Early Christianity in Asia and Africa

[abaris]

I don't know if that was necessarily the case in The Middle East. Although the modern, standardised borders were laid out by colonists, lots of the Middle Eastern nationalities have a existed for a long time and have strong historical identities.

No, they haven't. These are artificial constructs, merely using historical names. Not national identities. Since the peoples living there aren't the ones associated with that terminology. Iraq, just to give one example, is the sum of three former Ottoman provinces.