The Pope's visit to the UAE today is the first step in undoing the damage caused by his predecessor

Today, nearly all of the UAE’s one million Christians are expatriates. But Christianity is not new to the country or the Arabian Peninsula

Pope Francis’s visit comes appropriately enough at the start of the UAE’s Year of Tolerance

This week’s visit by Pope Francis to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will be his first to the Arabian Peninsula and the first of its kind to the Islamic World. While the pope has previously travelled to Muslim-majority countries, this will be the first time the head of the Catholic Church will conduct what is expected to be the largest ever open-air mass in what Muslims consider to be the most religiously significant part of the Islamic world. This in a country that, like neighboring Saudi Arabia, is governed by Sharia law. The timing of the visit coincides with a period of history where radical Islamist groups have stepped up their attacks on Christians, killing them or forcing them to flee.

Today, nearly all of the UAE’s one million Christians are expatriates. But Christianity is not new to the country or the Arabian Peninsula.

Christians were present in the Hejaz, the western region of modern-day Saudi Arabia, at the time of the Prophet Mohammed. Then, a quarter of a century ago, archaeologists discovered a 1,400-year-old monastery on the island of Sir Bani Yas, which is part of present-day Abu Dhabi. Scholars believe the monastery was built around 600BC by monks linked to the Church of the East, which originated in neighboring Iraq. Evidence suggests that Christians remained at this site well into the Islamic period under the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750BC). During this period, the Umayyads allowed Christians to construct and maintain churches. The Umayyad caliphs were also known to take Christian wives.

The number of Christians living in the Middle East has rapidly fallen in the past century, from 14 per cent of the population in 1910 to just 4 per cent today. And given the recent bloodsoaked history, it’s easy to see why. Extremists have repeatedly targetted Egyptian Copts, killing 70 in one 2017 attack. Somalia’s al-Shabab views Christians as crusader spies and regularly executes them. But militant attacks are not the only reason for this decline. Forced expulsions, such as the 1915 Ottoman massacre of the Armenians, and institutional discrimination – until 2016, Egyptian Copts could not construct new churches without presidential approval – have also contributed to the Christian exodus.

In the Gulf states, where Christian populations are smaller, an imperfect situation is showing signs of improving.

Christians now constitute an estimated 12.6 per cent of the UAE’s population, and this figure is rising with every new wave of emigrants from the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and elsewhere. Christians in the UAE openly celebrate Christmas and Easter. The ruling family has donated land for church construction, and in the past 12 years, the number of Emirati Christian churches has doubled to 40 – the largest number in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).

In neighboring Bahrain in 1905, the ruling family allowed American missionaries to construct a church. Today, the tiny island nation has small indigenous Christian and Jewish populations who worship openly in churches and synagogues. Bahrain’s elected shura council has one Christian (and one Jewish) representative, and in 2008, Bahrain became the first Arab and Muslim-majority country to appoint a Jewish ambassador (to represent the kingdom in the United States).

In 1969, Kuwait formally established diplomatic ties with the Vatican, making it the first country to do so. Nearly 300 Kuwaitis practice Christianity under Emanuel Ghareeb, the GCC’s first indigenous pastor.

Even in Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina, there are small signs of change. Roughly 1.4 million people in Saudi Arabia – virtually all of whom are expats – are Christian. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has met with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who leads the Church of England, as well as with the patriarch of Lebanon’s Maronite Church and the pope of Egyptian’s Coptic Church.

During their meeting, the archbishop asked the crown prince if the kingdom would lift its ban on the free practice of Christianity and allow worshippers to build churches.

Although the answer was no, Christians in Saudi Arabia do practice their religion in private. They have not been specifically targeted since the government decided to rein in the Mutawa’een, the religious police responsible for enforcing Islamic laws who used to break up masses being held even in private. But the kingdom still does not permit any other faith to build a house of worship, believing that to lift this restriction would cause outrage among the conservative majority, what with reactionary clerics pointing to certain Islamic hadith that prohibit the establishment of any competing religion in the Arabian Peninsula.

Throughout the GCC, it is still almost impossible for non-Muslims to earn citizenship, and, in many parts of the world, Muslim converts to Christianity still risk being executed or killed as apostates.

That being said, Pope Francis’s visit, which comes appropriately enough at the start of the UAE’s Year of Tolerance, is a significant step for both sides. Pope Francis is keen to protect the region’s Christian population, but he is also keen to undo the damage caused by his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who not only equated Islam with violence but also quoted from a medieval text declaring Prophet Muhammad “evil and inhuman.”

While no major policy breakthrough is expected, this is an important reset. That the pope has made a decision to promote understanding between the Vatican, the Gulf, and the Islamic world can only marginalise those who promote religious extremism. And while Christians may be under siege in much of the Middle East, Christianity still has a place in the birthplace of Islam.

Najah Alotaibi is a senior analyst at the Arabia Foundation