WI Meccans support Muhammad from start?

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What changes in Islam, and history if Meccans just support Muhammad from the start, rather than oposing and fighting him?
Would Islam spread as far as it did?
Or would it be restricted because of it and die out eventualy as a tribal religion?
 
If the Meccans had embraced Islam from the start, I can see the subsequent expansion of Islam being more peaceful, much like Christianity had spread 600 years earlier. Without the bitterness and resolve that persecution brings, the Arabs may have been happy to simply evangelize their trade partners in the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Abyssinia, and we could have seen a slow expansion of Islam along trade networks, rather than through rapid and overwhelming conquest.

Whether the Byzantines and Persians would later have initiated persecution of Muslims in their territories is another story, but I can see it being a plausible reaction, especially among the Byzantines, who were already zealous about persecuting non-Orthodox sects.
 
What changes in Islam, and history if Meccans just support Muhammad from the start, rather than oposing and fighting him?

Would Islam spread as far as it did?
There's quite too much butterflies to deal with that. I would think that it would have an equivalent situation to IOTL.

Or would it be restricted because of it and die out eventualy as a tribal religion?
I don't think so : granted, Mecca wasn't the city Yatrib was, but Hejaz as a whole had a real potential, critically with former Arabic states declining.
Furthermore, you'll get rid of the dispute between Mohagerins and Ansarians that poisoned up the Islamic succession of Muhammad.

On the short run, it could make Islam a little bit stronger it was IOTL

If the Meccans had embraced Islam from the start, I can see the subsequent expansion of Islam being more peaceful, much like Christianity had spread 600 years earlier.
I don't see that happening : the Meccan hegemony over Arabia is gonna be as much fought as Yatrib/Meccan was IOTL during Ridda Wars. You'll have an imposition of Islam over submitted or allied tribes quite quickly, and that would be formative on how Islam would spread.
 

Mookie

Banned
I don't think so : granted, Mecca wasn't the city Yatrib was, but Hejaz as a whole had a real potential, critically with former Arabic states declining.
Furthermore, you'll get rid of the dispute between Mohagerins and Ansarians that poisoned up the Islamic succession of Muhammad.

On the short run, it could make Islam a little bit stronger it was IOTL


Mecca was stronger and more populous than Yathrib. But that is not the issue. In Yathrib Muhammad had absolute authority. But if Meccans accepted Islam from day the start, which includes tribal leaders. wouldnt then Muhammad be forced to accomodate to them, and they would be ones making the big decisions, while Muhammad is in a position of modern-day pope
 
Mecca was stronger and more populous than Yathrib.
Not by the VIIth century. Mecca was notably poorer, less important than Yatrib, that was a commercial city existing since centuries, when Mecca made it mostly as pilgrimage center.
The city population itself doesn't matter much, admittedly, as many clans lived in Hejaz without being urbanized (in fact, Muhammad played peripherical clans against urbans).

But that is not the issue. In Yathrib Muhammad had absolute authority.
That's not what events seems to show : there's many occurences where Yathrib clans did as they wanted and against the will of Muhammad. The aformentioned Mohagerins/Ansarians (basically native Medinits and Meccans that followed Muhammad in Yatrib) frictions that didn't disappeared depsite his orders (see the succession, and how was elected Abu Bacr on this).

Or Medinits attacking caravans against his express orders, etc.

There's clear indication that he had to compromise with clanic features, willingly or not.
 
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