I wondered this idly, as a way of figuring out who is REALLY responsible for all the terrorism in the world today.
At first blush, you might think that, if Mohammad hadn’t lived, there’d be less terrorism, maybe. Certainly there’d be no Islamic terrorism.
However, I’m inclined to guess that people can always find reasons to hate/kill each other. Isolation and separation (like what happened to the Middle East after the end of the Silk Road) produces ignorance and xenophobia. I think the larger cause of terrorism today is really the ignorance and isolation of the Middle East for the last 500 years.
If there had been continuous exchange of ideas/information/goods between the Middle East and the rest of the world for that time period, like there was during the time of the Silk Road, I think we wouldn’t be where we are today.
Without Mohammed (Peas Be Upon Him), the world would be unreognizable to-day. Without the rise of Islam and the subsequent wars of conquest, the Sassanid Empire in Persia (ie Iran) survives for far longer while Byzantium doesn’t lose Jersualem and Egypt. That in itself will have massive effects on history-I can’t say what’ll happen not being an expert in those periods.
My guess is that something quite similar to Islam would have been created by someone else and caught on; apparently, in that time and place there was a market for such an belief system, and there’s always would-be prophets trying to push their religion. Mohammad was just one whose product caught on.
Overage men, who successfully convinced thousands of followers to surrender their underage teenage virgin girls by the hundreds, as well as their hard earned money, to them…while insisting they have a direct line of communication with god, telling them to make these requests of their flocks of sheeple.
Minor cult leaders, not remotely comparable to Mohammad in terms of their success.
None of that has any long term, large scale importance. Abusive people are a dime a dozen; Islam is something much larger and longer lived than Mohammad. He’s only of importance now because he started it, not because of what he did or did not do with a girl over a thousand years ago.
True. I’ve heard it conjectured that if Jesus of Nazareth had never lived one of the mystery cults would have risen to prominence in the Roman Empire.
Back to the OP:
One big issue is that of the Holy Land. If the hypothetical different religion doesn’t consider Israel/Jerusalem/etc. very important then militant Islamists would lose one of their best pieces of propaganda (‘the West is supporting the Jews who occupy our Holy Land’).
Much more of the learning of the Greeks and Romans might have been lost if it had not been preserved by Islamic scholars while Europe was in the Dark Ages. Development of modern science might have been delayed without the advances in Chemistry, Astronomy, and other fields made by Islamic scientists. Without these, the Renaissance might have taken place much later or in a much different form.
The European discovery of the Americas and the rest of the Age of Discovery might have been delayed if the Middle East had not been controlled by Islamic regimes. (However, there might still have been an interest in trying to do an end run around whatever power controlled the trade routes to the East.)
Historical counter-factuals make for shitty dissertation subjects. In fact I doubt any reputable university would accept such a thing, because basically it comes down to speculation. Maybe slightly informed speculation, but speculation nonetheless. The short answer to what would happen if there was no Muhammad or no Jesus Christ or no Siddhartha or no Zoroaster is “we don’t know.”
Counter-factuals can be fun to think about, just so long as you remember that you’re just spit-balling. And at the level of a major barely attested religious prophet that purportedly founded a massive world religion, you’re doing it into the wind ;).
I think all we know for certain is that Islam would not exist. The civilizations that flowered under their banner would have continued, except for maybe the unification of the Arabian peninsula. So the spread of Christianity, prominence of Judaism, and spread of Hinduism and Buddhism are reasonable assumptions but I question the conclusions that are based as if the persian empires just ceased to be.
The hard sciences are usually preserved and advanced by the machinery of war so I don’t see them taking much of a hit during the “dark ages”. Astronomy did not really fall into that category (at that time) and it’s preservation in the Mid East would have made a difference on the whole of things.
You shouldn’t blame Muhammad for all of the negative excesses carried out by Muslims. The original version of Islam was pretty open-minded. Unfortunately more narrow-minded people later came along and used their religion as an excuse to enhance their authority and oppress other people.
It is generally acknowledged that Islamic science was much more developed than that of Europe during the Dark Ages and Medieval Period. Interpretations vary, but at the very least Islamic science preserved classical knowledge and served to transmit it to Renaissance Europe. Others such as Will Durant “held that Muslim scientists helped in laying the foundations for an experimental science with their contributions to the scientific method and their empirical, experimental and quantitative approach to scientific inquiry.”
I really doubt that would be an issue; that involves political issues and history that simply wouldn’t have occurred the same way after a change so far back. There’s no reason to assume that there will even be a “West” instead of some other cultural division; much less a World War II and Jews establishing a state with Western support at the present location of Israel.
I’m not discounting this. They kept the flame of science alive at a time when it was a patriarchal commodity. But it’s not like it died at this period in time in Europe. This is why I referred to the machinery of war. It’s been the historic barometer of science. That and religious structures. You see the best and latest technology applied. and it is well applied in Europe and the Mid East during these times, the machinery of war by necessity and religious structures as an extension of the best that can be offered to one’s God.
That’s actually kind of what I meant. If there was no Holy Land (or no Holy Land issue) then militant extremism would be less prominent, if it existed at all.
Of course, there would still be conflicts over oil.