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What other cleavages could have occurred if the question of successor had never been brought up? What if Muhammad had explicitly detailed a succession order? What if he'd had a son?
Would the Islamic world have remained even more united for an even longer period of time? Would Islam's spread have been stronger? Or would the lack of "competition" have been bad for the various powers?
I looked through about 10 pages of threads with "Islam" in the title and was surprised to see very, very little discussion on this particular POD.