A cathedral is being built in the Arabian peninsula
There were Christians in the Arabian desert before the coming of Islam: they included bishops, saints and kings. These communities, however, did not long survive the victories of Islam, whose founder, according to a subsequent tradition, evicted all non-Muslims from the Arabian peninsula.
Work has now begun on a Catholic cathedral, dedicated to Our Lady of Arabia, in the Arab Gulf state of Bahrain. It is a historic development, but not totally new. In the past century Christians have returned to this region in great numbers, though as guest workers, not to stay. They were slow to be given civic and economic rights, but their right to worship is better recognised than in countries where Christians are indigenous, like Egypt and Iraq.
