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en43rs t1_j78mffr wrote

Reply to comment by bobbieibboe in Weekly History Questions Thread. by AutoModerator

It's complex but in short, the main tenets of Islam weren't a new thing in the region. Monotheism, the Abrahamic god, all those were known. And Christianity wasn't united at all, there were a lot of variations between doctrines. So it appeared as another Abrahamic faith, it was familiar. Then the Arab Muslim won militarily very quickly and brought stability to what was a war zone between Rome and Persia.

And finally, the Muslim empire were relatively tolerant of other faiths. But if you're not Muslim you have to pay a tax. So you got a faith that isn't that far from your own, their empire is successful... and if you stay Christian/Zoroastrian you have to pay... It took time but gradually populations converted on their own.

Forced conversions were pretty rare for Muslims (that's just not a thing they do as a rule, two arguments: the Quran says not to do so, and non Muslim can be a source of cash with special taxes). They integrated local populations which drifted toward Islam on their own. Again it wasn't immediate, Egypt was still mostly Christian in the 13th century (and still is 10% Christian today).

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elmonoenano t1_j78spby wrote

>Forced conversions were pretty rare for Muslims (that's just not a thing they do as a rule, two arguments: the Quran says not to do so, and non Muslim can be a source of cash with special taxes).

You'll see some posts on /r/askhistorians about this too. But one other kind of obvious reason that the western idea of mass forced conversion, or conversion by the sword, just doesn't pan out is that often Muslims were a small minority in an area. You can't just go mass convert everyone when they have a 100 to 1 advantage over you. So it rarely happened, but there were governmental and institutional advantages to converting. You could get better patronage. There were specific additional taxes for non believers. You had a right to participate in conquest and gain land, etc. So there were lots of good practical reasons to convert.

This distrusts, and some earlier Muslims people retaining benefits only to their own class, and denying them to the new converts, manifested in the Shi'a/Sunni split. A lot of the later converting groups felt that they weren't getting their fare share of opportunities and saw Ali as willing to address that. It's not the total explanation, but part of how the split developed.

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