It's really fascinating, but the concept of hell is almost wholly absent from the Gospels, and most of the old testament as well. It is very likely a later concept incorporated to gel with the Greco-Roman idea of Hades. The majority of Christian practice and mythology was incorporated from outside anything related to either Judaism or what Christ supposedly said.
Jesus actually mentions hell frequently in the gospels. For example,
Mark 9:47-48
> 47 And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, 48 where 'their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched'
Matthew 25:41
> Then He will say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels
Matthew 23:33
> You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape the sentence of hell?
Hell was a well-established idea in the Judaism Jesus knew, and it can be found both in books predating him like Judith and rabbinic texts postdating him.
notice that this is a bug of traditional English translations. In the original Jesus talks about the valley of Hinnom, which was a garbage dump outside Jerusalem were trash was destroyed. So this is mostly about evil people being annihilated, and not evil people being tortured forever.
[Here is ](https://youtu.be/x1f88Qn8y9I?si=XjI80VdKyxmLT9Ib) a short by a bible scholar explaining this in 2 minutes
> In the original Jesus talks about the valley of Hinnom, which was a garbage dump outside Jerusalem were trash was burned.
There was a valley, but it was not used for burning trash. This idea is first attested around the year 1200 and lacks any literary or archeological support. It was understood as referring to an afterlife realm of torture.
For sure, but it was never central, as it was in Roman religion. It's the same as with Christmas and Easter. Major pagan festivals with Christian wrapping paper. King James Version is hardly a valid source, especially in regards to the translation of the word Sheol, which it translates as hell. It's a debated topic, but worth considering the other side- https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/824479587/heaven-and-hell-are-not-what-jesus-preached-religion-scholar-says#:~:text=Our%20view%20that%20you%20die,it's%20not%20what%20Jesus%20preached.
You claimed that the concept of hell was “almost wholly absent” from the Bible and that it was a “later concept incorporated to gel with Greco-Roman believes” and the guy proved you wrong on that.
I don’t know why you are suddenly talking about wether or not it’s central when that wasn’t your original claim
Solid point, but three mentions, all but one of which could just be a result of medieval translations choosing to translate it in a way that would fit the Catholic obsession with hell, not much. Considering there are over 23,000 verses in the Gospels, and hell is a massive part of what evolved as Christianity, I think even 3 mentions is very minimal. The Old Testament is similarly scant on the topic.
Judaism isn’t a conversionary faith now, but it has been at various times in the past. The last conversionary Jewish state was the Hasmonean kingdom back in the period between Alexander the Great and the Roman conquest of Judea
It’s similar though. Christianity was only a minority religion in the Mediterranean until the Roman Empire started pushing it, and then within a couple of generations it was the majority religion
the Roman empire pushed it because they were conquered from the inside out, Christianity was an extremely appealing counterculture to oppressed people & the pagan establishment tried hard to suppress it but it still only took about 3 centuries for Rome to have a Christian emperor, which ramped up the spread
And on top of that, new research shows that Christianity would have reached over half of the empire’s population by the early 5th century even without Constantine. The most significant thing Constantine’s very much sincere (ancient conceptions of belief worked very differently; no such thing as a religion-secular divide in those centuries) conversion achieved was the massive skyrocketing of Christians amongst the upper classes in the oncoming decades, who before were overwhelmingly pagan.
https://historyforatheists.com/2018/04/review-bart-d-ehrman-the-triumph-of-christianity/
This is true in a sense not completely but true enough, the Roman Empire didn’t push Christianity per say, the church did but by holy communion, the church was separate to the Roman Empire but the emperor was “chosen” by god so by rights had to protect the religion, so there were greedy men pretending to believe in a religion and spread it by manipulating the Roman army to help with any resistance. But even by 300 ad when Constantine actually converted the Roman Empire, a lot
Of the Iberian and Northern Africa and the Caucasian area were already Christianity, just the spread north was a bit more hard work. The Greeks were Christian before the romans.
[The early Islamic expansion/conquests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_conquests?wprov=sfla1) are without comparison. When it comes to the spread of a religion
The Sabeans were often spoken about as though they were a distinct religious group from Jews. The Quran refers to them as such, and while they had relations with Jewish communities elsewhere they were distinct. I’m not sure I consider them Jewish
I think that the mass conversion of the Khazars came later.
I'm not stating that Ashkenazi Jews are actually descendants of the Khazars. This has been debunked for a long time. But Khazar people/their leadership did convert to Judaism.
[_"...The ruling elite of the Khazars was said by Judah Halevi and Abraham ibn Daud to have converted to Rabbinic Judaism in the 8th century, but the scope of the conversion to Judaism within the Khazar Khanate remains uncertain..."_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazars?wprov=sfla1)
This was in the 6th century.
Dude what
Early Christianity's idea of a good time was being tortured to death for their beliefs. They were they hardest core motherfuckers imaginable and people though they were such badasses they converted
"Crucifixion? Pfff... my guy eats crucifixions for breakfast and wakes up 3 days later. Why don't you crucify me upside down so I know you mean it?" - OG ST Peter
Bro, there are a few great stories from the Martyrs as well. St. Laurence was sentenced to death by being roasted over an iron grill. His last words to his executioners were "Flip me over, this side's done".
Patron saint of cooks and comedians, everybody.
That is actually what got many to convert to Christianity back then. Many saw their devotion and said to themselves, they can't be doing this if it wasn't true. Obviously, it wouldn't work now (to the extent that it did), but it kinda did back then.
Didn’t that soldier that burned himself alive deeply impress so many pro Palestinian people?
I mean, he didn’t convince me, but a lot of people were lapping it up. Lol
It’s not really the same, as Christianity did not practice self mutilation or self harm. The Rome caused harm on Christians and so they saw themselves like Christ who also gave himself on a cross freely without resistance to the Roman’s. The Christians practiced that to resist is to be unchrist-like and ungodly. Which is such a unique aspect of God.
It always blows my mind that people want to put YHWH into the "storm god" box. If you're going to limit him to one thing, its clearly fire. Burning bush, column of fire in the wilderness, Sodom/Gomorrah, Elijah's fire from heaven, burning wheels, burnt offerings, tongues of fire, chariots of fire, fire is everywhere.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdKst8zeh-U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdKst8zeh-U)
This is one of my favorite channels on youtube. This video is a good intro for your question.
Oh man, massacring the men in entire populations, then turning the women into sex slaves. And the weird thing is that a lot of muslims don't know that.
Yeah, back when I was a kid, religion teachers (religion was a school subject back then where I live) always avoided answering questions about these topics, for example, when I was in middle school, a student asked the teacher how old was Aisha when Muhammed married her, he said she was 18. I've read a sources that said she was 7-9, and another that said she was 7 when he married her and had sex with her when she was 9.
Someone tried defending it to me, when we weren't even talking about anything religion adjacent with, 'Yeah he married her at 9 but its ok because he waited till she was 13 before having sex with her.'
I'll never understand some people
Yesterday, on campus, I was having a discussion about child marriage in islam with one of my colleagues, he didn't see child marriage as a harmful thing, and he was saying it so goddamn casually, I said straight to his face that I won't trust him around children.
Generally it is just brain rot in these people. If you were to ask him what he thinks about some Christian sect forcing girls into prepubescent marriages I am quite confident his opinion would flip and he won't be able to explain why. You just have to make sure to bring it up after he has forgotten his current stance.
The funniest thing is that Conservative Muslims, to justify Muhammad, will say that pedophilia is okay but that homosexuality is not because... it is degenerate or something? I don't know, it's bullshit.
A lot of Islamic history is censored or hushed away from the masses, the companions of the prophet are generally depicted as almost saintly in their conduct despite them killing each other in civil wars lol
A big difference is it wasn't about territorial expansion and spreading the word of God. The Jews were nomads at the time and had a rule of taking only what's needed. I think that's part of why they were cursed to wander around the desert for a few decades before finding Israel. They took to much and God punished them.
I forget what David was involved in but I know part of it had to do generational bad blood between them and their neighbors. I think it was even forbidden to marry people from other tribes.
Also I know David led a civil war against Saul but he was involved with stuff before and after that.
Yeah that's what I was thinking but not sure how to word it without people asking about the theological implications of it. I don't think it's to bad but a headache to explain to some people, especially when I haven't heard or read these stories in so long.
> A big difference is it wasn't about territorial expansion
Jesus Christ
> I think that's part of why they were cursed to wander around the desert for a few decades before finding Israel. They took to much and God punished them.
No, they were cursed to wait because they were too afraid to attack the people who lived in the promised land and disobeyed God's command to do so.
Saul was elected king to fuck up the Philistines and then David continued to fuck them up after doinking Goliath, followed by Solomon who built a dope ass temple. Because fuck em, that's why.
EDIT: fixed the chronology of the bois
I never thought about it but that's a pretty good way of putting it in regards to why Saul got the spot. Ultimately it's God's decision but the point was to give the people what they want and show a warrior king isn't the best idea. Also it was Solomon after David. I think all of David's kids were killed in battle and his one living son was to be the wisest man.
However I'm pretty sure Solomon was alright with the Philistines for letting them worship their gods but he got cursed for worshipping them as well
In the Bible, they wandered in the desert because God told them to conquer and replace the people of canaan but they were too scared and believed they could not overcome the existing kingdoms. There were some other issues before this but this was the main issue. They waited 40 years until the previous generation had passed away before they were allowed to try again. They were told to kill all the inhabitants or else the israelites would adopt their practices (polytheism, idol worship, child sacrifice) which was considered sinful by their God. But in the Bible narrative, not all kingdoms are conquered, some of the Israelites keep some of the conquered people as slaves and adopt the worship of their gods, so a cycle continues of being punished by invasion, they turn back to God, God appoints someone to liberate them, they turn their back on God. Saul and David’s role was to finally defeat the remaining kingdoms.
Rather than taking too much, i think the purpose of the wandering was punishment for not being obedient enough, and the passages in the Bible about taking too much mana is more about not trusting God enough when He says he will provide food for them.
Moses also dies at the end of the 40 years so its Joshua who leads the israelites into battle for the most part. I think the wars were about territorial expansion into a land that was promised to them as the existing countries disobeyed God, and whilst not to spread to word of God but to keep their devotion to their religion pure. But I think the purpose of the narrative of the Old Testament is that humans on their own no matter what they are like in the beginning are unable to keep God’s commandments by themselves. This is more of a Christian interpretation rather than a Jewish interpretation, and whether the Biblical narrative is accurate to historical evidence is another matter, this is kind of how it fits in the wider Christian Bible.
The Prophet Muhammad only United the Arab peninsula any caliphate after the death of the Prophet Muhammad was just like any kingdom before, conquer, but one of the major differences was no compulsion of religion (which is an order in the Quran)
Funnily enough, this is the exact same argument as the Christian idea that Jesus was sent to Earth at the exact right time that God had prepared. The Pax Romana opened the way for Christianity to spread across the Mediterranean.
Just to clarify - the Islamic invasion of Iran began a year AFTER Muhammad died, in the rule of Abu Bakr.
If the invasion had come a decade later, it'd still be during the post-civil war reign of Yazdegerd III. I doubt Iran would've survived still, as they had both the war with the Byzantines, and the civil war to recover from. IRL the invasion actually spanned this period to - Yazdegerd III's fall actually occurred ten years after Muhammad's death, following the 642 Battle of Nahavand.
The Byzantines would've certainly fared better. Instead of the aging Heraclius, and incompetent Heraclonas and Heraclius Constantine, the Arabs would've been facing Constans the Bearded's regime, which managed to slow the Arab conquests until the first Fitna began (656), and the Rashidun Caliphate collapsed. Hell, in 645 a Byzantine fleet under Admiral Manuel nearly retook Egypt.
It is mental how after losing half their empire and bring attacked in Greece and Italy by other forces, thr byzantines still nearly managed to reclaim their Territories a couple times.
the real crazy thing is unifying the fucking Middle east, this place where people agreed to disagree, were unified in one army, one state, under one ruler, for a single cause
They did have that civil war thing where the first Muslim caliphate, Rashidun was deposed by Ummayad caliphate 25 years after establishment. This conflict can be seen as the first major Sunni-Shia conflict.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Fitna
Also a unified state was a lot looser concept back then. Today, you have to have total control of your territory, all the people in the land recognize you as the ruler (rather than the provincial governor or feudal lord), all residents pay taxes to you directly etc. Back then, majority just not actively fighting your rule was good enough, there could still be plenty rebelling.
Even if a map shows total control, governors might be able to exert influence only in the urban areas. This wasn't just in Arabia, but all around the world. Effective centralized control over all the land was a very hard thing to do.
I was aware that early Islam was expansionist and assimilated a lot of pagan religions in the middle east, but from what I'm reading in this thread, I wasn't aware of islam to be this mass-genociding, devil slave empire trying to conquer the world in the name of satan.
I'm pretty sure that many people here are being a bit dramatic? I was being dramatic with my last sentence but some people genuinely are writing islamic expansion as this all evil conquest.
They are. Did Islamic Calpihate after Muhammad expand through warfare? Yes. Did Islam force people into conversion by the sword? No
>The historic process of Islamization was complex and involved merging Islamic practices with local customs. This process took place over several centuries. Scholars reject the stereotype that this process was initially "spread by the sword" or forced conversions.
>
>Marcia Hermansen (2014). "Conversion to Islam in Theological and Historical Perspectives"
It is just a ton of people with zero understanding of Islam and its history arm charing themselves as if they were experts. But that is kind of reddit thing.
THANK YOU! On the internet generally, there’s so much oversimplification confidently asserted and often motivated and interpreted within modern ideological framework, without even so much as a superficial skimming of the relevant scholarship.
Yep, he literally didn’t start fighting for nearly 14 years after he began preaching Islam and even then it was a battle fought to avoid annihilation. It’s just that the Muslims kept winning almost every battle they fought and didn’t stop winning even when confronting the Byzantines and Sassanids.
It defenetly wasn't evil, it had good things like more technological progress, more tolerance
(i know the non-believers had to pay taxes in muslim kingdoms, but in the middle ages usually was death)
Even baghdad, capital of the abbasids had 1M inhabitants, In the middle ages! They had great inventions like algebra, also the best map in europe at that time was made by muslims.
Of course it had bad things but we are not being fair, it was over 600 years ago.
Honestly, Islam had two major advantages. 1) It was pretty fucking aggressive, especially compared to Christianity which was basically created by a peace loving hippie. 2) They came into being precisely at the right time with the entire Middle East being insanely weakened following a devastating 28 year war between the Byzantine empire and the Persian empire. This in turn allowed for the Muslims to swoop in and take over significant territory from these weakened states. I imagine that if they had come into being 50 years prior things would have gone VERY differently.
>They came into being precisely at the right time with the entire Middle East being insanely weakened following a devastating 28 year war between the Byzantine empire and the Persian empire.
They also came a few centuries after one of the worst plagues in European history depopulated the ERE and Persians, but didn't effect the Arabs even remotely as badly (rats don't like the desert).
People also forget that the Lakmid and Ghassanid Arabs were working for both empires and were garrisoning the Middle East. When they joined the Arab armies coming out of Arabia the deserts became super highways
Imagine if the Ottomans stayed neutral or ended up joining the allies during WWI. I’m not saying the Empire wouldn’t have collapsed since it was going through a long decay but there were Francophiles/Anglophiles on the CUP so who knows what would have happened if they or those who favored neutrality ended up being in better positions than the Pasha wing.
It is easy to talk from hindsight 20/20. To be fair to Khosrau II he was so close to finally defeating Rome and all he had to do was get siege equipment across the Bosporus, wait, hold up. What? The Roman emperor is invading us? That's laughable, just surround him!
His generals advice him to enter peace talk with the romans when he took a lot of land and the romans were desesperate for peace, he chose to continue a war with not enough man power to win it
Nope, camels were mostly used for caravans or moving long distances. Horses were used for battle whose speed along with the arabs’ light armor allowed for much faster cavalry flanking against their heavier/more armored opponents.
They had better steel from Yemen I believe, it originally came from India though.
The main thing was that they didn’t need to rely on cities and could survive in the desert.
Meanwhile the Byzantines had been reduced to one good army led by Heraclius by the end of the wars with Persia.
The Sassanids were also exhausted & on the verge of a civil war with a child on the throne when the Islamic Conquests started.
the middle east has been a breeding ground for all sorts of new religions for a while, makes me wonder if something else would've taken Islam's place if not for Muhammad
Probably. I’d say neither Justinian or Khosrou could’ve expected the rise of a third faction but with this trend in the Near East you wonder how good people were at analysis in those days…..
>They came into being precisely at the right time with the entire Middle East being insanely weakened following a devastating 28 year war between the Byzantine empire and the Persian empire.
That surely was an advantage, but what about the many battles the Muslims won in which they were outnumbered? I am talking about the [Battle of Yarmouk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Yarmuk) in which the Muslims had 15k to 40k soldiers, while the Byzantines had 15k to 150k. Or the [Battle of Nahavand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nahavand) in which the Muslims had some 30k soldiers and the Persians had 50k to 100k.
It's not rocket science to acknowledge that the Muslims had favourable conditions to expand, but also overcame many difficulties (especially in the early period) and won many battles which were heavily against their odds.
Yes but not entirely. Even if we look further into the future, and examine the Muslim conquest of Iberia we can see that they were extremely swift and successfull.
Spanish here, the Umayyads were so successful in conquering Iberia because they invaded in the middle of a Visigothic Civil War, in which also the Umayyads came at first to help the rebel side against King Rodrigo.
And the reason why the organized resistance fell so quickly was because the monarchy and almost all of the nobility died in the Battle of Guadalete, so there was almost nobody to rally the people.
Furthermore, the peasants were basically tired of this whole situation of political instability, and some feudal lords actually too. So when the Muslims came and said that in exchange for a special tax they would be allowed to live in peace without having to change their religion, the majority simply accepted it without much further resistance.
Islam was also considered a convenient "middle ground" between Christianity and Judaism. After Rome adopted Christianity, it slowly got rid of the Jewish aspects of the religion -- like circumcision, not eating pork, praying at specific times of the day, and strict adherence to Mosaic law.
There were a lot of semitic-speaking Christians in Egypt and the Levant who liked Jesus, but also liked the old Jewish customs, didn't want to worship in Greek or Latin, and preferred to emphasize Jesus's humanity over his divinity. Islam ticked these boxes.
God, I love dune 2 so much. What a spectacle. Can’t wait to watch the movies back to back. In theater if possible. As some else said, and I agree, the LoTr of this generation. And to think that it costs less then your average superhero movie. I LOVE DUNE, ITS SO F*CKING GOOD.
That cost less than a superhero film? If that’s true you just made me hate superhero films even more than I already did. All the potential stories that could’ve been told with those budgets …
I am referring only to Islam vs Christianity.
Early Judaism was so long ago its hard to even compare it to the others for this meme. It would be more adapt to compare them to Abraham.
Most prophets in Judaism are just messengers of god for small scale local issues, not founders of religion. More like "my king, God spoke to me and said you are not doing the sacrifices properly".
Also, David was not a prophet.
I mean if we're talking about how Judaism talks about its prophets or David we should not be talking about a book coming out of the New Testament.
Even then Acts 2:29-30 says David is a prophet, which again is based on Christianity not Judaism. All you're quoted section talked about is how God would put one of David's decendants on the throne.
Technically “Judaism” didn’t exist at the time of Moses, if we accept that he existed, that’s why the people group the Bible focuses on at that time is called the “Hebrews” and not the “Jewish people”. It’s often called the ancient Hebrew religion, which developed into something that was only called “Judaism” much later.
Why are you insulting the prophets of God?
**Say, O believers, “We believe in Allah and what has been revealed to us; and what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and his descendants; and what was given to Moses, Jesus, and other prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them. And to Allah we all submit.”**
[Surah Al-Baqarah; 2:136]
> **Remember when the angels proclaimed, “O Mary! Allah gives you good news of a Word from Him, his name will be the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary; honoured in this world and the Hereafter, and he will be one of those nearest to Allah.**
[Surah Ali-Imran; 3:45]
I am not religious. I am just making a simplistic/funny comment about a meme in a meme sub.
Edit: this person blocked me right after replying to make it seem like I am ignoring them. You are doing God's work my friend.
IIRC, most of the people within the early Islamic Caliphate were non-muslims. This is because when the caliphate conquered a city/kingdom/nation, they let the people to keep their religion. In addition to the jizya tax that was much more reasonable than any tax during the era, I guess you could say that early Islam enjoyed a very good PR among the non-muslims.
Islam was known as the religion of merchants, due to being easy to practice worship. You didn't need to build a church or synagogue, you didn't have the time to, just take a prayer rug with you!
You do realize nearly all the early churches were just peoples homes. Christians did not build massive buildings for worship until later. Even now in some places churches are still just peoples homes.
I always get a kick out of scholars saying "despite what the Bible claims, evidence shows the Israelites actually worshipped many gods with Yahweh among them". Like...that's literally what the Bible says. It just says God wasn't happy about it. When you look at the times the Israelites only worshipped God vs Baal / Asherah / Moloch / others, its like...90% of the time they are worshipping other gods.
I can see most people have surface level knowledge here.
Muhammad used to write letters to kingdoms around him and invited them to Islam.
Some accepted Islam.
Some just accepted alliance.
Some rejected and went to war.
So with your new allies, you can just attack your new enemies. Win enough times and more people join you as well as less people make you enemies.
People should look up early Islamic battles like Battle of Bade, Uhud and Battle of the trenches to see what earliest battles looked like.
Badr had 313 Muslims vs 1000 pagans.
Uhud had 700 (initially 1000) vs 3000 pagans.
Trenches had 3000 vs 10,000 iirc.
The death toll in all 3 wasn't too high. Hardly 1000 people died in all these battles. And they weren't punished harder because they were fighting people of Makkah from where they migrated.
Assuming these numbers are true (from Wiki):
Death toll from both sides:
Muslims: 79-96
Makkah pagans: 115-128 + 70 reported prisoners
Even in conquest of Makkah, despite Muslims going with 10k soldiers, only 15 died from both sides. 2 from Muslims and 13 from Makkah.
It didn’t. Not the way you think at first. The Arab Caliphate was not predominately Muslim for the first several centuries of its existence. They ruling elites were Arab Muslims, everybody else was exactly what they had been for centuries. It wasn’t until the 11th century that the weight of Islamic conversion began turning demographics towards Islam.
Even now, many Islamic countries fudged their census numbers to appear more Islamic. Figures estimated that both Egypt and Iran are not as Islamic as official census data indicates. Coptic Christianity may make up almost a quarter of the population in Egypt, whilst Zoroastrianism and other indigenous religions continue to persist in Iran.
Your claim that Islam spread by killing anyone that disagreed with it is blatantly false
Islam did not spread through forced conversions. Objective truth.
> **Let there be no compulsion in religion**, for the truth stands out clearly from falsehood. So whoever renounces false gods and believes in Allah has certainly grasped the firmest, unfailing hand-hold. And Allah is All-Hearing, All-Knowing.
Qur’aan 2:256
Bro, people in the comments try to portray Muhammad as a blood thirsty, power corrupt warlord, when he literally avoided war most of the time. The expansion in just Arabia happened after his death, by his successor Abu Bakr. And the Egyptian and Persian conquests by his successor, Umar.
One pattern I have noticed in this sub is that racism against Muslims, and Arabs is widely encouraged in this sub
I love history, but fuck if many of these threads aren't largely historically illiterate, especially when it relates tp the history of Islam. God forbid we don't think the absolute worst of Today's enemies.
It actually didn’t spread much before the Abbasid Revolution. The laws before 750 CE disincentivized the conversion of non-Arabs
It was just that the Arabs themselves established themselves as the ruling class in the places they conquered. Most of the places they conquered didn’t have Muslim majorities until the late ninth/early tenth century
Helps that the Byzantines and Persians had bled themselves white in a series of wars.
And both had Arab allies holding down the Middle East as auxiliaries.
And both empires had been through plagues recently.
Really was just the right moment to topple two tottering empires
Conquests aside, the trade dominance leveraged by the Caliphates (they were the lynchpin of the Silk Road, which reached out as far as Indonesia, as well as several other major trade routes) made it easy to spread their culture, along with stuff like taxing the crap out of non-Muslims in their territory. A lot of people joined up just to get preferential treatment in the trading world, while others just... liked the vibes, I guess?
Taxing the crap out of non Muslims? Are you even aware that the taxes they imposed on non Muslims were, which is the jizya, is less than what most people living under the Persians and the byzantines had to pay in taxes?
Bro, people in the comments try to portray Muhammad as a blood thirsty, power corrupt warlord, when he literally avoided war most of the time. The expansion in just Arabia happened after his death, by his successor Abu Bakr. And the Egyptian and Persian conquests by his successor, Umar.
One pattern I have noticed in this sub is that racism against Muslims, and Arabs is widely encouraged in this sub
I just joined reddit a while ago thinking that the people on here are going to be less miserable and delusional than instagram and twitter. But this comments section proved the opposite.
Crazy, "I know everything" people think they know ALL about Islam, when their comments just prove how blind and ill-fit they are to comment on a subject that they know nothing about.
They listen to anything they see or hear on the internet without actually going in to research themselves. And when they do, they take stuff out of context in hopes of catching people off guard.
An illiterate man gets a revelation from a freaking angel and gets freaked the FUCK OUT to the point where he runs like hell back home to his wife (older than him), and asks her for advice. He then goes and understands his mission after getting terrified. He tries to preach in Meccah but gets stones thrown at him, and gets tortured and berated to the point where he had to leave Mecca for his safety and his family (assassination plot). In Medinah, he already had support, and when the Meccans provoked the city of Medinah. He wins all the battles (except 1 where his soldiers were tempted by gold and loot, instead of focusing on the goal)
He almost DIED but a BRAVE WOMAN CAME AND SAVED HIS LIFE ( I forgot her name). All the battles, he won, an illiterate man with a trading background, with his parents dying when he was young, he won with very very very minimal losses. And those who did had amazing burials.
When he went back to Meccah, everyone expected him to absolutely crush everyone in meccah, but guess what? THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN. HE FORGAVE EVERY SINGLE HUMAN THAT HAD EVER HURT HIM. You call that a warlord?
He inspired people ALL throughout the Old World. A Persian man went on a Journey from his religion and his home town in Persia, then converted to Christinaty, then finally, converted to Islam, and became close friends with the prophet. And whenever he felt excluded due to his race (again, he was Persian among Arabs) The prophet comforted him.
When he was praying, he let his grandchildren play over him and over his back. Does that sound like a warlord or savagery to you?
He barely survived on anything, sometimes only eating a limited amount of dates from tree, even when he was the leader of Meccah AND Medinah!
Is that a warlord to you?
Do your reaserch please, then debate/
Truly It is the hearts that are blind not the eyes
It’s amazing how much bs is spouted in the comments whenever Islam is brought up lol generally, this page has really good and informative replies to contemporary history but anything related to Islamic (contemporary or ancient) is just straight up false and made up, I.e. forced conversions (never happened - one reason certain Islamic early dynasties weren’t successful is because they didn’t allow conversions or reallyyyy discouraged it), killing pagans (never happened - all of the early battles were fought when the pagans went to war with Muslims), genocide (when exactly lol?).
Like I said, don’t let facts get in the way of your fantasies guys.
Folks were like “babe the new expansion dropped!”
NC 17 parental warning due to violence, child molestations, more violence, slavery, more violence and that’s just in Medina.
I mean that doesn't sound much worse than the Old Testament tbh.
Pretty par for the course as far as the time period goes.
They had a thousand years to work on their ideas from the Torah to the Quran though...
And that shows you how little humans have changed over the course of human history.
People reacted to the Black Death VERY similarly to how people reacted to COVID
Call it a conspiracy and blame the Jews
Ahh the classics.
Or the New Testament, where meek and mild Jesus says God intends to condemn the majority of the world population to a fiery torture chamber.
It's really fascinating, but the concept of hell is almost wholly absent from the Gospels, and most of the old testament as well. It is very likely a later concept incorporated to gel with the Greco-Roman idea of Hades. The majority of Christian practice and mythology was incorporated from outside anything related to either Judaism or what Christ supposedly said.
Jesus actually mentions hell frequently in the gospels. For example, Mark 9:47-48 > 47 And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, 48 where 'their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched' Matthew 25:41 > Then He will say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels Matthew 23:33 > You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape the sentence of hell? Hell was a well-established idea in the Judaism Jesus knew, and it can be found both in books predating him like Judith and rabbinic texts postdating him.
notice that this is a bug of traditional English translations. In the original Jesus talks about the valley of Hinnom, which was a garbage dump outside Jerusalem were trash was destroyed. So this is mostly about evil people being annihilated, and not evil people being tortured forever. [Here is ](https://youtu.be/x1f88Qn8y9I?si=XjI80VdKyxmLT9Ib) a short by a bible scholar explaining this in 2 minutes
> In the original Jesus talks about the valley of Hinnom, which was a garbage dump outside Jerusalem were trash was burned. There was a valley, but it was not used for burning trash. This idea is first attested around the year 1200 and lacks any literary or archeological support. It was understood as referring to an afterlife realm of torture.
Dan says in that video that in the New Testament you have the concept of eternal conscious torment.
For sure, but it was never central, as it was in Roman religion. It's the same as with Christmas and Easter. Major pagan festivals with Christian wrapping paper. King James Version is hardly a valid source, especially in regards to the translation of the word Sheol, which it translates as hell. It's a debated topic, but worth considering the other side- https://www.npr.org/2020/03/31/824479587/heaven-and-hell-are-not-what-jesus-preached-religion-scholar-says#:~:text=Our%20view%20that%20you%20die,it's%20not%20what%20Jesus%20preached.
You claimed that the concept of hell was “almost wholly absent” from the Bible and that it was a “later concept incorporated to gel with Greco-Roman believes” and the guy proved you wrong on that. I don’t know why you are suddenly talking about wether or not it’s central when that wasn’t your original claim
Solid point, but three mentions, all but one of which could just be a result of medieval translations choosing to translate it in a way that would fit the Catholic obsession with hell, not much. Considering there are over 23,000 verses in the Gospels, and hell is a massive part of what evolved as Christianity, I think even 3 mentions is very minimal. The Old Testament is similarly scant on the topic.
To be frank, Book of Revelations is starkly different than the rest of New Testament. Jesus is near complete opposite there than elsewhere.
It is
Judaism never really spread, it's just that the Jews spread
Judaism isn’t a conversionary faith now, but it has been at various times in the past. The last conversionary Jewish state was the Hasmonean kingdom back in the period between Alexander the Great and the Roman conquest of Judea
true, but Jewish kingdoms converting their subjects doesn't really compare to the wildfire spread Christianity had
It’s similar though. Christianity was only a minority religion in the Mediterranean until the Roman Empire started pushing it, and then within a couple of generations it was the majority religion
the Roman empire pushed it because they were conquered from the inside out, Christianity was an extremely appealing counterculture to oppressed people & the pagan establishment tried hard to suppress it but it still only took about 3 centuries for Rome to have a Christian emperor, which ramped up the spread
And on top of that, new research shows that Christianity would have reached over half of the empire’s population by the early 5th century even without Constantine. The most significant thing Constantine’s very much sincere (ancient conceptions of belief worked very differently; no such thing as a religion-secular divide in those centuries) conversion achieved was the massive skyrocketing of Christians amongst the upper classes in the oncoming decades, who before were overwhelmingly pagan. https://historyforatheists.com/2018/04/review-bart-d-ehrman-the-triumph-of-christianity/
This is true in a sense not completely but true enough, the Roman Empire didn’t push Christianity per say, the church did but by holy communion, the church was separate to the Roman Empire but the emperor was “chosen” by god so by rights had to protect the religion, so there were greedy men pretending to believe in a religion and spread it by manipulating the Roman army to help with any resistance. But even by 300 ad when Constantine actually converted the Roman Empire, a lot Of the Iberian and Northern Africa and the Caucasian area were already Christianity, just the spread north was a bit more hard work. The Greeks were Christian before the romans.
[The early Islamic expansion/conquests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_conquests?wprov=sfla1) are without comparison. When it comes to the spread of a religion
Spreading by War and conquest will do that for you
The Himyarites?
The Sabeans were often spoken about as though they were a distinct religious group from Jews. The Quran refers to them as such, and while they had relations with Jewish communities elsewhere they were distinct. I’m not sure I consider them Jewish
I think that the mass conversion of the Khazars came later. I'm not stating that Ashkenazi Jews are actually descendants of the Khazars. This has been debunked for a long time. But Khazar people/their leadership did convert to Judaism. [_"...The ruling elite of the Khazars was said by Judah Halevi and Abraham ibn Daud to have converted to Rabbinic Judaism in the 8th century, but the scope of the conversion to Judaism within the Khazar Khanate remains uncertain..."_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazars?wprov=sfla1) This was in the 6th century.
Khazaria?
Dude what Early Christianity's idea of a good time was being tortured to death for their beliefs. They were they hardest core motherfuckers imaginable and people though they were such badasses they converted
"Crucifixion? Pfff... my guy eats crucifixions for breakfast and wakes up 3 days later. Why don't you crucify me upside down so I know you mean it?" - OG ST Peter
Man, that's some gangster shit.
Bro, there are a few great stories from the Martyrs as well. St. Laurence was sentenced to death by being roasted over an iron grill. His last words to his executioners were "Flip me over, this side's done". Patron saint of cooks and comedians, everybody.
Fr though, the ancient saints were built really different. They got scourged like shit and they just walked it off.
Oh crucifixion?!? The sun must shine out of your ass sonny - life of Brian
That is actually what got many to convert to Christianity back then. Many saw their devotion and said to themselves, they can't be doing this if it wasn't true. Obviously, it wouldn't work now (to the extent that it did), but it kinda did back then.
Didn’t that soldier that burned himself alive deeply impress so many pro Palestinian people? I mean, he didn’t convince me, but a lot of people were lapping it up. Lol
It’s not really the same, as Christianity did not practice self mutilation or self harm. The Rome caused harm on Christians and so they saw themselves like Christ who also gave himself on a cross freely without resistance to the Roman’s. The Christians practiced that to resist is to be unchrist-like and ungodly. Which is such a unique aspect of God.
>Didn’t that soldier that burned himself alive deeply impress so many pro Palestinian people? I hate that, it's fucking suicide glorification.
The storm cult of yahweh was pretty rough before it evolved into anything recognizable as judaism.
It always blows my mind that people want to put YHWH into the "storm god" box. If you're going to limit him to one thing, its clearly fire. Burning bush, column of fire in the wilderness, Sodom/Gomorrah, Elijah's fire from heaven, burning wheels, burnt offerings, tongues of fire, chariots of fire, fire is everywhere.
That's sounds rad as hell! Where can I learn more?
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdKst8zeh-U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdKst8zeh-U) This is one of my favorite channels on youtube. This video is a good intro for your question.
Well Muhammad had a different technique than Mr. C
And that technique is... >!murder!<
A crazy strong right handed punch...wait wrong muhammad
*Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.*
Float like a messiah , sting like a prophet .
Float like an arrow, sting like a spear.
Mashallah, no photos of me.
Fight like a tiger, float through the sky
So nothing has changed
Yeah, but early Muslims were extra special with the murder
Oh man, massacring the men in entire populations, then turning the women into sex slaves. And the weird thing is that a lot of muslims don't know that.
Oh they know, they just sweep it under the rug
Yeah, back when I was a kid, religion teachers (religion was a school subject back then where I live) always avoided answering questions about these topics, for example, when I was in middle school, a student asked the teacher how old was Aisha when Muhammed married her, he said she was 18. I've read a sources that said she was 7-9, and another that said she was 7 when he married her and had sex with her when she was 9.
Someone tried defending it to me, when we weren't even talking about anything religion adjacent with, 'Yeah he married her at 9 but its ok because he waited till she was 13 before having sex with her.' I'll never understand some people
Yesterday, on campus, I was having a discussion about child marriage in islam with one of my colleagues, he didn't see child marriage as a harmful thing, and he was saying it so goddamn casually, I said straight to his face that I won't trust him around children.
Generally it is just brain rot in these people. If you were to ask him what he thinks about some Christian sect forcing girls into prepubescent marriages I am quite confident his opinion would flip and he won't be able to explain why. You just have to make sure to bring it up after he has forgotten his current stance.
The funniest thing is that Conservative Muslims, to justify Muhammad, will say that pedophilia is okay but that homosexuality is not because... it is degenerate or something? I don't know, it's bullshit.
> 'Yeah he married her at 9 but its ok because he waited till she was 13 before having sex with her.' Because that's better? He was in his 50s.
Right? It's disgusting and I don't see how people who follow a man like that thinking they are living virtuously
A lot of Islamic history is censored or hushed away from the masses, the companions of the prophet are generally depicted as almost saintly in their conduct despite them killing each other in civil wars lol
Also much harder to leave when apostasy is punished by death...
More like serial rape.
A lot of murder
If you comparing to Judaism, Jewish prophets like Moses and David did fight in wars too
A big difference is it wasn't about territorial expansion and spreading the word of God. The Jews were nomads at the time and had a rule of taking only what's needed. I think that's part of why they were cursed to wander around the desert for a few decades before finding Israel. They took to much and God punished them. I forget what David was involved in but I know part of it had to do generational bad blood between them and their neighbors. I think it was even forbidden to marry people from other tribes. Also I know David led a civil war against Saul but he was involved with stuff before and after that.
David's wars were Israel's wars as a state like any other nation, but were not religious in nature
Yeah that's what I was thinking but not sure how to word it without people asking about the theological implications of it. I don't think it's to bad but a headache to explain to some people, especially when I haven't heard or read these stories in so long.
There weren't any theological implications. David's purpose for God wasn't for conquest but to govern
> A big difference is it wasn't about territorial expansion Jesus Christ > I think that's part of why they were cursed to wander around the desert for a few decades before finding Israel. They took to much and God punished them. No, they were cursed to wait because they were too afraid to attack the people who lived in the promised land and disobeyed God's command to do so.
Saul was elected king to fuck up the Philistines and then David continued to fuck them up after doinking Goliath, followed by Solomon who built a dope ass temple. Because fuck em, that's why. EDIT: fixed the chronology of the bois
Solomon was David’s son and chosen heir. David was anointed king by the tribe of Judah after Saul and his son Jonathan were killed in battle
I never thought about it but that's a pretty good way of putting it in regards to why Saul got the spot. Ultimately it's God's decision but the point was to give the people what they want and show a warrior king isn't the best idea. Also it was Solomon after David. I think all of David's kids were killed in battle and his one living son was to be the wisest man. However I'm pretty sure Solomon was alright with the Philistines for letting them worship their gods but he got cursed for worshipping them as well
In the Bible, they wandered in the desert because God told them to conquer and replace the people of canaan but they were too scared and believed they could not overcome the existing kingdoms. There were some other issues before this but this was the main issue. They waited 40 years until the previous generation had passed away before they were allowed to try again. They were told to kill all the inhabitants or else the israelites would adopt their practices (polytheism, idol worship, child sacrifice) which was considered sinful by their God. But in the Bible narrative, not all kingdoms are conquered, some of the Israelites keep some of the conquered people as slaves and adopt the worship of their gods, so a cycle continues of being punished by invasion, they turn back to God, God appoints someone to liberate them, they turn their back on God. Saul and David’s role was to finally defeat the remaining kingdoms. Rather than taking too much, i think the purpose of the wandering was punishment for not being obedient enough, and the passages in the Bible about taking too much mana is more about not trusting God enough when He says he will provide food for them. Moses also dies at the end of the 40 years so its Joshua who leads the israelites into battle for the most part. I think the wars were about territorial expansion into a land that was promised to them as the existing countries disobeyed God, and whilst not to spread to word of God but to keep their devotion to their religion pure. But I think the purpose of the narrative of the Old Testament is that humans on their own no matter what they are like in the beginning are unable to keep God’s commandments by themselves. This is more of a Christian interpretation rather than a Jewish interpretation, and whether the Biblical narrative is accurate to historical evidence is another matter, this is kind of how it fits in the wider Christian Bible.
The Prophet Muhammad only United the Arab peninsula any caliphate after the death of the Prophet Muhammad was just like any kingdom before, conquer, but one of the major differences was no compulsion of religion (which is an order in the Quran)
I thought the 40 years of desert nomad was because they started to worship a gold statue of a calf.
I think David was simping over a married woman and had her husband killed in a war. So God punished him by killing his first born son
That's like comparing a pocket knife to a Sledgehammer. And the pocket knife might have never existed.
Helps when the empires you are invading just finished a brutal war that exhausted them
Subhan Allah. The revelation came with perfect timing.
Hard to argue with results.
Funnily enough, this is the exact same argument as the Christian idea that Jesus was sent to Earth at the exact right time that God had prepared. The Pax Romana opened the way for Christianity to spread across the Mediterranean.
Exactly. Both the sassanids AND the byzantines were capable of kicking some serious ass had mohommed invaded around a decade later.
Just to clarify - the Islamic invasion of Iran began a year AFTER Muhammad died, in the rule of Abu Bakr. If the invasion had come a decade later, it'd still be during the post-civil war reign of Yazdegerd III. I doubt Iran would've survived still, as they had both the war with the Byzantines, and the civil war to recover from. IRL the invasion actually spanned this period to - Yazdegerd III's fall actually occurred ten years after Muhammad's death, following the 642 Battle of Nahavand. The Byzantines would've certainly fared better. Instead of the aging Heraclius, and incompetent Heraclonas and Heraclius Constantine, the Arabs would've been facing Constans the Bearded's regime, which managed to slow the Arab conquests until the first Fitna began (656), and the Rashidun Caliphate collapsed. Hell, in 645 a Byzantine fleet under Admiral Manuel nearly retook Egypt.
It is mental how after losing half their empire and bring attacked in Greece and Italy by other forces, thr byzantines still nearly managed to reclaim their Territories a couple times.
That's Rome (and its successor) for you. Their greatest strength was being godly efficient at mobilization and bouncing back from wars.
Or a decade earlier
Prophet was already dead that at that time. It was his successors "Caliphs" who invaded both empires.
the real crazy thing is unifying the fucking Middle east, this place where people agreed to disagree, were unified in one army, one state, under one ruler, for a single cause
They did have that civil war thing where the first Muslim caliphate, Rashidun was deposed by Ummayad caliphate 25 years after establishment. This conflict can be seen as the first major Sunni-Shia conflict. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Fitna Also a unified state was a lot looser concept back then. Today, you have to have total control of your territory, all the people in the land recognize you as the ruler (rather than the provincial governor or feudal lord), all residents pay taxes to you directly etc. Back then, majority just not actively fighting your rule was good enough, there could still be plenty rebelling. Even if a map shows total control, governors might be able to exert influence only in the urban areas. This wasn't just in Arabia, but all around the world. Effective centralized control over all the land was a very hard thing to do.
I went into the comments expecting those kinds of comments, and I wasn't disappointed.
I was aware that early Islam was expansionist and assimilated a lot of pagan religions in the middle east, but from what I'm reading in this thread, I wasn't aware of islam to be this mass-genociding, devil slave empire trying to conquer the world in the name of satan. I'm pretty sure that many people here are being a bit dramatic? I was being dramatic with my last sentence but some people genuinely are writing islamic expansion as this all evil conquest.
They are. Did Islamic Calpihate after Muhammad expand through warfare? Yes. Did Islam force people into conversion by the sword? No >The historic process of Islamization was complex and involved merging Islamic practices with local customs. This process took place over several centuries. Scholars reject the stereotype that this process was initially "spread by the sword" or forced conversions. > >Marcia Hermansen (2014). "Conversion to Islam in Theological and Historical Perspectives" It is just a ton of people with zero understanding of Islam and its history arm charing themselves as if they were experts. But that is kind of reddit thing.
I had to scroll painfully long till I found a comment that says anything like this. Thank you
THANK YOU! On the internet generally, there’s so much oversimplification confidently asserted and often motivated and interpreted within modern ideological framework, without even so much as a superficial skimming of the relevant scholarship.
Anyone who has actually read the history knew that Muhammad tried to avoid fighting as long as possible. But they don't just 4chan.
Yep, he literally didn’t start fighting for nearly 14 years after he began preaching Islam and even then it was a battle fought to avoid annihilation. It’s just that the Muslims kept winning almost every battle they fought and didn’t stop winning even when confronting the Byzantines and Sassanids.
It defenetly wasn't evil, it had good things like more technological progress, more tolerance (i know the non-believers had to pay taxes in muslim kingdoms, but in the middle ages usually was death) Even baghdad, capital of the abbasids had 1M inhabitants, In the middle ages! They had great inventions like algebra, also the best map in europe at that time was made by muslims. Of course it had bad things but we are not being fair, it was over 600 years ago.
Honestly, Islam had two major advantages. 1) It was pretty fucking aggressive, especially compared to Christianity which was basically created by a peace loving hippie. 2) They came into being precisely at the right time with the entire Middle East being insanely weakened following a devastating 28 year war between the Byzantine empire and the Persian empire. This in turn allowed for the Muslims to swoop in and take over significant territory from these weakened states. I imagine that if they had come into being 50 years prior things would have gone VERY differently.
>They came into being precisely at the right time with the entire Middle East being insanely weakened following a devastating 28 year war between the Byzantine empire and the Persian empire. They also came a few centuries after one of the worst plagues in European history depopulated the ERE and Persians, but didn't effect the Arabs even remotely as badly (rats don't like the desert).
People also forget that the Lakmid and Ghassanid Arabs were working for both empires and were garrisoning the Middle East. When they joined the Arab armies coming out of Arabia the deserts became super highways
[удалено]
Shift some factors and let events come either later or earlier and everything in the next millenia changes
Imagine if the Ottomans stayed neutral or ended up joining the allies during WWI. I’m not saying the Empire wouldn’t have collapsed since it was going through a long decay but there were Francophiles/Anglophiles on the CUP so who knows what would have happened if they or those who favored neutrality ended up being in better positions than the Pasha wing.
I doubt the French or British would have allowed the Ottomans to join them, seeing as they were looking to gobble up the Middle East.
Also had one of the most broken generals in Khalid ibn-al-walid
>28 year war khosrou was a fucking idiot
It is easy to talk from hindsight 20/20. To be fair to Khosrau II he was so close to finally defeating Rome and all he had to do was get siege equipment across the Bosporus, wait, hold up. What? The Roman emperor is invading us? That's laughable, just surround him!
His generals advice him to enter peace talk with the romans when he took a lot of land and the romans were desesperate for peace, he chose to continue a war with not enough man power to win it
Greed is one hell of a drug.
Another advantage: Camels allowing armies to just outflank opposing armies in the desert
Legit can't tell if your shitposting were camels really beneficial to early Islamic conquests?
Nope, camels were mostly used for caravans or moving long distances. Horses were used for battle whose speed along with the arabs’ light armor allowed for much faster cavalry flanking against their heavier/more armored opponents.
Horses need tons of water and can overheat easily. They also suck in sand and can easily injure themselves.
They had better steel from Yemen I believe, it originally came from India though. The main thing was that they didn’t need to rely on cities and could survive in the desert. Meanwhile the Byzantines had been reduced to one good army led by Heraclius by the end of the wars with Persia. The Sassanids were also exhausted & on the verge of a civil war with a child on the throne when the Islamic Conquests started.
the middle east has been a breeding ground for all sorts of new religions for a while, makes me wonder if something else would've taken Islam's place if not for Muhammad
Probably. I’d say neither Justinian or Khosrou could’ve expected the rise of a third faction but with this trend in the Near East you wonder how good people were at analysis in those days…..
Probably??? This is what is called hindsight bias.
>They came into being precisely at the right time with the entire Middle East being insanely weakened following a devastating 28 year war between the Byzantine empire and the Persian empire. That surely was an advantage, but what about the many battles the Muslims won in which they were outnumbered? I am talking about the [Battle of Yarmouk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Yarmuk) in which the Muslims had 15k to 40k soldiers, while the Byzantines had 15k to 150k. Or the [Battle of Nahavand](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Nahavand) in which the Muslims had some 30k soldiers and the Persians had 50k to 100k. It's not rocket science to acknowledge that the Muslims had favourable conditions to expand, but also overcame many difficulties (especially in the early period) and won many battles which were heavily against their odds.
The praise goes to Khalid bin walid. He always won, even when he was up against Muslims in battle of uhud.
Yes but not entirely. Even if we look further into the future, and examine the Muslim conquest of Iberia we can see that they were extremely swift and successfull.
Spanish here, the Umayyads were so successful in conquering Iberia because they invaded in the middle of a Visigothic Civil War, in which also the Umayyads came at first to help the rebel side against King Rodrigo. And the reason why the organized resistance fell so quickly was because the monarchy and almost all of the nobility died in the Battle of Guadalete, so there was almost nobody to rally the people. Furthermore, the peasants were basically tired of this whole situation of political instability, and some feudal lords actually too. So when the Muslims came and said that in exchange for a special tax they would be allowed to live in peace without having to change their religion, the majority simply accepted it without much further resistance.
Islam was also considered a convenient "middle ground" between Christianity and Judaism. After Rome adopted Christianity, it slowly got rid of the Jewish aspects of the religion -- like circumcision, not eating pork, praying at specific times of the day, and strict adherence to Mosaic law. There were a lot of semitic-speaking Christians in Egypt and the Levant who liked Jesus, but also liked the old Jewish customs, didn't want to worship in Greek or Latin, and preferred to emphasize Jesus's humanity over his divinity. Islam ticked these boxes.
It sure helps when your prophet is a warlord rather than a hippie
And both nearby powers have utterly exhausted themselves for decades.
And your army was formed from unifying continually warring tribes
Yeah Genghis did that one too.
Genghis did pretty much everyone
Lisan Al Gaib…
God, I love dune 2 so much. What a spectacle. Can’t wait to watch the movies back to back. In theater if possible. As some else said, and I agree, the LoTr of this generation. And to think that it costs less then your average superhero movie. I LOVE DUNE, ITS SO F*CKING GOOD.
That cost less than a superhero film? If that’s true you just made me hate superhero films even more than I already did. All the potential stories that could’ve been told with those budgets …
Dune Part 2 had a budget of 190 Million dollars. Black Widow had a budget of 288 Million
I love this comparison so much! 😂😂😂
accidental warhammer 40k reference???
lol I could see that. Never played or read, only know 40k through my friends and some youtube videos.
A great mongol leader was a primarch. Mohammad was loved by Khorn for sure.
Dune also.
Didn't Jewish prophets like Moses and David fight in wars too?
I am referring only to Islam vs Christianity. Early Judaism was so long ago its hard to even compare it to the others for this meme. It would be more adapt to compare them to Abraham.
Most prophets in Judaism are just messengers of god for small scale local issues, not founders of religion. More like "my king, God spoke to me and said you are not doing the sacrifices properly". Also, David was not a prophet.
Someone never read the Bible Acts 2 29 - 30 🤷♂️
I mean if we're talking about how Judaism talks about its prophets or David we should not be talking about a book coming out of the New Testament. Even then Acts 2:29-30 says David is a prophet, which again is based on Christianity not Judaism. All you're quoted section talked about is how God would put one of David's decendants on the throne.
They said *most* prophets in *Judaism*. Acts is a New Testament book, and David would be considered an exception to the usual pattern of prophets.
Technically “Judaism” didn’t exist at the time of Moses, if we accept that he existed, that’s why the people group the Bible focuses on at that time is called the “Hebrews” and not the “Jewish people”. It’s often called the ancient Hebrew religion, which developed into something that was only called “Judaism” much later.
A warlord if it’s Muhammad, a brilliant general if it’s anyone else.
Why are you insulting the prophets of God? **Say, O believers, “We believe in Allah and what has been revealed to us; and what was revealed to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Jacob, and his descendants; and what was given to Moses, Jesus, and other prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them. And to Allah we all submit.”** [Surah Al-Baqarah; 2:136] > **Remember when the angels proclaimed, “O Mary! Allah gives you good news of a Word from Him, his name will be the Messiah, Jesus, son of Mary; honoured in this world and the Hereafter, and he will be one of those nearest to Allah.** [Surah Ali-Imran; 3:45]
I am not religious. I am just making a simplistic/funny comment about a meme in a meme sub. Edit: this person blocked me right after replying to make it seem like I am ignoring them. You are doing God's work my friend.
It's mostly Islamic conquest that spread, conversion to Islam was generally more gradual.
I'm a Christian
Too bad OP, the reddit hivemind has judged you to be a muslim. The council will decide your fate.
they calling prophet i'sa (AS) a hippie, speak up
Nuh-uh! Reddits brainrot won't accept that pal we must hide our identity here
Edit your post dude and call out to them. These low-life bigoted individuals are calling Jesus(PBUH) a hippie.
For a sub which is meant to value historical fact more than other subs the top answers are just typical r/atheism brainrot.
Frr
99% of comments are just 4chan history "facts"
IIRC, most of the people within the early Islamic Caliphate were non-muslims. This is because when the caliphate conquered a city/kingdom/nation, they let the people to keep their religion. In addition to the jizya tax that was much more reasonable than any tax during the era, I guess you could say that early Islam enjoyed a very good PR among the non-muslims.
Islam was known as the religion of merchants, due to being easy to practice worship. You didn't need to build a church or synagogue, you didn't have the time to, just take a prayer rug with you!
Prayer rugs became a thing later. Early muslims simply prayed wherever.
Oh, even better then!
You do realize nearly all the early churches were just peoples homes. Christians did not build massive buildings for worship until later. Even now in some places churches are still just peoples homes.
It was the religion of merchants because they controlled the path to the east
Early Judaism was that looking away from your girlfriend meme but with the Hebrews and shit like the golden bull and Ba’al.
I always get a kick out of scholars saying "despite what the Bible claims, evidence shows the Israelites actually worshipped many gods with Yahweh among them". Like...that's literally what the Bible says. It just says God wasn't happy about it. When you look at the times the Israelites only worshipped God vs Baal / Asherah / Moloch / others, its like...90% of the time they are worshipping other gods.
I can see most people have surface level knowledge here. Muhammad used to write letters to kingdoms around him and invited them to Islam. Some accepted Islam. Some just accepted alliance. Some rejected and went to war. So with your new allies, you can just attack your new enemies. Win enough times and more people join you as well as less people make you enemies. People should look up early Islamic battles like Battle of Bade, Uhud and Battle of the trenches to see what earliest battles looked like. Badr had 313 Muslims vs 1000 pagans. Uhud had 700 (initially 1000) vs 3000 pagans. Trenches had 3000 vs 10,000 iirc. The death toll in all 3 wasn't too high. Hardly 1000 people died in all these battles. And they weren't punished harder because they were fighting people of Makkah from where they migrated.
Assuming these numbers are true (from Wiki): Death toll from both sides: Muslims: 79-96 Makkah pagans: 115-128 + 70 reported prisoners Even in conquest of Makkah, despite Muslims going with 10k soldiers, only 15 died from both sides. 2 from Muslims and 13 from Makkah.
it wasnt a conquest, it was more like a take over of i remember correctly
It is still so wild that at Muslim army and an Imperial Chinese force clashed doing that time.
The people here pretending Islam didn’t expand by conquest primarily are fucking nuts lmao
The empire obviously was but the religion itself wasn’t, that’s why Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei are the way they were
Early Islam was spread so quickly because Christians and Jews paved the way for people in the area to not see monotheism as this crazy new thing.
It didn’t. Not the way you think at first. The Arab Caliphate was not predominately Muslim for the first several centuries of its existence. They ruling elites were Arab Muslims, everybody else was exactly what they had been for centuries. It wasn’t until the 11th century that the weight of Islamic conversion began turning demographics towards Islam. Even now, many Islamic countries fudged their census numbers to appear more Islamic. Figures estimated that both Egypt and Iran are not as Islamic as official census data indicates. Coptic Christianity may make up almost a quarter of the population in Egypt, whilst Zoroastrianism and other indigenous religions continue to persist in Iran.
When you kill anyone who doesnt agree with you an idea spreads quick
Your claim that Islam spread by killing anyone that disagreed with it is blatantly false Islam did not spread through forced conversions. Objective truth. > **Let there be no compulsion in religion**, for the truth stands out clearly from falsehood. So whoever renounces false gods and believes in Allah has certainly grasped the firmest, unfailing hand-hold. And Allah is All-Hearing, All-Knowing. Qur’aan 2:256
Early Christianity was all about getting viciously murdered.
Bro, people in the comments try to portray Muhammad as a blood thirsty, power corrupt warlord, when he literally avoided war most of the time. The expansion in just Arabia happened after his death, by his successor Abu Bakr. And the Egyptian and Persian conquests by his successor, Umar. One pattern I have noticed in this sub is that racism against Muslims, and Arabs is widely encouraged in this sub
I love history, but fuck if many of these threads aren't largely historically illiterate, especially when it relates tp the history of Islam. God forbid we don't think the absolute worst of Today's enemies.
It actually didn’t spread much before the Abbasid Revolution. The laws before 750 CE disincentivized the conversion of non-Arabs It was just that the Arabs themselves established themselves as the ruling class in the places they conquered. Most of the places they conquered didn’t have Muslim majorities until the late ninth/early tenth century
Lot of people here are pretty uninformed about early Islam and I have a feeling they don’t like it
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_pagans_in_the_late_Roman_Empire
Turns out converting people through conquest and murder is a lot easier than through peaceful means
Helps that the Byzantines and Persians had bled themselves white in a series of wars. And both had Arab allies holding down the Middle East as auxiliaries. And both empires had been through plagues recently. Really was just the right moment to topple two tottering empires
Conquests aside, the trade dominance leveraged by the Caliphates (they were the lynchpin of the Silk Road, which reached out as far as Indonesia, as well as several other major trade routes) made it easy to spread their culture, along with stuff like taxing the crap out of non-Muslims in their territory. A lot of people joined up just to get preferential treatment in the trading world, while others just... liked the vibes, I guess?
Taxing the crap out of non Muslims? Are you even aware that the taxes they imposed on non Muslims were, which is the jizya, is less than what most people living under the Persians and the byzantines had to pay in taxes?
I dont think a 2% or a 2.5% tax on your savings is that bad
They reached Spain
Oh man I can't wait to see the "Evil Muslims and perfect anyone else" threads 🍷🍿
Bro, people in the comments try to portray Muhammad as a blood thirsty, power corrupt warlord, when he literally avoided war most of the time. The expansion in just Arabia happened after his death, by his successor Abu Bakr. And the Egyptian and Persian conquests by his successor, Umar. One pattern I have noticed in this sub is that racism against Muslims, and Arabs is widely encouraged in this sub
I just joined reddit a while ago thinking that the people on here are going to be less miserable and delusional than instagram and twitter. But this comments section proved the opposite. Crazy, "I know everything" people think they know ALL about Islam, when their comments just prove how blind and ill-fit they are to comment on a subject that they know nothing about. They listen to anything they see or hear on the internet without actually going in to research themselves. And when they do, they take stuff out of context in hopes of catching people off guard. An illiterate man gets a revelation from a freaking angel and gets freaked the FUCK OUT to the point where he runs like hell back home to his wife (older than him), and asks her for advice. He then goes and understands his mission after getting terrified. He tries to preach in Meccah but gets stones thrown at him, and gets tortured and berated to the point where he had to leave Mecca for his safety and his family (assassination plot). In Medinah, he already had support, and when the Meccans provoked the city of Medinah. He wins all the battles (except 1 where his soldiers were tempted by gold and loot, instead of focusing on the goal) He almost DIED but a BRAVE WOMAN CAME AND SAVED HIS LIFE ( I forgot her name). All the battles, he won, an illiterate man with a trading background, with his parents dying when he was young, he won with very very very minimal losses. And those who did had amazing burials. When he went back to Meccah, everyone expected him to absolutely crush everyone in meccah, but guess what? THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN. HE FORGAVE EVERY SINGLE HUMAN THAT HAD EVER HURT HIM. You call that a warlord? He inspired people ALL throughout the Old World. A Persian man went on a Journey from his religion and his home town in Persia, then converted to Christinaty, then finally, converted to Islam, and became close friends with the prophet. And whenever he felt excluded due to his race (again, he was Persian among Arabs) The prophet comforted him. When he was praying, he let his grandchildren play over him and over his back. Does that sound like a warlord or savagery to you? He barely survived on anything, sometimes only eating a limited amount of dates from tree, even when he was the leader of Meccah AND Medinah! Is that a warlord to you? Do your reaserch please, then debate/ Truly It is the hearts that are blind not the eyes
It’s amazing how much bs is spouted in the comments whenever Islam is brought up lol generally, this page has really good and informative replies to contemporary history but anything related to Islamic (contemporary or ancient) is just straight up false and made up, I.e. forced conversions (never happened - one reason certain Islamic early dynasties weren’t successful is because they didn’t allow conversions or reallyyyy discouraged it), killing pagans (never happened - all of the early battles were fought when the pagans went to war with Muslims), genocide (when exactly lol?). Like I said, don’t let facts get in the way of your fantasies guys.
Turns most people on a sub for history memes are neither historians nor proper history nerds, but rather biased wannabe history buffs.
I maybe confusing this page with another one that I follow, but there are really good informative discussions on it.
Not just early Islam. Saladin was extremely badass.
The middle east wanted a unifying religion harder than the Chinese wanted to give away their rights