- Moderator
- #7,541
The Arab culture and Muslim religion spread widely - by conquest and also by benign conversion as with most religions.
"Benign" conversion can only happen in a place of equality. There was never such a thing, until VERY recently, and then only in certain places, the ME not being one of them, except for Israel. So, no, I'm not buying what you are selling.
Actually...benign conversion is quite frequent historically. For example - people simply decide that the other faith has more to offer than the original one. In the case of Islam, it had more to offer the poor and down trodden than the polytheistic faiths in the region. In other cases - the ruler or king converts and as a result his subjects do. It's no different than the way Christianity spread.
Spread of Islam - Wikipedia