Slavic "Islam"

What if the ERE had to face a new, rapidly expanding power united by a newborn religion on its northern border instead of in the East in the 7th century? And what qualities would a successful Slavic "prophet" possess in your opinion?
 
I believe the concept of giving the Slavs a local organized religion has been discussed recently. Of course, that thread dealt more with Not!Neoplatonism, but I think the arguments stated there apply here anyway.

Slavs were disorganized and on a considerably lower footing than the Arabs, their paganism, while notoriously inclusive, had few contacts with foreign faiths in the 7th century, and it was, much like the Baltic and Finnic equivalents, less of an actual religion and more of a loose collection of beliefs and concepts of worship, thus they had basically no experience with organized religion. They had no writing system, either, so you can forget the creation of any religious texts (which, while not mandatory for an organized religion, are extremely useful in preserving and spreading your faith, which is why most of current OTL religions have them).

The Slavs also, unlike the Arabs, did not have pre-existing states or proto-states (the first Slavic countries arose well after their migration slowed down) which could serve as a point of origin or base of operations for any Slavic "Islam".

And even if an organized stable (presumably) monotheistic religion arose in some Slavic tribe in the 7th century, a Slavic "Caliphate" would be much, much, much weaker and less of a threat to Byzantium and anyone else around (Avars?) than the Arabs were. The Arabian Peninsula had rich cities, trade routes to the rest of the world and technology not far from what was best at the time, all three of which the Slavic homeland, wherever it was, sorely lacked. The only thing really distinguishing it from all the other semi-nomadic peoples running around Central and Eastern Europe at the time, at least in the eyes of the Byzantines, was that they would have a funny faith that sounds similar to Christianity.
 
The situation in eastern Europe at this point probably have to be stressed.

Slavic entities in the VIIIth were definitely on the beggining of their social and political build-up : at best, we're talking ensemble of chiefdoms as Antes that were deeply marked by the Late Antique Sarmatian-Germanic influence, and generally included in Pontic entities as Bulgars or Khazars.
This is not the kind of background that really fit the development of a "united newborn religion" or a "rapidly expending power".

Again, the particularities of pre-Islamic Arabia must be pointed out : we're talking of a region that, far from being isolated, was one of the cornerstone of European-Asian trade, particularily open to outer influences and political meddling (namely from Sassanians and Romans). Islam as a religion didn't just appeared because a random prophet happened to pop up, but because the various Judeo-Christian influences in Arabia were important and dynamics.
Such things didn't existed in Russia yet, which wasn't a main trade road at this point (would it be Itil/Volga or Dniepr), and whom societies barely began to really form early states (on the form of chiefdoms, see there for an explanation) and was fairly isolated from a direct contact with the heart of civilization.

For what mattered Romans, the only "rapidly expanding powers" North were the usual semi-nomadic confederacies, such as Kurtigurs, Avars, Khazars, Bulgars whom super-complex chiefdoms/confederacies tended to last as geopolitical threats. Slavic expansion, on a geopolitical matter, tended to be a by-product as they were part of the aformentioned confederations.

It's worth noting that Early Slavs, at least in Balkans, formed a relatively cohesive but ill-definied ensemble : it took a significant longer time for Slavs to build formative states, comparately to Barbarians in the Vth century, and they tended to be rather sattelized than sattelizing. Rus' federations (khaganate or Kievan) while still quite unstable (as it would be obvious later) asked for a significant structuration of ties (commercial and political) with Romania.

EDIT : plus what @Augenis said, obviously
 
What if the ERE had to face a new, rapidly expanding power united by a newborn religion on its northern border instead of in the East in the 7th century?

Probably the Empire would fare considerably better than IOTL. Constantinople's Balkan provinces were nowhere near as rich or economically important as its African and Middle Eastern ones, so losing the Balkans (assuming they do) would be a much less severe blow than losing the whole of Syria, Egypt and North Africa was.
 
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