WI: Islam Survives the Ridda Wars, but its Military Apparatus and Polity Permanently Collapse?

A POD that I think is underused is: what if the orthodox Muslims eventually won the Ridda wars, but only after so long and brutal a struggle that the Arab military expansion machine and unified polity permanently fell apart?
It would leave a recognizable Islam (plus possibly a small remnant of the followers of one of the apostate prophets), but force it to spread through non-state proselytization, like Buddhism, as well as preserving some of the old geopolitical structure of the Mediterranean.
 
Yeah, I think you just answered your own WI on your speculation that it spreads through non-state proselytization
 

Skallagrim

Banned
How successfully would Islam be able to spread without a state apparatus enforcing it and carrying out conversion by the sword, though? Regardless of the refined philosophies that the Islamic golden age later produced, early Islam relied heavily on force. Areas were conquered, and the conquered inhabitants were converted as a result. Without a strong enough polity around to do the conquering, the only other means of spreading Islam in that early stage is demographics. That is: Arabs migrating north. Not conquering, but moving into existing Empires (the ERE and Persia) like the Germanic peoples moving into the Roman Empire-- and taking their religion with them.

I'm not at all sure that would be effective. The Germanic peoples did not suddenly convert Rome to worship their gods, after all. If anything, it was the other way around. Ceteris paribus, the dominant religious and cultural norms win out. The victory of Christianity over traditional Roman beliefs had more to do with the totally different approaches they had: Roman religion was heterodox, inclusive, didn't have a central authority structure or a canon of holy books.... and Christianity was orthodox, exclusive, did form a central structure of authority (a church, a clearly defined clergy bound to that church) and did have a defined canon. Things between those two forms of religion were not equal. Islam would have the same advantages Christianity had against pagan practices, but it wouldn't have those advantages over Christianity, nor over Zoroastrianism.

Unless Islam develops a tradition of travelling philosophers who instruct people in their wise ways, I don't see it spreading very successfully without state backing. Of course, Islam did develop such traditions later on, and a lot of other philosophical schools besides... but that was after it had conquered other powers already. It used the existing institutional frameworks of the civilisations it had overrun with brute force to refine itself. It did this very successfully. But without the intial conquests, this would not have been possible.

Bottom line: unless Islam dramatically evolves into a more Buddhist-like form of religion, I suspect it will remain "just" a local Arabian tradition, without much chances to effectively spread outward. ...Unless it should be into East Africa, perhaps...!
 
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In OTL, many conquered areas were not majority Muslim for centuries, and in Indonesia and Central Asia it spread by missionaries alongside traders.

Islam could spread further in this scenario. Muslim China, Korea, or Japan (or syncing up with local traditions) are more likely here than with OTL early developments in Islam.
 
The political and military apparatus was very embryonic at the time of the Ridda wars and it may be argued to have been begun its structuration because of the wars themselves (not that the Medinian community under the Prophet had no governing structure at all, of course, but it was quite informal and largely depending on the Prophet's personal charisma).
Also, any POD at the Ridda Wars time would impact Islam as a religion greatly. For instance, if the "political" aspect of the community collapses (which I take it means that the Emirship of the Faithful, a.k.a. Caliphate, does not emerge as a specific institution) a lot of the subsequent theological and sectarian landscape is totally different. The Qur'an did not exist yet as a single, unified written text yet, and without a unified Caliphal institution to support the establishment of a universally accepted text, divergent variants might develop unchecked (though without the conquests, the process might not be as quick as the Muslim tradition depicts it to be IOTL).
I'd say, however, that the Prophet's message, in some of its variants, has still a decent chance to spread, though probably not anywhere near the extent it did IOTL.
 
In OTL, many conquered areas were not majority Muslim for centuries, and in Indonesia and Central Asia it spread by missionaries alongside traders.

Islam could spread further in this scenario. Muslim China, Korea, or Japan (or syncing up with local traditions) are more likely here than with OTL early developments in Islam.

It only spread to non-Arabs through peaceful means several hundred years after the early Islamic expansion. At that point Islam had developed into more than a Arab religion. If Islam fail to expand early on, it will likely stay a Arab only religion and be limited to the peninsula and maybe a few mercantile city states outside Arabia.
 
Bottom line: unless Islam dramatically evolves into a more Buddhist-like form of religion, I suspect it will remain "just" a local Arabian tradition, without much chances to effectively spread outward. ...Unless it should be into East Africa, perhaps...!

This, I feel like, is a pretty decent point that I'd like to expand upon and twist beyond its original intent. Buddhism should never have made it out of the Indian subcontinent. As part of the broader nāstika movement, and a reaction to Hinduism and contemporary Indian society, I think you could argue the early teachings of the Buddha filled a limited niche - appealing to the spiritually and socially discontent of early India, riding much the same currents that gave rise to other competing religious and philosophical movements that just simply up and died eventually. Buddhism itself was nearly eliminated from the subcontinent - it endured primarily outside of the regions that gave it life.

Almost everything about say, Buddhism as it was practiced by the Ikko Ikki would be strange to the earliest Buddhists, no?

So too, I think you could say about an "unsuccessful" Islam, one whose state apparatus fails. I think it's distinct enough from Christianity to endure, and it's very difficult to say where it goes from there. Even without overwhelming conquests of the near east, the Arab world was falling under Greco-Persian influences - and I maintain that the Sassanian-Byzantine stalemate simply has to break sooner or later. It's so difficult to say what would happen next.
 
It only spread to non-Arabs through peaceful means several hundred years after the early Islamic expansion. At that point Islam had developed into more than a Arab religion. If Islam fail to expand early on, it will likely stay a Arab only religion and be limited to the peninsula and maybe a few mercantile city states outside Arabia.
Well, there's evidence in the sources that non ethnic Arabs converted to Islam in very early times (including, of course, during the Prophet's lifetime, but that was in Arabia and so does not necessarily count). Also, "Arab" identity was clearly a rather loose affair then (the rise of Islam helped cementing it, though some sense of shared identity existed already at least in linguistic terms). Of course, this occurred in the context of the conquests, where conversion tended to imply political allegiance to the Arab/Muslim-dominated political order, endorsement of it, and/or embracing an Arab identity (politically, sometimes linguistically as well). People affiliated to Arab tribes as protected, lower status converts. It was not universal however. We have documented cases of Iranian nobles converting (and serving in the Caliphal armies) while proudly clinging to a Persian cultural heritage in language and self-perception. There appears to have been some boundery-setting in Umayyad times, while the Abbasids obviously opened the gates to non-Arabs.
Of course, the political and military success of Islam was the main driver of the conversions of non-Arabs in these phases anyway, even if the single instances of conversion were rarely forced in the strict sense.
 
and I maintain that the Sassanian-Byzantine stalemate simply has to break sooner or later. It's so difficult to say what would happen next.
It had basically broken down by then. The Sassanid Empire was such a mess that they put Empresses on the throne (and, even worse, people who weren't even Sasanids claimed the throne), both of which were most unusual and shocking (the rule of Khusrow's daughters was really unprecedented in Iranian tradition as far as I can tell). Iran was likely to undergo severe crisis no matter what. The Eastern Romans would be in no position to take full advantage of that, however. The Arabs did IOTL and likely they would (without the notable empire-building bit perhaps) ITTL as well to some extent (other groups might get advantages too, the Khazars come to mind). The last Perso-Byzantine war and the Hunnic/Khazar raids on top of it were really devastating (seemingly more so the the subsequent Arab invasions) with the combination of the three creating a massively apocalyptic mindset and religious fervor. In this collapse, openings for some form of Islam to spread semi-peacefully (as in, not primarily in the context of preceding military conquest) are quite realistic.
However, Islam in ITTL would be hardly recognizable anyway, and would possibly lack the unitary character of IOTL.
 
How successfully would Islam be able to spread without a state apparatus enforcing it and carrying out conversion by the sword, though?

Buddhism spread without the use of the sword. Hinduism didn't get far beyond India... but that's impressive when you realize at any given time there are 7+ major Indian powers before the EITC came along. Judism didn't become anyone's state religion, but alone it got plenty of inroads to Africa without the sword.
 
How successfully would Islam be able to spread without a state apparatus enforcing it and carrying out conversion by the sword, though? Regardless of the refined philosophies that the Islamic golden age later produced, early Islam relied heavily on force. Areas were conquered, and the conquered inhabitants were converted as a result. Without a strong enough polity around to do the conquering, the only other means of spreading Islam in that early stage is demographics. That is: Arabs migrating north. Not conquering, but moving into existing Empires (the ERE and Persia) like the Germanic peoples moving into the Roman Empire-- and taking their religion with them.

I'm not at all sure that would be effective. The Germanic peoples did not suddenly convert Rome to worship their gods, after all. If anything, it was the other way around. Ceteris paribus, the dominant religious and cultural norms win out. The victory of Christianity over traditional Roman beliefs had more to do with the totally different approaches they had: Roman religion was heterodox, inclusive, didn't have a central authority structure or a canon of holy books.... and Christianity was orthodox, exclusive, did form a central structure of authority (a church, a clearly defined clergy bound to that church) and did have a defined canon. Things between those two forms of religion were not equal. Islam would have the same advantages Christianity had against pagan practices, but it wouldn't have those advantages over Christianity, nor over Zoroastrianism.

Unless Islam develops a tradition of travelling philosophers who instruct people in their wise ways, I don't see it spreading very successfully without state backing. Of course, Islam did develop such traditions later on, and a lot of other philosophical schools besides... but that was after it had conquered other powers already. It used the existing institutional frameworks of the civilisations it had overrun with brute force to refine itself. It did this very successfully. But without the intial conquests, this would not have been possible.

Bottom line: unless Islam dramatically evolves into a more Buddhist-like form of religion, I suspect it will remain "just" a local Arabian tradition, without much chances to effectively spread outward. ...Unless it should be into East Africa, perhaps...!

In a narrow sense, instances of Early Islam spreanding "by the sword" are comparatively rare, as in, as it is widely known, the (primarily Arab) conquerors rarely forced conversion upon the conquered through direct violence (though such cases are attested). However, it is clear that the fact the conquering elite was Muslim made conversion advantageous to the following generations of the conquered, which would not have been the case without Muslim political prominence. Thus, Islam spread also "by the sword" in a broader sense, though it might be more accurate to say that Islam spread "top-down" in polities it had dominated through initial conquest. Also note that it is hard to separate religion and political allegiance in a Late Antique context, as the use of the same word "Islam" in Arabic accounts of the conquests testifies: it may be used both to indicate either political/military submission/allegiance, religious conversion, or both (an ambiguity that to some extent still remains in modern Arabic).

I insist that *Islam would spread to some degree even without its early unified polity simply because the underlying crisis of the Middle Eastern powers would still happen (it was already happening, and the emergence of Islam itself may be construed as an answer to it) and the demographic pressure of the Arabian tribes would still likely be felt even without a unifying *Caliphate to direct their expansion.
However, again, it may be a religion quite different from the Islam we know from IOTL by modern times; it might even not be called that, since it is not clear that in early times "Islam" was the only or even primary name of the faith (it is attested in the Qur'an however).
 
Buddhism spread without the use of the sword. Hinduism didn't get far beyond India... but that's impressive when you realize at any given time there are 7+ major Indian powers before the EITC came along. Judism didn't become anyone's state religion, but alone it got plenty of inroads to Africa without the sword.

Buddhism doctrinally tends to a (for lack of a better word) "quietist" outlook. Islam tends, looking at its scriptural core, toward a more "militant" (not necessarily militaristic) approach. Absent a unified polity in early stages, of course, this might be toned down in the subsequent tradition (as it was the case historically). Conversely, militant (and even militaristic) strains of Buddhism have developed historically, though they rarely contributed very much to the spread of the faith itself (Tibet being a partial exception). So, the tendencies in the basic doctrinal foundations are not to be taken deterministically.
Islam would still appeal to some religious anxieties of the Late Antique Near East, and offer a generally activist response that would resonate well with many existing sensibilities. The emphasis on a personal devotion, piety and solidarity that is encouraged to exert actively in the world would appeal to traders (as it did IOTL) even without a dominant polity.
I guess that, ITTL, the egalitarian paradigm present in the Qur'an would be less likely to be obscured by the highly hierarchical worldview that marks Islamic thought in the Middle Ages to the same extent we see IOTL, making some forms of this Islam more popular among the urban middle classes and the downtrodden alike.
 
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