The Consequences of a World Without Islam?

Richter von Manthofen

I doubt that the Arabs will be as sucessful without Islam

Islam is an unifiing concept, without each city /tribe has its own (though) related faith and philosophy.

Even if the Arabs unite (probably much later) without Islam the unifying element for the other cultures disappears.

At "worst" Arab conquerors will for the ruling caste of different kingdoms and the "commoners" will keep their culture - as it happened so often in history.
 

LordKalvan

Snake Featherston said:
The world's history is extremely different and alien to our own, arguably no better, and in many ways arguably quite a bit worse.
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No doubt the world history will be very different ITTL. A priori there is no reason for it to be "better" than OTL, and there is no reason either for it to be "worse" (for any given value and any definition of "better" or "worse": it will be neither utopia or dystopia, just different)
 

Lysandros Aikiedes

twovultures said:
A POD that destroys Islam would greatly retard the advancement of science. The Muslim world created a forum for cultural exchange that stretched from China to the Maghreb, and allowed Islamic people to gain knowledge of mathematics (from India) chemistry (from Egypt) and printing (from China). They used and advanced this knowledge (for example, Algebra) and transmitted it to Europe. Europeans built on this knowledge and created modern science.

Without Islam, there is no single force that has the power to learn and synthesize such a wide range of knowledge, which means that such revolutionary inventions such as the printing press would be delayed for centuries. I don't think Christianity could do it, short of a single Christian sect teaming up with a military force to conquer the length of Eurasia without splitting into dozens of competing sects that declare the others heretics.
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I think it would be more accurate to credit "Arabic civilization", which had already absorbed Persian and Eastern Greek cultural influences which enabled it, then to credit Islam with the furtherance of scientific and technological advancement. Islam had nothing to do with the individual efforts of innovators like Avicenna and Abu Rayhan al-Biruni in their fields, just as Christianity had nothing to with the advances made by Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Galileo Galilei or Charles Darwin. Their native religions did not make these people better scientists. Nor would evolution of technology or the scientific process depend on any specific culture to help it thrive. As long as there is a need, it'll happen anyway.
 

willbell

twovultures said:
A POD that destroys Islam would greatly retard the advancement of science. The Muslim world created a forum for cultural exchange that stretched from China to the Maghreb, and allowed Islamic people to gain knowledge of mathematics (from India) chemistry (from Egypt) and printing (from China). They used and advanced this knowledge (for example, Algebra) and transmitted it to Europe. Europeans built on this knowledge and created modern science.

Without Islam, there is no single force that has the power to learn and synthesize such a wide range of knowledge, which means that such revolutionary inventions such as the printing press would be delayed for centuries. I don't think Christianity could do it, short of a single Christian sect teaming up with a military force to conquer the length of Eurasia without splitting into dozens of competing sects that declare the others heretics.
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Could Byzantium spread into the Sassanid land? Could a different Persian dynasty do the same thing?
 

The Ubbergeek

LordKalvan said:
No doubt the world history will be very different ITTL. A priori there is no reason for it to be "better" than OTL, and there is no reason either for it to be "worse" (for any given value and any definition of "better" or "worse": it will be neither utopia or dystopia, just different)
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Well, there is a tendency at times to paint the muslim legacy as 'bad'... So, maybe the good things brought by the caliphates and all are also butterflied away.
 

The Ubbergeek

metastasis_d said:
If Islam never happens, will that stay true? Will Buddhism travel down the islands? Will whatever replaces Islam?
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maybe missionaires from Sri Lanka or Indochina (Theravada for Thailand and Burma and Cambodia I think, Theravada, then mahayana in Vietnam - if I am right) to those lands (and places like Madlives?).
 

John Fredrick Parker

Donor
Advernt said:
Really? Is it inevitable that the Byzantines would loose the Levant and Egypt, i n a No Islam world? I file this under one of the irritating Pre 1900 Alternate History cliches.
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AIUI, it gets to religion -- Egypt had a huge population that Constantinople considered "heretical" (the Coptics being foremost among them). At some point, the province was going to cause trouble for "Rome" -- possibly with the help of Makuria and/or of Axum...
 

Elfwine

John Fredrick Parker said:
AIUI, it gets to religion -- Egypt had a huge population that Constantinople considered "heretical" (the Coptics being foremost among them). At some point, the province was going to cause trouble for "Rome" -- possibly with the help of Makuria and/or of Axum...
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But the Byzantines, at least as of the point it's lost, are wrestling with this in a way to find a mutually acceptable compromise, not persecuting the heretics.

Their efforts aren't succeeding, but I don't think this is going to be like say, the Netherlands Revolt.

Nor does trouble necessarily mean independence.
 

Hnau

Banned
I read a history book at one point that said that the Arabic tribes were in the process of unifying even before Muhammad came around, and there was something of a religious reformation going on in Mecca with Arabs trying to reconcile their polytheism with outside forces. That being said, I don't think that the Arabs will be able to unify as quickly and thoroughly without Islam, which established much more social equality and got rid of castes and rigid tribal structure. Arabic society might be less regimented, but not as much as in OTL, and as such it might not be dynamic enough to become the powerhouse that conquered all of North Africa, the Iberian peninsula, and other parts of the Middle East. I think expansion is a given, but it would be muted without Islam.

Christianity would make inroads into the Arabian peninsula for sure. It would take longer to spread than Islam, because its not tailored specifically for the Arabic culture, but it will spread. I think it's likely a majority of the population in the Middle East by today would be Christian, with perhaps a large minority following reformed Arabic polytheism. Heck, maybe Arabic polytheism would develop naturally into non-Abrahamic monotheism overtime, the idea of Allah as a mysterious superior god to all the others was already there. Seeing as how Hinduism has become more monotheistic overtime, I can only guess that Arabic polytheism would go that route even faster (especially with so much contact from Christians).
 
kasumigenx

kasumigenx

Flocculencio said:
Guys, the East Indies were Hindu-Buddhist for over a thousand years before Islam arrived.
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We have Nestorianism as well in South East Asia actually, it could get popular in South East Asia.

I think Ma-I will survive without Islam without a proselytizing and militaristic religion near them they will survive although backward and most probably isolated even if Manila rises as a popular trading hub.
 

twovultures

Lysandros Aikiedes said:
I think it would be more accurate to credit "Arabic civilization", which had already absorbed Persian and Eastern Greek cultural influences which enabled it, then to credit Islam with the furtherance of scientific and technological advancement. Islam had nothing to do with the individual efforts of innovators like Avicenna and Abu Rayhan al-Biruni in their fields, just as Christianity had nothing to with the advances made by Isaac Newton, Louis Pasteur, Galileo Galilei or Charles Darwin. Their native religions did not make these people better scientists. Nor would evolution of technology or the scientific process depend on any specific culture to help it thrive. As long as there is a need, it'll happen anyway.
Click to expand...


I disagree. As has been pointed out by other posters, Islam gave Arabs both the impetus to conquer far and wide while simultaneously keeping the socio-political unity to transfer innovations from the cultures they conquered to each-other. Without Islam, any Arab conquest has the disadvantage of political fracturing, lack of common language as they either adapt the languages of the people conquer or their dialects evolve in different directions without the need to learn standard Arabic to understand the Quran.

Science is a combination of thousands of little innovations built on the backs of previous innovations. Without some force to bring disparate innovations together, science stagnates even if there is a demand for the benefits these innovations can provide.
 

Elfwine

twovultures said:
I disagree. As has been pointed out by other posters, Islam gave Arabs both the impetus to conquer far and wide while simultaneously keeping the socio-political unity to transfer innovations from the cultures they conquered to each-other. Without Islam, any Arab conquest has the disadvantage of political fracturing, lack of common language as they either adapt the languages of the people conquer or their dialects evolve in different directions without the need to learn standard Arabic to understand the Quran.

Science is a combination of thousands of little innovations built on the backs of previous innovations. Without some force to bring disparate innovations together, science stagnates even if there is a demand for the benefits these innovations can provide.
Click to expand...

Would this necessarily preclude connections between (relative to the Arabian peninsula) East (Persia) and West (Rum*)?


* I need to learn how one writes the u with a squiggle over it.. Byzantium, by any other name, in any case.
 

Wendell

Miaphysite Christianity is slightly more popular, and might become the dominant faith tradition among Arabs.
 
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