What if Mohammed had never existed?

As we all know, Mohammed is considered one of the most influential people of all time, not only being the founder of Islam, but also an able politician. Yet, what would happen if Mohammed had never come along? What religion would the Arabs have?

Could they have beaten back the Crusades without Islam to unite the Arabs? Would the Arabs still have fundamentalist regimes? What would be the size of Israel? Would the Arabs still hate them?

What's your take?
 
HueyLong said:
No Islam equals no Crusades. Jerusalem would have remaiend in Christian hands.....

I can see a form of Crusade taking place, after all Christians are good at fighting each other......
 
The non-existence of Islam will surely butterfly away Israel, Arab nationalism, and the Crusades.

I think the Arabs would have their own "volkswandring," but there won't be one Arab Empire established. Probably lots of local invasions leading to Arab regimes that will assimilate in time.

Nestorian and Monophysite Christianity have a much better chance in TTL.
 
Bmao said:
Could they have beaten back the Crusades without Islam to unite the Arabs? Would the Arabs still have fundamentalist regimes? What would be the size of Israel? Would the Arabs still hate them?

Without Islam, all these questions become irrelevant.

The Arabs would probably be Christian. Presuming their "explosion" from the Arabian Peninsula was caused by more than religion (so it would still take place), they would concentrate on Persia and the east, possibly taking all of India and Central Asia. Ties with Christian Ethiopia might be strong, or the Arabs might become mortal enemies of the heretic kingdom and bring it down.

But all that is just presuming they don't stay where they are. An ethnic invasion of the rest of the Middle East by Bedouins is probably inevitable (if it hadn't started even before Muhammad), but political conquest is another matter entirely.
 
TyrannusZero said:
I can see a form of Crusade taking place, after all Christians are good at fighting each other......

With a POD in the 6th century!? Yeah right!

They don't have to go all the way to the eastern Mediterranean to fight each other. They can do it at home.
 
chunkeymonkey13q said:
What about Zoroastrian Arabs?

I don't think Zoroastrianism caught on that well even among the Persians. There were Christian and Judaic Arab tribes at the time, but I haven't heard of any Zoroastrian one.
 
VoCSe said:
With a POD in the 6th century!? Yeah right!

They don't have to go all the way to the eastern Mediterranean to fight each other. They can do it at home.

Yeah right to you too buddy. I said a form, I never said the kind that happened in OTL. :rolleyes:

Then again, you glossed over in your rush to discredit me to realize that what happens if Jerusalem is considered to be in the hands of the "heretic", I can see whatever forms of "Orthodox" Christianity trying to take it back from the "heretical" sects. So in a sense, the kind of Crusade we know of could take place, if the right circumstances were to happen.
 
No Mohammed means no Islam and none of the influence Islam has in our world today or that it has had throughout history since Islam was founded.

Some of the Arabs would still follow the religion or religions they followed before Islam. Some would have become Jewish, some would have become Christian. We might have had some Jewish sects and Christian denominations that we didn't have in OTL. Question is of how influential they might have become.

Without Islam, Judaism might have become more influential in The Middle East than in OTL. There might still have been The Cruisades this time the Christians against the Jews.

How big or how influential the state of Israel would be in TTL is a good question. I think it depends of a number of factors.
 
TyrannusZero said:
Then again, you glossed over in your rush to discredit me to realize that yadda, yadda, yadda...

"Discredit"!? Me!?

Sir, I find your accusation of calumny to be calumny in itself. My wounded honour demands that I do not allow this to pass. We must settle this like men. Swords or pistols?

Now seriously, no Islam means stronger Byzantines, so Constantinople might very well replace Rome as the spiritual capital of even western Christians.
 
Some Popes liked having enemies- hence Crusades.

In some places Islam provided a kind or refuge for Jews from Christian persecution.

Might it be very hard for Jews to survive as well as they did in OTL?
 
The turks or Sassanid Empire could still invade and take the Holy Land. And like most of you said, even if some christian rule over Jerusalem, some other christian could find them heretic and thus they have to invent the crusade.
 
The Arabs would likely gradually go Christian. After that, the window for anything like Islam to arise, would be shut.

There would likeliest be no mass Arab explosion across the world. Perhaps leakage of bedouin into settled lands, like there had been for long before down the ages.

Morocco and Algeria would be Berber-speaking unless overridden by Punic or Latin.

The Middle East would mostly be Aramaic-speaking and Egypt would be Coptic-speaking, unless overridden by Greek.
 
We forget a bit the east side of things there... Islam changed Asia very much...

Would the decline in Buddhism in India be slower and calmer?

Would there be a survival, even extension of it in Central Asia and westward?

No Sikh, no Bahia, of course.

The Malays may end up majorly Hinduists or perhaps Buddhists?

The Uyghurs more sinified?
 
Let me think about the immediate consequences:

Spain would become a base for the Visigoths for some time, and probably be attacked by the Byzantines if they could tighten their grip on North Africa, and most probably by the Franks who were catholic (as opposed to Visigoth Arian Christianity).

North Africa would be a Byzantine province, as before.

Byzantines would stay. Due to its relative modernity in comparison with the other European Kingdoms and without the permanent threat of a great Jihad on its southern borders, they could well survive and become the predominant Christian power.

The Persians would stay Zoroastrians. If they would stay it in the long run depends as well on their success against the Byzantines.

Arabs would become either Christians or Jews, and probably develop a special sort of those religions which would be very similar to Islam (say what you want, but Islam is a product of Arab pre-Islamic culture, and they wouldn't suddenly become wholly different people just by adopting another religion). In fact, I fail to see many differences if they would take the Old Testament in literal sense as many are taking the Quran.
On the other hand, they could fall under the Byzantine and Persian sphere of influence and adopt their cultural traits.

The crusades are another thing. It is quite en vogue to describe it as an act of purely Western agression, but one should not forget that they were predated by a long period of Arab conquest and, finally, the taking of Jerusalem from the Greeks, who might have been Orthodox, but were still Christian. However, a special sort of Crusade, directed against Orthodoxy, could evolve, but this should involve a serious deterioration between the two faiths.

About Asia, ask someone who is more competent than me. Which is not that hard.
 
Without the unifying power of Islam, I doubt an Arab "expansion" made up of disunited groups will amount to much- they probably won't even pass the Ghassanids and whatever Persia's Arab puppet state was.
 
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