Correction --

Submitted by GWK (United States), Aug 19, 2008 at 21:53

Correction --

Islam adapts Mohammed's local Mekkan culture with his era's native Arabian beliefs and the concurrent Christian heresies that populated the caravan routes that Mohammed had been exposed to, along with the pockets of Jewish culture that found refuge in Yathrib and along the routes where the Mekkan caravans traveled.

The Mekkan culture was competitive and violent and very different from the culture of Dark Age Christianity and post-Diaspora Judaism. It is no wonder that it was able to thrive in Arabia, nor that it could defeat the befuddled and plague-addled Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire forces in Syria and Palestine and the vain and despotically led Persian Empire forces shortly after Mohammed's death.

The bigger mystery is why the once very Christian Vandals and Visigoth states of North Africa's Mahgreb and Spain fell so quickly to the charms of the young and adaptable religion -- Islam. Certainly, however, it didn't spread beyond the Pyrenees through the examples of missionaries and celibate and pacifistic monks.

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