christians mentioned are Westerners. Many Iraqis believe we migrated here — that we’re guests.
This revisionism has had profound effects not just on Muslims, but on Christians themselves. I’m frequently asked, even in the West, why Christians would “choose” to live in the Middle East among Muslims who persecute them — completely overlooking the fact that these Christians are not recent arrivals, but the land’s original inhabitants.
The result: Indigenous Christians come to see themselves as foreigners and Muslims see them as alien interlopers.
The bitter irony? Many Muslims persecuting Christians today descended from Christians who converted centuries ago to escape persecution. Now, they persecute their Christian cousins — convinced by a fraudulent history that these Christians are colonial remnants.
And in this, the Muslim world is not alone. The West engages in the same distortion. While Islam rewrites history to elevate itself, the modern West rewrites history to weaken and undermine its own foundations. Both Islam and the secular progressive Left — strange bedfellows — demonize Christianity and distort its legacy.
One does so to dominate – and the other, oddly, to self-destruct.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West and Sword and Scimitar, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.