Alternate Islamic Schisms

Fractured religious structures are a hallmark of RoS.

  • Christianity is splitting into state-controlled churches each with their own flavors. Irish (paternalistic near-theocracy) Iberian (inching towards Adoptionism the more they try to mesh it with Islam), Roman (Similar to OTL's of the period but more open to ideas and less corrupt), Greek (as OTL) and lately, Afro-Iberian. Not to mention Nestorian (Syriac) communities far stronger east of the steppe-Turks, supported by Persia and influenced a bit more than OTL by Zoroastrianism.
  • Islam has an alt-sufrism heavily influenced by originalist hanifa wiritings, a somewhat anti-Turkish Persia is the last bastion of a Sunni Islam which was essentially clergy-less during ~40 years of near-iron control of the ME by the Qarmatians.
  • Buddhism is beginning to have a third way that is far more militant (the Shri Lanka type, writ large).
  • Even Judaism is in the process of making the leap into a more proselytizing-friendly religion with the arrival of European Jews in Khazaria and the total conversion of the Magyars so that Jews are actually a majority (barely!) with a society based on the Laws of Noah.
The point is you kind of need to do drastic things to the political structures of the places where Islam is practiced to schism it. In RoS the Umayads of Spain became extremely successful Christian monarchs and supported an alternate interpretation of Islam in Africa. Later, the Abassids themselves were conquered by messianic Ismailis who sought to end the position of Caliph and came down harder and harder on religion in general but reached a an agreement with Persia who took in many fleeing Sunnis and left India alone.
 
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