Was Europe ever at risk of fully coming under Islamic control?

Oh Yes,

Europe was vulnerable multiple times in OTL, from 600 - 1750 CE, simply from the existing Islamic forces

Most of the Obvious PODs have been mentioned already
  • Anatolia & Byzantium in the 630s
  • Hispana & Septimamia 711 (and effectively threatening to finish Christianity through to 1300)
  • Ummayid raids into what is now France up to battles at Toulouse 721 and Tours 732
    all the way through to the Balkans after the fall of Constantinople
  • Mohacs 1526
  • Vienna 1529
    and then seaborne culminating
  • Malta 1565
  • Lepanto 1571
    and then versus the Hapsburgs on land again
  • Vienna 1683
  • Zenta 1697
  • Eugene of Savoys campaigns in 1716-17
All of these might have allowed the Muslims to take out a major player in European history

(and that's not counting PODs based on their alliances with France and other nominally Christian countries at various times)

How far they could have gone from any of those PODs , that's much more difficult to work out.
 
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Antaeus

Banned
The Arabs never attempted to conquer Southern France other than to raid it. I doubt they can conquer Southern France by ruling from Iberia.

In theory it could have happened. But in practice, it would most likely not happen. The Arab Conquest of Constantinopel is seen as the destruction of the Christian base in Eastern Europe thus pretty much eliminating the spread of Christianity in Eastern Europe (In my opinion, if Russia turns Islamic there is a decent chance the Baltics are also vunerable to Islamisation). But the conquest of Constantinople by the Arabs was pretty much implausible in practice. That is why I think it is impossible.

There is also that locals in Southern Gaul converting to Islam and do their own conquests of Christian Lands North of Iberia. Fragmenting and conquering Christian Lands. But that as well, would only work in theory. In practice it might likely get absorbed by the larger Arab Muslims or Christian Franks.

That is a problem it self. How are the Arabs going to conquer Constantinople without having Thrace secured or Naval dominance? If the Arabs did succeed there is a chance to isolate Christianity between the Oder, Danube and the Pyrenees.

Even the British isles became pagan when the Saxons invaded. If the Franks and Byzantines fall, Christianity is over.

France:
The conquest of Iberia began as a raid. Thus it is possible that had Charles Martel been killed at Tours, the Franks would have fallen into a period of instability with everybody trying to fill the vacuum left behind. Odo of Aquitaine is killed by further Muslim raids which culminate in the conquest of Aquitaine due to there being no figure strong enough to halt the advance. As the decades pass, the Muslims are busy fighting the Franks on the border of Aquitaine but do not push any further due to overextended routes. The Franks had a hard time with the Saxons and thus I wouldn't be surprised if the Muslims hired Saxon (and later on Nordic) mercenaries in their wars against the Franks. These Saxons then settle down and invite more Saxons to come over and slowly northern France is overrun as the Saxons become the new ruling class as they phase out the Franks through war and intrigue. They then go on to convert to Islam because Christianity is pretty useless in this region by this point.

British Isles and Northern Europe:
This would leave the British Isles isolated from the rest of Christendom and they might develop into something akin to Ethiopia. Nords conquer vast swathes of lands of England and go on to convert to Islam due to the power of the Muslims across the Channel. Muslim raiders too pillage British coasts and make their own incursions and eventually Christianity dies out here as well as Germany and Scandinavia where Islam is gaining a foothold after being spread here from the Saxon nobility in northern France.

Italy and Eastern Europe:
Constantinople falls to the Muslims bringing about the destruction of the Byzantine Empire as Slavic tribes carve up the remnants of what's left. The Muslims don't even need to hold on to the city as the Slavs in the region are probably going to convert to Islam due to Christianity being pretty weak in their eyes. With the Slavs, Bulgars and other Balkan groups converting to Islam, we see Islam gain further popularity in eastern Europe as it slowly moves north amongst the Slavic tribes. Christianity has died as an evangelical force in Western Europe and has been replaced by Muslims so expect German jihads in the Baltics. Russia too would convert to Islam and this brings me to an interesting development of Islam in northern and eastern Europe. Due to the importance of pigs and alcohol, we would likely see these populations ignore Islamic restrictions on pork and alcohol the same way many muslims ignored Islamic restrictions on musical instruments (which are deemed as bad as pork and alcohol). With Italy surrounded by Muslims on all sides, we would likely see most (if not all) of the peninsula fall to muslim Berbers and Slavs. Then there are the Magyars who would probably convert to Islam and mess about for a while in Europe destroying Christian Bavaria before settling down.

ISLAMWANK

As Europe has fallen to Islam, I'll turn this into a mega Islamwank.

THE AMERICAS:
Europe rises to the top due to its geology and it colonizes the New World. Since the Europeans are by this point (50%-80%), the Americas are converted to Islam by the settlers and colonists.

AFRICA:
Islam spreads down into the Sahel during the Medieval Era. During the Colonial Era, the Muslims crush the Christians in Ethiopia and spread Islam throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.

INDIA:
A European empire conquers India and is more belligerent than the Christian British were in OTL and they use the support of native Muslims to convert much of the subcontinent to Islam.

EASTERN ASIA:
There is a Muslim peasant revolt against the nobles in Japan and it is successful thus bringing Japan into the fold of the Islamic Ummah. This encourages peasants revolt in Korea and then China. However, in China the Islam is so warped that many other Muslims refuse to call them Muslim. The Muslim Russians spread Islam throughout the steppes.

INDOCHINA AND AUSTRALASIA
The European empires spread Islam even further in Indochina converting almost the entire thing to Islam whilst colonists turn Australia and New Zealand into Muslim islands. The rest of the Pacific is converted to Islam by Muslim Europeans.
 
Even the British isles became pagan when the Saxons invaded.

Not quite accurate..

Since we are talking about the 620s (the time of the Ummayid incursions into what is now France),
some parts of the Celtic fringe of Britain remained unconquered by the Saxons and so were still Christian
but of their own tradition(s) separate to either Roman or Greek Orthodoxy.

Rome had just begun to make some headway converting the pagan Saxons in Kent,
but that barely extended beyond the local nobility
because of marriages with Christrian Franks.

It was not until 664 that another major Saxon Kingdom submitted to Rome
(Northumbria via the Synod at Whitby)

Other elements of the 7 major Kingdoms in England were even later
The Welsh and (ironically) Irish Christians toed the Roman line much later.

Therefore if France goes Islamic, even if only partially, in the mid 600s
I strongly doubt any of the British Isles will be part of the Roman Church by the 800s.


Of course it was all made much fuzier with the pagan Norse invasions of the 800s
which destroyed many of the Celtic Christians in Scotland and Ireland

Aside: apologies for the many edits. Not at my best just now
 
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Christian states could certainly be wiped out entirely from Europe during the first 2 centuries of Islam. Still, Christian faith will almost certainly survive everywhere it was most prominent.
 
Europe rises to the top due to its geology and it colonizes the New World. Since the Europeans are by this point (50%-80%), the Americas are converted to Islam by the settlers and colonists.
I always get a bit bothered by reducing all of history down to geology. The effort to discover/colonize the new world was not driven purely by geological factors; a major factor as well was the fact the relationship between portugal/spain and their various neighbors.

Really, I think this scenario ends with a lot of Islamic superstates in Europe. Superstates aren't the best at innovating, so things stagnate heavily. eventually there's a period of social disorder and everything fragments, likely with Britain and a few other areas reasserting their heretofore buried Christianity. Once there's a more competitive situation, then you might see things that happened in OTL like colonization and the second agricultural revolution.

Christian states could certainly be wiped out entirely from Europe during the first 2 centuries of Islam. Still, Christian faith will almost certainly survive everywhere it was most prominent.
Indeed. Although that's few places than you might expect. There aren't many significant Christian areas at the time. The Rus, the slavs, the Norse, and most of Saxony and modern germany hadn't christianized yet.

But you'd likely also see a mass exodus of Christians, particularly clergy, from France, Britain etc. into less civilized lands. So I would argue that its more than possible that modern Germany and Eastern Europe still end up with a significant Christian presence.

Could muslim states end up in control of most/all of Europe? Sure. Could Muslim states enforce Islam on all of those holdings? Not unless they held onto them for a very very long time. Could they hold on to them perpetually? I would say no.

Was Europe as a whole ever at risk? No, not really. You have to have a lot of things go catastrophically bad, like Charles Martel dying, his realm descending into chaos, the Arabs actually wanting to conquer the kingdom of the Franks, the Arabs holding onto the kingdom of the Franks, and the Saxons converting to Islam despite mass exodus of clerics from conquered frankish/Italian lands.
 
I think people here are simplifying the process of enforcing a religion top down on a population. I don’t think it’s as simple as “Byzantium and Franks fall, everyone converts as Muslim rulers expand and flex their power.”

I think this is all ignoring the domestic issues that the Umayyad Caliphate (and later the Abbasid Caliphate) faced at home. Inherent problems in the administration, compounded now with the overextension of the Caliphate into areas that are generally less profitable and more unruly, means that the Caliphate will devolve to local rulers and collapse possibly even quicker than it did IOTL.

People here are also saying that they will simply do what they did in the modern Middle East but the situation is quite different. In the conquered Levant and Egypt, the Christian populations were often at odds with the “official orthodoxy” of the Capital and this, combined with other factors, meant that things went well for religious conversion. This situation wouldn’t repeat itself in the Balkans and Western Europe as there are less incentives to stay content under their Muslim rulers.

Essentially I think people here are overestimating the snowball effect of PODs like a Muslim conquest of Constantinople. Muslim rulers of largely Christian populations have more of an incentive to convert to the majority populations. Political fragmentation and overextension will mean that Christianity can’t be “slowly choked out” in Europe in any meaningful way I think.

As other users have said, I think it’s possible for Muslims to make some deep headways into Europe if they get consistently lucky but I definitely think it’s ASB for all of Europe from Ireland to Romania to just ditch Christianity in the face of hyper Muslim conquests
 

Deleted member 67076

Hispaniola?
Its doable, would take a POD either to maintain a larger remnant state in Grenada than the Nasrids and/or a Morocco with enough of a naval empire to start colonization while being blocked off from the Sahara by some angry Tuareg confederation. Throw this in with different shifts in first contact with the Taino and a few caciques would begin to convert over time (especially after pressure from the Spanish incursions up north create incentive for settlement to the New World).
 
"Hurr durr muslims and Brown people today white genocide blah blah"

/s

No, seriously, I don't think that we were ever at any point close to being under full Islamic control. That said, maybe much of the Mediterranean could have been controlled for long periods of time by empires of a Muslim nature with religious tolerance, that's about it in my opinion.

I feel that you underestimate the power or the early Islamic state....
 
Was it ever feasible for the Muslim conquests throughout the Middle-East and North Africa to have progressed into Europe beyond the regions of Hispaniola and Italy and into the heart of the continent?

I think the thread title is interesting because it kind of assumes that would be a bad thing, or at least a failure for the local cultures.

Islamic control could have been good or bad. Maybe a topic worthy of opening a new thread...
 
Europe probably could've been conquered, but then the Islamic Empire probably wouldn't spread to some other places.

If they're early enough the muslims just need to dominate the main christian kingdoms, Francia and Byzantium, perhaps rome aswell. Then christianity will probably retract by itself.
 
I think the thread title is interesting because it kind of assumes that would be a bad thing, or at least a failure for the local cultures.

Islamic control could have been good or bad. Maybe a topic worthy of opening a new thread...
i've had such a TL in mind for a while, the gist being that Islam becomes the majority religion in the world with a whole band of Islamic states along the equator, tentatively titled "Islamistan", intended as an objective examination of what the world could be like if a medieval POD resulted in Islam "ruling" the world, not something politically-charged like so much racist drivel is (in all likelihood, Islamic extremism as we know it wouldn't exist; obviously, there would still be extremists because even the most peaceful peoples and religions in the world have at least some radicals, but it wouldn't define this "Islamic Empire" like it does ISIS' rogue state)
 
i've had such a TL in mind for a while, the gist being that Islam becomes the majority religion in the world with a whole band of Islamic states along the equator, tentatively titled "Islamistan", intended as an objective examination of what the world could be like if a medieval POD resulted in Islam "ruling" the world, not something politically-charged like so much racist drivel is (in all likelihood, Islamic extremism as we know it wouldn't exist; obviously, there would still be extremists because even the most peaceful peoples and religions in the world have at least some radicals, but it wouldn't define this "Islamic Empire" like it does ISIS' rogue state)

Indeed, sounds interesting.

Yeah contemporary Islam would be changed beyond all recognition. What a lot of people don't realise is that confident, secure and dominant cultures tend to be more tolerant and open, while threatened cultures which see themselves under attack are much more likely to become radical and intolerant. There was an article in the New Scientist about this; it applies to any country or culture irrespective of any particular religion or nationality.

That's why Islam was more open, tolerant and inclusive in the age when Islamic empires were the dominant force in world events, in the medieval period. And it's also why, in the current world, the opposite is the case, as the Muslim countries today are downtrodden failed states utterly lacking in any power or influence.

In a world where Islam was dominant again, we can expect to see much greater confidence and vastly reduced extremism. Those societies would be much more open, innovative and inclusive in outlook.

Extremism stems from insecurity. Remove the insecurity, you remove the extremism. One might see arrogance, the opposite of insecurity. In which case we would see Islamic countries more like America of the 1990s, the dominant and open power in the world but possibly storing up some problems in the world by its own arrogance.
 
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