Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region remains one of the most complex and volatile areas globally. Although some positive developments were observed during the two-year reporting period, they were largely overshadowed by troubling trends and by the conflict between Israel and Hamas, which triggered unprecedented levels of violence and broader regional destabilisation.
Several major trends can be identified that, naturally, do not apply to all countries in the MENA region and the adjacent Muslim-majority States Türkiye, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Government gestures toward religious minorities
While comprehensive religious liberty is nowhere to be found in Muslim-majority States, some have shown greater inclination to recognise that religious pluralism is still a necessary part of the social mosaic. Islamic monarchies such as Jordan and Morocco, in particular, have a long-standing tradition of interreligious dialogue and repeatedly call for religious moderation.
For several years now, other Islamic-majority States in the region have joined them by pursuing tolerant religious policies. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), in particular, have continued to show tolerance towards Jews and Christians. An example is the inauguration of the Abrahamic Family House in Abu Dhabi in 2023. This multireligious centre encompasses a church, a synagogue and a mosque. In April 2023, the Jewish community of the UAE was able to celebrate Passover.[1] And in February 2024, India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, inaugurated Abu Dhabi’s first Hindu temple.[2]
Morocco also took steps towards the Jewish community. In November 2022, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Marrakesh inaugurated the first campus synagogue in the Arab world. It was built alongside a new campus mosque, with the two structures sharing a wall as a symbol of religious unity.[3] However, there were no Jewish students enrolled in the university when the synagogue was opened, and by July 2025 there had still been none. A few months after the inauguration, Israel recognised Morocco’s annexation of the Western Sahara. The first Trump administration had recognised the annexation in 2020 as part of facilitating talks about Morocco normalising relations with Israel.[4]
In February 2023, Oman and the Holy See established full diplomatic relations.[5] In Bahrain the King donated a plot of land to the Orthodox Church and paid a return visit to Pope Francis after the latter’s journey to the country.[6]
These steps are undoubtedly positive since they begin to reduce deep-seated reservations about non-Muslims. However, they are usually associated with political intentions with the respective States wanting to present themselves abroad as tolerant, while at the same time they often act in a repressive manner domestically and do not grant comprehensive religious freedom.
Political Islam
A survey by Arab Barometer in 2023 showed that in most countries, citizens both young and old had a clear preference for giving religion a greater role in politics.[7]
This is reflected in voting patterns. The political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood achieved major success in the parliamentary elections in Jordan in September 2024. With 31 out of 138 seats, the Islamist party became the biggest faction in Parliament and achieved its best result in 35 years. Jordanian authorities banned the Muslim Brotherhood in April 2025, accusing it of planning acts of violence. The political arm was allowed to continue, but its offices were searched.[8]
Much more significant, both domestically and in terms of international ramifications, was the seizure of power in Syria by the Islamist militia Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) at the end of 2024. At the beginning of 2025, the HTS leader Ahmed al-Sharaa was named President for the “transitional period”. He succeeded long-time President Bashar al-Assad, who was overthrown by a lightning rebel offensive which ended decades of Alawite minority rule. President al-Sharaa is the founder of the al-Qaeda offshoot al-Nusrah,[9] which has been responsible for dozens of attacks on civilians involving the massacre of Christians[10] and Druze. Notwithstanding more recent comments favouring religious freedom, in a 2014 interview, al-Sharaa (formerly al-Julani) is also on record stating stated that his aim was to see Syria governed by Islamic law, and that there was no place for the Alawite, Shia, Druze and Christian minorities in the country[11].
It is still unclear what effect HTS’s seizure of power will have in Syria on religious freedom. Some Western States view the new rulers as legitimate contacts, although the UK government says that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham is “an alternative name for al-Nusrah”, and lists HTS as part of al-Qaeda and therefore a proscribed terrorist organisation.[12] The UN Security Council also lists HTS as an al-Qaeda offshoot and a terrorist organisation.[13] Nevertheless, Interim President Sharaa was received in Paris by President Emmanuel Macron at the beginning of May 2025. US President Donald Trump met him in May in Saudi Arabia, and in July 2025, the US removed HTS from its list of terrorist organisations.[14]
Presidents Macron and Trump did both call for inclusive policies towards minorities in Syria, and the inclusion of one Christian and one Druze member in the transitional government is a positive sign. The government assured Christian leaders that minority rights would be respected. However, in July 2025, Christian leaders said that they could not trust President al-Sharaa to protect either them or the Druze,[15] and the HTS remains ideologically aligned with hardline Islamism.
In this context, the massacre of hundreds of members of the Alawite community in March 2025 is deeply disturbing. Christians were affected too.[16] At the end of April, there were also clashes between members of the Druze minority and pro-government troops which left nearly a hundred people dead.[17]
Given Syria’s Sunni majority, it cannot be assumed that a secular government will be formed after the five-year transition period. There are certainly no signs of this so far. On the contrary, the changes made in the interim constitution indicate a greater Islamisation of political and public life. They include a March 2025 declaration that the President must be a Muslim and that Islamic jurisprudence is the principal source of legislation.[18]
Islamisation
Islamisation of public life, which aims to secure the approval of the population and increase the legitimacy of political actors, is a growing trend in several parts of the region. In Libya the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity (GNU) is internationally recognised although it controls only about one-third of the country’s North and none of the South. In November 2024, its Interior Minister announced that he planned to reactivate the “morality” police. He added that women would not be allowed to leave the house without wearing the Islamic veil nor travel alone without a male guardian.[19]
That same month, the Iraqi Parliament extended a ban of alcohol to hotels and social clubs, moving the country closer to total prohibition.[20] The Kurdish-controlled North of the country, however, which is home to many Yazidis and has a large Christian population in its capital Erbil, has largely ignored the ban.[21] Selling alcohol is of major economic importance to minorities like Christians and Yazidis.
The same trend of Islamisation can be seen in Türkiye where in 2024, the fourth-century Church of St Saviour in Chora was officially inaugurated as a mosque. The country’s ÇEDES project ran into strong opposition[22] when imams were appointed as “spiritual counsellors” in schools. The General Secretary of the teachers’ union described the move as reactionary and said that teachers would not bring children to the sessions the government was planning.[23]
Islamist terrorism reemerges
Jihadist terrorism in the region has not reached the level that it assumed in 2014 with the territorial expansion of ISIS. However, in January 2025, the Institute for the Study of War said that ISIS was re-emerging in Syria where recent shifts in international counterterrorism strategy created security vacuums that it could exploit.[24] They have enabled its slow reconstitution in [25]the centre of the country.
Jihadism has also spread to new places. In July 2024, six people, including a policeman, were killed and 28 others injured in an unprecedented shooting at a Shi‘a mosque in Oman’s capital, Muscat. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for an attack for the first time in the country’s history.[26]
In Pakistan, the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) is among many terrorist groups which are destabilising the country.[27] It frequently targets civilians and religious minorities, particularly Shi‘a Muslims and rival Sunni factions such as the Taliban. As the Taliban intensified its crackdown on ISKP in Afghanistan, many fighters relocated to Pakistan, where they have been building networks in both urban and rural areas. This has led to a sharp rise in violence, marked by increasingly sophisticated attacks on religious minorities.[28] The same goes for Afghanistan itself where religious freedom has completely disappeared since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021. As well as heavily discriminating against religious minorities like Sufi and Shi‘a Muslims, the de facto rulers fail to protect them against ISKP.
Conflict in the Holy Land
The Israel-Hamas conflict has caused unprecedented levels of violence. The terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas on 7 October 2023 resulted in the largest massacre of Jews since the Second World War. Israel’s military response has rendered large parts of the Gaza Strip uninhabitable; the death toll as of July 2025 is more than 60,000[29] lives with even more injured or starving. Israel has set a deadly precedent in killing more than 400 humanitarian aid workers and 1,300 medical workers,[30] disregarding the Geneva Conventions of which it is a signatory. Gaza’s mosques and church buildings have been heavily affected. Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court accuse both sides of war crimes.[31]
In Israel, the rift between the Jewish and Arab populations has deepened as a result of the war. The far-right coalition led by Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu has exacerbated division along ethnic and religious lines. The government’s National Security Minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has added fuel to the fire by demonstratively visiting the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The result has been clashes between Muslims and Israeli security forces. Meanwhile, the President of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, during a speech to the United Nations in New York, denied that the Jewish Temple was ever even in Jerusalem.[32]
Christians in Israel, in turn, have suffered an unprecedented level of violence and contempt as fanatical Jews have targeted both Christian institutions and leaders. The impact of the war on religious tourism has added to the economic weakening of Christians in the Holy Land.
The Israel-Hamas conflict has triggered a wave of antisemitism in the region. In October 2023, an Egyptian police officer shot dead two Israeli tourists in Alexandria; and jihadism, which has taken up the cause of Palestinians against Israel, is gaining momentum.
The rapprochement between Arab States such as Saudi Arabia and Israel has been, at least temporarily, halted by the war in Gaza. The conflict between Iran and Israel has also intensified, with direct confrontation between the two States.
Geopolitical trends shift to the disadvantage of Shi‘a powers
The balance of power in the region has shifted to the disadvantage of Shi‘a Islam. This is particularly evident in Syria with the rise to power of the Islamist Sunni HTS and the overthrow of President Assad, a member of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi‘a Islam. In both Syria and neighbouring Lebanon, the Shi‘a militia Hezbollah was severely weakened by Israel’s military strikes, and it was beheaded by the killing of its charismatic leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut. In Iraq powerful Iranian-backed militia groups announced they would consider disarming for the first time to avert escalating conflict with the Trump administration.[33] The change of leadership in Syria and the weakening of Hezbollah in Lebanon have in turn severely limited Shi‘a Iran’s regional influence. The regime there responded by increasing repression at home; in addition to women who refuse to wear the mandatory headscarf, victims include religious minorities such as Sunnis, Bahá’ís and Christian converts from Islam. In the last decade the number of Christians in Iran has more than doubled,[34] bucking the trend in the MENA region and reaching more than a million.[35]
Socio-economic living conditions worsen
According to the World Food Programme, the MENA region has experienced “an unprecedented level of crises, with millions caught in the grip of relentless conflict, political turmoil, staggering refugee crises and a deepening economic downturn.”[36] The countries of the Maghreb have taken an increasingly hard line towards sub-Saharan migrants attempting to reach Europe, with Tunisia making more than 10,000 homeless by burning down their makeshift settlements.[37] High food prices have added to the pressure, with inflation soaring in several countries of the region—passing 250 percent in Gaza at the end of 2024[38] and 79 percent in Syria. One sign of economic hope, however, has been the lifting of US sanctions on Syria by President Trump in May 2025.[39] The UK and the European Union have likewise eased or lifted sanctions imposed on the country, as local Churches have for years been calling them to do.[40]
Despite optimistic projections, Iraq has been struggling with falling oil prices. In May 2025, the International Monetary Fund warned that these were taking their toll on the Iraqi economy, exacerbating the country’s vulnerabilities.[41] Falling prices have been compounded by attacks on oilfields in the Kurdish North of the country by what the regional Prime Minister has called “criminal militias on the Iraqi government payroll”, which have taken out 70 percent of the region’s oil production.[42] Since the Iraqi state budget depends heavily on oil revenue, all this adds to an already fragile economy and could have severe social and political repercussions including accelerating the ongoing exodus of Christians and other religious minorities from the country.
Conclusion
The MENA region has proved once more to be a highly unstable region politically, economically and in terms of security. There has been more than a twofold increase in conflict episodes and a sixfold increase in MENA’s share of global fatalities since the 1990s.[43] This is especially due to the escalation of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Socio-economic conditions show little to no signs of improving—indeed these have worsened, leaving religious minorities vulnerable. One encouraging sign during the period was the election of General Joseph Aoun as President of Lebanon in January 2025—ending more than two years of vacancy—which marked a positive step toward restoring institutional stability.[44]
There have been a few encouraging developments with regard to religious freedom such as the proposed personal status law for Christians in Egypt.[45] The inauguration of the Abrahamic Family House in Abu Dhabi, a fruit of the vision of Pope Francis, has also highlighted that religious freedom is possible in a stable Islamic country and is inherent in the shared values of the Abrahamic religions: the belief in the right to life and the right of parents to instil moral values in their children, the complementarity of the sexes and the desire to safeguard sacred buildings and honour religious leaders. However, the region in general is not taking substantial steps towards comprehensive religious freedom for all of its inhabitants.
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[2] Rhea Mogul, India’s Modi inaugurates Abu Dhabi’s first Hindu temple, CNN, 14th February 2024, https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/14/india/india-modi-uae-hindu-temple-intl-hnk/index.html, (accessed 6th December 2024).
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