The decline and the geographical changes in the spatial distribution of the local Christian community between the Byzantine and the Frankish periods reflect also the process of Islamization of this community. This process is usually described as continuous and irreversible adaptations of the basic structures of the non-Muslim societies to conform with the cultural, ethnic, and economic changes which occurred in the Levant after the Arab-Muslim conquest. The process of Islamization can be described as a process of “longue durée” accelerated momentarily by political and social events.

Most of the scholars who dealt with the causes for the Islamization of “the Dhimmi” during the early Muslim period tended to ascribe it to the social and economic difficulties suffered by the Christian and Jewish communities. These scholars point to the high rate of special taxation, the direct assaults of Muslim mobs, the occupation restrictions, the general feeling of helplessness, and other economic and social causes as possible incentives for mass Islamization. Most of the scholars agree that until the beginning of the eleventh century there were not many cases of Islamization by coercion, as this was forbidden by Muslim religious law.

Most scholars agree also that the direct and indirect motives, which brought Christians and Jews to convert to Islam during the early Muslim period, did not disappear and were even stronger during the later periods, when direct discrimination and deliberate persecution on the part of the Mamluk and Turkish rulers were added to the incentives for Islamization.