AHC: Wank Christianity

Yeah that's not going to work. Or else what? Short of a massive papal army that dethrones anyone who objects, there's not any enforcement method that really matters.



That's hardly an issue. ;)



I'd be cautious about such broad generalizations. Some Muslim dynasties were ruthless, others less so. A Christian dynasty in India is going to face unique challenges and if it gains too much mass appeal those challenges are going to come very much from inside the faith, I think.

True, the Pope cannot stop Christian kings with faith alone. Might brings power and that brings respect, if you lack that, then good luck keeping everyone in line in Europe.
 
I would hardly call the Mughal Empire tolerant. Other than Akbar, who himself killed many in his early years (although it could be argued that the incident was a "normal" massacre rather than religiously motivated one), they were not very tolerant at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Hindus#Mughal_Empire

The Mughals post-Akbar and except for Alamgir and his direct successors were quite tolerant. Bahadur Shah II, for instance, believed that Hinduism was a tolerable path to reaching God - a borderline heretical view.
 
I wonder why Islam "worked" in Persia and Indonesia but not India.

Iran was a process that took over 200 years after its initial conquest to have an Islamic narrative fully. The elimination of Persian independence movements and generals furthered this Islamization.

Indonesia, I am not sure about.

India was also a process but it was conquered over a very long period of around 800 years, as opposed to 10-20 years for Iran. The people further of India had faced massive invasion from the steppe by the White Huns and Saka, this iteration was simply the strongest. In accordance, Hinduism reacted in resistance to Islam and the invaders. In Iran, the dissidents were often defeated quickly by Caliphal armies, especially as Turkic warriors began to dominate more and more of the Abbasid military elite.
 
If he did that, the court Brahmins would likely reinterpret the Bible so as to absorb Christianity into the Hindu framework. I can see Jesus being an incarnation of Vishnu quite easily.


Not at all. Without the Nestorians, the chance of converting Persia to Christianity goes from low to impossible.

I can also see Jesus being part of the Roman or Norse canon. Yet Christianity still displaced them.
 
As others have mentioned, strangling Islam in the cradle nets you at least the Levant and North Africa, and could get you Persia as well. This probably also leads to the Christianization of parts of Central Asia going on into the future, although how effective that ultimately is is dependent on what sort of competitor (if any) is coming out of Persia.

China is a tougher nut to crack, and I don't think the Taiping suggestion will really cut it--I'm skeptical that the Taiping would manage to Christianize China completely in the long term, and if they did their beliefs would be so syncretic that it'd be hard to call them "Christian" in any real sense. I think an earlier POD might be better there.

During the Tang Dynasty there was a very notable period of, for lack of a better term, spiritual yearning in China, where people began to take interest in more spiritualist/mystical religions over traditional Chinese religion, which is very formalistic and not very "faithful" in the sense of not really emphasizing salvation and so forth like, say, Buddhism or the Abrahamic religions. It's during this period that Buddhism expanded considerably and Islam arrived in China--the former became very widespread after a few centuries, and the latter at least succeeded in carving out a small but devoted population inside China. You could probably have Christianity arrive more heavily during this period as well--it did in real life, but it never really caught on. If the lack of Islam leads to a Christianization of Central Asia by some sect or another, that Christian sect would be well-placed to expand into China.

Two things could then allow it to expand further. You could have the Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution overlook the Christians or hit the Buddhists much harder than the Christians, allowing Christianity to take over the gap left by Buddhism as a more mystical and evangelistic alternative to current beliefs, and then you could kill of Zhu Xi, preventing the creation of the Neoconfucianist school that would arise to counter the ascent of these evangelical religions with a more spiritual set of beliefs that are in line with Confucian orthodoxy. While this isn't going to get you a China that's majority Christian, it could give you one where Christianity is a significant portion of the population, and well-placed to convert most of China over the next many centuries
 
I can also see Jesus being part of the Roman or Norse canon. Yet Christianity still displaced them.

In the case of the Romans, it's because of centuries of buildup and gradual conversion, and in the case of the Norse, it's because their religion was persecuted. The scenario suggested was St. Thomas merely converting the monarch of some Indian kingdom. The elite nor the court Brahmins would not change their religion, and isolation from the rest of Christendom means religious evolution. In fact, to retain power, the court Brahmins would likely reinterpret the Bible to put it in a Hindu framework

If you want to convert India to mainstream Christianity, you need it to be connected directly to the rest of Christendom i.e. through Persia. And a conversion of Persia is terribly unlikely, as, if the Shahanshahs feared Christianity converting too many, the ancillary deities were purged and the holy texts were organized, making their faith more like Christianity, and thus stopping it in its track. That is what would happen in any scenario save for absurdities like Rome conquering Persia.
 
The Muslims were not as ruthless as say people like Olaf Tryggvason or the Northern Crusaders or Cortez five centuries later.

Muslims sent Sufi mystics first and the Mughal empire was extremely tolerent. There was a lot of Syncretism (Krishna as a Prophet, etc).

A narrow minded Christianity could be more like more like what Cortez did to the Aztecs (though not as extreme as what we saw due to relative power) and the cultural revolution we saw along the Baltic.
1) The muslims absolutely were more brutal and ruthless.They could not convert a majority of the populace because Hinduism is a much more resilient religion than Norse paganism or the Mesoamerican pantheons. The areas of the subcontinent that are majority muslim (Sindh; half of Bengal and Punjab) now used to be majority buddhist a millennia ago. Force and brutality has historically failed to break Hinduism, I see nothing a christian power could do differently.
2) No mainstream sunni or shia islamic sects (Hanafi, Twelver, etc) practice this sort of syncretism. Din-i-illahi was a brief experiment that never went beyond a court religion and other syncretic sects like the ahmadiyya are so small as to be irrelevant. The Abbasids were the first islamic power to reach India, through their conquest of the buddhist kingdom of Sindh. Where is this sufi-mystic claim coming from? For "tolerance" refer to post #23
3) Very briefly did Europeans have a slight military, primarily organisational, superiority over Indian powers. We are not the native americans, and never were.
 
I wonder why Islam "worked" in Persia and Indonesia but not India.

Persia was converted because it was under the direct rule of the Caliphate for two centuries, and even then, Zoroastrianism had quite a few adherents in Persia until relatively recently. If it wasn't for that extended period of Arab rule, Persia would likely be Zoroastrian.

Indonesia and Malaysia are really the special ones of the bunch. Essentially, Hinduism was associated with the Chola Empire, who had conquered much of the two countries and thus were seen negatively. When the Chola declined in power, Muslims rather than Hindus became the main religion of those that traded with Indonesia and Malaysia, and as a result of both of the above reasons, the two countries converted to Islam.
 
Indonesia and Malaysia are really the special ones of the bunch. Essentially, Hinduism was associated with the Chola Empire, who had conquered much of the two countries and thus were seen negatively. When the Chola declined in power, Muslims rather than Hindus became the main religion of those that traded with Indonesia and Malaysia, and as a result of both of the above reasons, the two countries converted to Islam.

As far as I can tell, the Srivijaya and Majapahit were Hindu-Buddhist, and their decline coincided with the establishment and rise of the sultanates. And in the Philippines itself, Islam came relatively late, and only penetrated farther than Mindanao with Sultan Bolkiah's invasion of Tondo around 1500.
 
The areas of the subcontinent that are majority muslim (Sindh; half of Bengal and Punjab) now used to be majority buddhist a millennia ago.

Sindh and half of Punjab was Buddhist? That's news to me. And wasn't the last Maharaja of Sindh a Hindu?

The centres of Indian Buddhism were Bengal and the Kashmir Valley. Both of them went Muslim, but in Bengal, it happened well after the Buddhist dynasty were overthrown by Hindus, and in Kashmir, Buddhism was heavily syncretized with Shaivite Hinduism, and there as well, Islam became the religion of the region well after Hindu dynasties became the rulers of the region.
 

longsword14

Banned
Sindh and half of Punjab was Buddhist? That's news to me. And wasn't the last Maharaja of Sindh a Hindu?

The centres of Indian Buddhism were Bengal and the Kashmir Valley. Both of them went Muslim, but in Bengal, it happened well after the Buddhist dynasty were overthrown by Hindus, and in Kashmir, Buddhism was heavily syncretized with Shaivite Hinduism, and there as well, Islam became the religion of the region well after Hindu dynasties became the rulers of the region.
Bakhtiar Khilji anyone?
 
Look, I'm sure many Chinese were hopeful about the Taipings, but how many do you really think believed he was the brother of God? Honestly you'd have to throw in a fascist historical-revisionist regime like that of Romania.
 
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