Assyria... The ancient Mesopotamia.

[dpr112yme]

The middle East... Ancient Mesopotamia where Babylon, Lebanon, and many other places had been. The pagan world to Israel just as San Francisco once was to the Bible Belt. Today, with the combining of love, righteousness, God, justice, mercy and the likes, we are becoming a world mixing pot where there are no more boundaries to distinguish between cultures and history. Each person is becoming a migrant on the Earth with each Country being home to all.

 

[September]

I wonder how many people in this world (in particular, "pagans") incorporate ancient Mesopotamian gods and goddesses into their pantheons. Tiamat, Marduk, Ishtar, Ereshkigal, and others are all important deities in my own pantheon, which combines ancient Mesopotamian spiritual-religious systems with ancient and modern Abrahamic spiritual-religious systems... among other things.

 

[dpr112yme]

the reason I say that the middle east is pagan country to Israel is because Israel is surrounded by many who do not accept the God of Israel the way Israel does, making those 'foreign' to Israel.

 

[dpr112yme]

could the definition of pagan be outsider? Or someone else's? Just like other faiths see Christianity as pagan to their faith?

 

[aris2chat]

the reason I say that the middle east is pagan country to Israel is because Israel is surrounded by many who do not accept the God of Israel the way Israel does, making those 'foreign' to Israel.

Muslims believe they do have the same god. Jews got their their book first, Muslims last but final revelations from god. They all share and supplement each other.

The "hate" many jews and muslims have for each other came in the last century. There have been periods in differing art of the muslims world that have been in conflict with other faiths, usually for local reasons.
Most conflict with jews have come from christians and most conflict with christians has come from muslims. Jews usually coexisted with muslims relatively well throughout the muslim world. Muslims also fully accepted the mount was the original site of the temples and allowed both jews and christians to pray there.
Muslims used to built mosques on the roofs of simple christian churches rather than pray inside or making claims of the sites. When churches ans synogoges were destroyed or damaged, muslims often paid for repairs out of their own pockets. Now there are muslims that would just as soon wipe christians and jews off the face of the earth.

How religion changes over time

All faiths borrow from those around them, always has.