essay on how islam spread so quickly

How Islam Spread Throughout the World

Published: December 14, 2018 • Updated: October 19, 2020

Author : Hassam Munir

بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ

In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

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1  Richard M. Eaton, “Islamic history as global history,” in Michael Adas, ed.,  Islamic and European Expansion: The Forging of a Global Order  (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), 12.

2  Michael Lipka, “Muslims and Islam: Key findings in the U.S. and around the world,”  Pew Research Center , 9 August 2017,  http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/08/09/muslims-and-islam-key-findings-in-the-u-s-and-around-the-world/ .

3  All quotations from the Qur ʾ ān in this article are taken from Mustafa Khattab,  The Clear Quran: A Thematic English Translation of the Message of the Final Revelation  (Lombard, IL: Book of Signs Foundation, 2016).

4   Abd al Wahid Dhanun Taha , “The Historical Process of the Spread of Islam,” in  The Different Aspects of Islamic Culture, Volume Three: The Spread of Islam throughout the World , eds. Idris El Hareir and El Hadji Ravane M’Baye (Paris: UNESCO, 2011), 134.

5  Abū Muhammad  ʿ Abd al-Malik ibn Hishām,  As-Sīra an-Nabawiyya , Vol. II, ed. Mustafa as-Saqqa et al. (Cairo: Matba ʿ at Mustafā al-Bāb ī  al- Halabī, 1936),  590.

6   They narrate that Abu Burda reported: “The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, sent Mu’adh and himself to Yemen and he said, ‘Make things easy and do not make things difficult. Give glad tidings and do not repel people. Cooperate with each other and do not become divided.’” ( Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī  2873,  Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim  1733; see Abu Amina Elias, “ Hadith on Da’wah: Give glad tidings, make it easy, and remain united ,” ).

7  Taha, “The Historical Process of the Spread of Islam,” 134.

8  S. von Sicard, “Malagasy Islam: Tracing the History and Cultural Influences of Islam in Madagascar,”  Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs  31, no. 1 (2011): 102; Vincent J.H. Houben, “Southeast Asia and Islam,”  The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science   588 (2003): 153.

9  Ulrike Freitag, “Reflections on the Longevity of the Hadhrami Diaspora in the Indian Ocean,” in  The Hadhrami Diaspora in Southeast Asia: Identity Maintainance or Assimilation? , eds. Ahmed Ibrahim Abushouk and Hassan Ahmed Ibrahim  (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 22.

10  Rakhym Beknazarov, “Analysing the Spread of Islam in Western Kazakhstan through Architectural Monuments,”  Anthropology of the Middle East  3, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 35.

11  D.G. Tor, “The Islamization of Central Asia during the Sāmānid era and the reshaping of the Muslim world,”  Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies   72, no. 2 (2009): 288-9.

12  Rekha Chowdhary,  Jammu and Kashmir: Politics of Identity and Separatism  (New York: Routledge, 2014), 162; Muslims are reported to make up 97.16% of Indian-held Kashmir’s population, according to this source; Pakistan-held Kashmir is estimated to be 99% Muslim.

13  Sayyed M. F. Bukhari,  Kashmir Main Islam: Manzar Aur Pasmanzar  [Islam in Kashmir: Historical Context], (Srinagar: Maktaba  ʿ Ilm-o-Adab, 1998), 18.

14  Yoginder Sikand, “Hazrat Bulbul Shah: The First Known Muslim Missionary in Kashmir,”  Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs  20, no. 4 (2000): 363.

15   Baharistān-i-Shahī   [The Royal Garden] (Calcutta: Firma KLM), 22; this is a Persian chronicle written by an anonymous author, published c. 1614, and translated into English in Kashinath Pundit,  Baharistan-i-Shahi: A Chronicle of Mediaeval Kashmi r  (Srinagar: Gulshan Books, 2013).

16  Mohibbul Hasan,  Kashmir under the Sultans  (Srinagar: Ali Mohammad and Sons, 1974), 39.

17  Sikand, “Hazrat Bulbul Shah,” 366.

18  Ibid., 367.

19  Jamal J. Elias, “A second ʿAlī: the making of Sayyid ʿAlī Hamadānī in popular imagination,”  Muslim World  90, no. 3-4 (Fall 2000): 397.

20  Frode Jacobsen,  Hadrami Arabs in Present-day Indonesia  (New York: Routledge, 2009), 11.

21  Freitag, “Reflections on the Longevity of the Hadhrami Diaspora in the Indian Ocean,” 24.

22  Syed Farid Alatas, “The Tariqat Al-‘Alawiyya and the Emergence of the Shi‘i School in Indonesia and Malaysia,” paper presented at the conference ‘The Northwestern Indian Ocean as Cultural Corridor,’ Department of Social Anthropology, University of Stockholm, Stockholm, 17–19 January 1997, p. 8.

23  Samory Rashid, “The Islamic Origins of Spanish Florida’s Ft. Musa,”  Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs  21, no. 2 (2001): 211.

24  Sylviane A. Diouf,  Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (15 th  Anniversary Edition)  (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 212.

25  Ibid., 213.

26  Ibid . , 212.

27  Mehrdad Shokoohy, “Architecture of the Sultanate of Ma’bar in Madura, and Other Muslim Monuments in South India,”  Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society  1, no. 1 (1991): 36.

28  A. D. W. Forbes, “Malabar,” in  Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition , Edited by P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W. P. Heinrichs.

29  Abū’l-Hasan al-Mas‘ūdī,  Murūj al-Dhahab   [Meadows of Gold], 2 Vols.   (Cairo, 1948), Vol. I, 170.

30  Stephen F. Dale, “Trade, Conversion and the Growth of the Islamic Community of Kerala, South India,”  Studia Islamica , no. 71 (1990): 162.

31  Zvi Ben Dor Benite, “Follow the white camel: Islam in China to 1800,” in David Morgan and Anthony Reid (eds.),  The New Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 3: The Eastern Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries  (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 413.

32  Hyunhee Park,  Mapping the Chinese and Islamic Worlds: Cross-Cultural Exchange in Pre-Modern Asia  (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 32.

33  Ibid., 70.

34  Ibid., 62.

35  Geoff Wade, “An Early Age of Commerce in Southeast Asia, 900-1300 CE,”  Journal of Southeast Asian Studies  40, no. 2 (2009): 231.

36  Michael Flecker, “A ninth century AD Arab or Indian shipwreck in Indonesia: First evidence for direct trade with China,”  World Archaeology  32, no. 3 (2001): 335-54.

37  S. Setudeh-Nejad, “The Cham Muslims of Southeast Asia: A Historical Note,”   Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs  22, no. 2 (2002): 452.

38  Geoff Wade, “Early Muslim expansion in South-East Asia, eighth to fifteenth centuries,” in  The New Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 3: The Eastern Islamic World, Eleventh to Eighteenth Centuries , eds. David Morgan and Anthony Reid (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 402.

39  Engseng Ho,  The Graves of Tarim: Genealogy and Mobility across the Indian Ocean  (Los Angeles: University of California Press),  48.

40  Freitag, “Reflections on the Longevity of the Hadhrami Diaspora in the Indian Ocean,” 24.

41  Ibid.

42  Armando Cortesão,  The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires , 1512-1515  (Laurier Books Ltd., 1990),  lxxv .

43  M. Hadzijahic and N. Šukric,  Islam I Muslimani u Bosni I Hercegovini   [Islam and Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina] (Sarajevo: Starješinstvo Islamske Zajednice, 1977), 21.

44   Smail Balic , “Islam in Eastern and South-East Europe,” in Idris El Hareir and El Hadji Ravane M’Baye (eds.),  The Different Aspects of Islamic Culture, Volume Three: The Spread of Islam Throughout the World  (Paris: UNESCO, 2011), 788.

45  Katarína Štulrajterová, “Convivenza, Convenienza and Conversion: Islam in Medieval Hungary (1000-1400 CE),”  Journal of Islamic Studies  24, no. 2 (2013): 182-3.

46  Nora Berend, “A Note on the End of Islam in Medieval Hungary: Old Mistakes and Some New Results,”  Journal of Islamic Studies  25, no. 2 (2014): 206.

47  Waines,  The Odyssey of Ibn Battuta , 85-90.

48  H. Neville Chittick, “The East Coast, Madagascar and the Indian Ocean,” in Roland Oliver (ed.),  The Cambridge History of Africa, Volume 3: From c. 1050 to c. 1600   (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 201-4.

49  Hamad S. Ndee, “Islam and Islamic Culture: Earliest Foreign Influences on Physical Activity in Pre-Colonial East Africa,”  The International Journal of the History of Sport  27, no. 5 (2010): 804.

50  Martin Meredith,  The Fortunes of Africa: A 5,000-Year History of Wealth, Greed, and Endeavor  (London, UK: Simon & Schuster, 2014), 70-79.

51  Michael Brett, “Egypt”, in Chase F. Robinson (ed.),  The New Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 1: The Formation of the Islamic World, Sixth to Eleventh Centuries  (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 557.

52  Ibid.

53  Eric Ross, “A Historical Geography of the Trans-Saharan Trade,” in Graziano Krätli and Ghislaine Lydon (eds.),  The Trans-Saharan Book Trade: Manuscript Culture, Arabic Literacy and Intellectual History in Muslim Africa  (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 15.

54  Ibid., 16.

55  For an account of Barth’s travels, see Steve Kemper,  A Labyrinth of Kingdoms: 10,000 Miles through Islamic Africa  (W.W. Norton & Company, 2012).

56  Lings,  Muhammad , 81.

57  Diouf,  Servants of Allah , 70.

58  Ibid.

59  Samory Rashid, “The Islamic Origins of Spanish Florida’s Ft. Musa,”   Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs  21, no. 2 (2001): 209.

60  Dalia Mogahed and Youssef Chouhoud,  American Muslim Poll 2017: Muslims at The Crossroads   (Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, 2017); retrieved from  https://www.ispu.org/american-muslim-poll-2017-key-findings/ .

61  Ira M. Lapidus,  A History of Islamic Societies   (2nd   ed.)  (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 760.

62  Markus Vink, ““The World’s Oldest Trade”: Dutch Slavery and Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Century,”  Journal of World History  14, no. 2 (2003): 139.

63  Ibid., 148.

64  Gerrie Lubbe, “Tuan Guru: Prince, Prisoner, Pioneer,”  Religion in South Africa  7, no. 1 (1986): 25.

65  Roman Loimeier, “Africa south of the Sahara to the First World War,” in Francis Robinson (ed.),  The New Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 5: The Islamic World in the Age of Western Dominance  (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 293.

66  Ibid.

67  Jan Ali, “Islam and Muslims in Fiji,”  Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs  24, no. 1 (2004): 141.

68  Anwarul Q. Rathur, “Muslim Encounter Down Under: Islam in Western Australia,”  Institute of Muslim Minority Affairs Journal   1, no. 1 (1979): 103.

69  Hassam Munir, “Meet Ali Abouchadi, the trailblazing Canadian Muslim,”  iHistory , retrieved from  http://www.ihistory.co/ali-ahmed-abouchadi/ ; see also, Peter Baker,  Memoirs of an Arctic Arab: A Free Trader in the Canadian North, The Years 1907-1927   (Yellowknife Publishing Company, 1976).

70  Maya Shatzmiller, “Marriage, Family, and the Faith: Women’s Conversion to Islam,”  Journal of Family History  21, no. 3 (July 1996): 235. 

71  Eduardo Manzano Moreno, “The Iberian Peninsula and North Africa,” in Chase F. Robinson (ed.),  The New Cambridge History of Islam, Volume 1: The Formation of the Islamic World, Sixth to Eleventh Centuries   (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 587.

72  See, for details, Simon Barton, “Marriage across frontiers: sexual mixing, power and identity in medieval Iberia,”  Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies  3, no. 1 (2011): 1-25.

73  David James,  Early Islamic Spain: The  History  of Ibn al-Qu ṭ iya  (New York: Routledge, 2009), 50-51.

74  Moreno, “The Iberian Peninsula and North Africa,” 586-7.

75  Eric Dursteler, “Fatima Hatun n é e Beatrice Michiel: Renegade Women in the Early Modern Mediterranean,”  The Medieval History Journal   12, no. 2 (2009): 375.

76  Ibid., 372.

77  Gabriella Erdélyi, “Turning Turk as a Rational Decision in the Hungarian-Ottoman Frontier Zone,”  The Hungarian Historical Review  4, no. 2 (2015): 333.

78  Ibid., 323.

79  Charu Gupta, “Intimate Desires: Dalit Women and Religious Conversions in Colonial India,”  The Journal for Asian Studies  73, no. 3 (August 2014): 678.

80  Ibid.

81  Lawrence Oschinsky, “Islam in Chicago: Being a Study of the Acculturation of a Muslim Palestinian Community in that City,” MA thesis (University of Chicago, 1947), 35.

82  Jonathan Friedlander, “The Yemenis of Delano: A Profile of a Rural Islamic Community,” in  Muslim Communities in North America , eds. Y.Y. Haddad and J. I. Smith (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 441.

83  Patrick D. Bowen, “U.S. Latina/o Muslims Since 1920: From ‘Moors’ to ‘Latino Muslims,’”  Journal of Religious History   37, no. 2 (June 2013): 181.

84  Ibid.

85  Anita M. Weiss, “South Asian Muslims in Hong Kong: creation of ‘local boy’ identity,”   Modern Asian Studies , 25, no. 3 (1991): 432.

86  Sithi Hawwa, “From Cross to Crescent: religious conversion of Filipina domestic workers in Hong Kong,”   Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations  11, no. 3 (2000):  353.

87  Martin Lings,  Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources  (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1991), 109-10.

88  Zafar Bangash,  Power Manifestations of the Sīrah: Examining the Letters and Treaties of the Messenger of Allah  (ﷺ)   (Richmond Hill: Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought, 2011), 225-6.

89  Hugh Kennedy,  The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live In  (Philadelphia: Da Capo Press, 2007), 93.

90  Thomas A. Carlson, “The Geography of Islamization in Syria, 600-1500,”  Journal of the American Oriental Society  135, no. 4 (2015): 791.

91 David Cook, “The Beginnings of Islam in Syria during the Umayyad Period,” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 2002, p. 280.

92  Chase F. Robinson,  ʿ Abd al-Malik  (London: Oneworld Publications, 2012), ch. 6.  

93  Tan Ta Sen,  Cheng Ho and Islam in Southeast Asia  (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2009), 171.

94  For a detailed discussion about these contributions, see Kong Yuanzhi, “On the Relationship between Cheng Ho and Islam in Southeast Asia,”  Kyoto Review of Southeast Asia  10 (2008),  https://kyotoreview.org/issue-10/on-the-relationship-between-cheng-ho-and-islam-in-southeast-asia/ .

95 This is based on the CIA Factbook’s estimate for 2014.

96  Dawn-Marie Gibson,  A History of the Nation of Islam: Race, Islam and the Quest for Freedom  (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2012), 77.

97  Kambiz GhaneaBassiri,  A History of Islam in America: From the New World to the New World Order  (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010),   288.

98  Felicitas Becker, “Commoners in the process of Islamization: reassessing their role in the light of evidence from southeastern Tanzania,”  Journal of World History  3 (2008): 236.

99  Ibid., 239.

100  Ibid.

101  Patricia Crone,  Slaves on Horses: The Evolution of the Islamic Polity  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 237 n. 358.

102  John Nawas, “A Client’s Client: The Process of Islamization in Early and Classical Islam,”  Journal of Abbasid Studies  1 (2014): 144.

103  Alwyn Harrison, “Behind the Curve: Bulliet and Conversion to Islam in al-Andalus Revisited,”  Al-Masāq  24, no. 1 (2012): 39.

104  Richard W. Bulliet,   Conversion to Islam In the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History  ( Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979),  28.

105   Bahjat Kamil Abd al-Latif , “The Prophet Muhammad and the Universal Message of Islam,” in Idris El Hareir and El Hadji Ravane M’Baye (eds.),  The Different Aspects of Islamic Culture, Volume Three: The Spread of Islam Throughout the World  (Paris: UNESCO, 2011), 39.

106   Richard M. Eaton,  The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier , 1204-1760  (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993),  127.

107  Ahmed Afzaal, “The Origin of Islam as a Social Movement,”   Islamic Studies  42, no. 2 (Summer 2003): 225.

108  See, for example, Fred M. Donner,  Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam  (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), 41.

109  Ismā‘īl ibn Kathīr, Trevor Le Gassick (trans.), and Ahmed Fareed (ed.),  The Life of the Prophet Muhammad, Volume I:   Al-S ī ra al-Nabawiyya   (Reading, UK: Garnet Publishing, 1998), 358.

110   Abdallah Salem al-Zelitny , “Islam in Afghanistan,” in Idris El Hareir and El Hadji Ravane M’Baye (eds.),  The Different Aspects of Islamic Culture, Volume Three: The Spread of Islam throughout the World  (Paris: UNESCO, 2011), 595-6.

111  Peter Hardy, “Modern European and Muslim Explanations of Conversion to Islam in South Asia: A Preliminary Survey of the Literature,”   Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland , no. 2 (1977): 188; Niharranjan Ray, “Medieval Bengali Culture,”  Vis v a Bharati Quarterly  11, no. 2 (1945): 49.

112  Guity Nashat, “Women in the Middle East, 8,000 BCE to 1700 CE,” in Teresa A. Meade and Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks (eds.),  A Companion to Gender History  (Oxford: Wiley, 2004), 245-6.

113  Dursteler, “Fatima Hatun,” 363.

114  Ibid.

115  David Motadel,  Islam and Nazi Germany’s War   (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), 213.

116  Ibid.

117  Mark S. Hamm, “Prisoner Radicalization and Sacred Terrorism: A Life Course Perspective,” in Richard Rosenfeld, Kenna Quinet, and Crystal Garcia (eds.),  Contemporary Issues in Criminology Theory and Research: The Role of Social Institutions  (Belmont: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2012), 174.

118  SpearIt,  American Prisons: A Critical Primer on Culture and Conversion to Islam  (Sarasota: First Edition Design Publishing, 2017), 13.

119  SpearIt, “Muslim Radicalization in Prison: Responding with Sound Penal Policy or the Sound of Alarm?”  Gonzaga Law Review  49, no. 1 (2014): 37.

120  Selçuk Esenbel, “Fukushima Yasumasa and Utsunomiya Tarō on the Edge of the Silk Road: Pan-Asian Visions and the Network of Military Intelligence from the Ottoman and Qajar Realms into Central Asia,” in Selçuk Esenbel (ed.),  Japan on the Silk Road: Encounters and Perspectives of Politics and Culture in Eurasia  (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 103.

121  Mikiya Koyagi, “The Hajj by Japanese Muslims in the Interwar Period: Japan’s Pan-Asianism and Economic Interests in the Islamic World,”  Journal of World History  24, no. 4 (2013): 859.

122  Ibid., 850.

123  Ismā ʿ īl Nawwāb, “A Matter of Love: Muhammad Asad and Islam,”  Islamic Studies  39, no. 2 (2000): 230.

124  Ibid., 171.

125  Malcolm X,  The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley  (New York: Ballantine Books, 1973), 396.

126  One person who was drawn to Mali based on reports he had heard was the famous traveler Ibn Battūtah, who visited in 1352; see David Waines,  The Odyssey of Ibn Battuta: Uncommon Tales of a Medieval Adventurer  (London: I.B. Taurus, 2010), 172.

127  John Hunwick,  Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire:   Al-Sa ʿ dī’s Ta ʾ rīkh al-Sūdān Down to 1613 and Other Contemporary Documents   (Leiden: Brill, 2003),  lvi .

128  Brent Singleton, “That Ye May Know Each Other”: Late Victorian Interactions between British and West African Muslims,”  Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs  29, no. 3 (2009): 374.

129  Ibid., 376.

130  “Sierra Leone Mohammedan in Liverpool,”  Sierra Leone Weekly News , February 3, 1894, p. 5.

131  Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, “Islam and the Cultural Imperative , ” Nawawi Foundation, 2004, p. 1, retrieved via the University of Alberta from  http://www.artsrn.ualberta.ca/amcdouga/Hist347/additional%20rdgs/article%20culture%20imperative.pdf .

132  Taqī al-Dīn i bn Taymīyah, in Abd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Qāsim (ed.),  Majmū’ al-Fatāwà , v. 29  (Madīnah: Majmaʻ al-Malik Fahd li-Ṭibāʻat al-Muṣḥaf al-Sharīf, 1995), 16-17.

133  Richard M. Eaton,  The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760  (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 315.

134  See, for ex a mple, Gabriele Marranci, “Multiculturalism, Islam and the Clash of Civilizations Theory: Rethinking Islamophobia,”  Culture and Religion  5, no. 1 (2004).

135  For a discussion on the merits and shortcomings of Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony, see T. J. Jackson Lears, “The Concept of Cultural Hegemony: Problems and Possibilities,”  The American Historical Review   90, no. 3 (1985): 567-593.

136  Ronit Ricci, “Translating Conversion in South and Southeast Asia: The Islamic  Book of One Thousand Questions  in Javanese, Tamil and Malay,” PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2006, p. 3.

137  Ronit Ricci, “Conversion to Islam on Java and the  Book of One Thousand Questions ,”  Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde   146, no. 1 (2009): 28-9.

138  Becker, “Commoners in the process of Islamization,” 233.

139  Michael Lambek, “Certain Knowledge, Contestable Authority: Power and Practice on the Islamic Periphery,”  American Ethnologist  17, no. 1 (February 1990): 34.

140  Ishayahu Landa, “New Light on Early Mongol Islamisation: The Case of Arghun Aqa’s Family,”  Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society  28, no. 1 (2018): 77.

141   Yoni Brack, “A Mongol Princess Making Hajj: The Biography of El Qutlugh Daughter of Abagha Ilkhan (r. 1265-82),”  Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society   21, no. 3 (2011): 333.

142  Ibid., 358-9.

143  Ibid., 334.

144  The exact date of Cobbold’s conversation of the Pope is not recorded, though it must have occurred before the publication of her book,  Pilgrimage to Mecca ,  in 1934, since she mentioned it therein.

145  Marcia Hermansen, “Roads to Mecca: Conversion Narratives of European and Euro-American Muslims,”  The Muslim World  89, no. 1 (January 1999): 60.

146  Thomas A. Carlson, “When did the Middle East become Muslim? Trends in the study of Islam's “age of conversions,”  History Compass  16 (2018): 4-5.  

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Why Islam Spreads so Quickly: Factors Behind Its Rapid Expansion

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Unified message and strong leadership, effective communication and trade routes, flexibility and tolerance, socio-economic factors, conclusion: a complex interplay of factors.

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Why Did Islam Spread So Quickly (Essay Sample)

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How Islam Quickly Spread

From being a small religious sect in the Middle East, Islam has for centuries grown into one of the world’s major religions with close to 1.8 billion adherents worldwide. The reason for this remains to be seen, but many historians have generally attributed this to several factors that shaped the religion’s character and continue to do so in the contemporary world.

First, Islam’s rapid growth is the result of politico-military conquests in the Early Middle Ages. Second, trade and commerce centered in the city of Mecca helped in the dispersion of Islamic thought across Europe and much of Asia and Africa. Finally, Islamic tenets had encouraged individuals and scholars to travel across the globe and introduce the religion to a diverse range of ethnicities.

Military Conquest

Islam was first introduced around 600 AD through the prophet Muhammad. Acting upon the revelations of the archangel Gabriel, Muhammad had set out on preaching about the new faith through the Qur’an, which is a collection of revelations and tenets composing the core of Islamic tradition and culture.

After the death of Muhammad, his successors set out to spread the message of Islam throughout the Middle East, West Asia, and North Africa. The Arabs were able to wrest areas from the Persian and Byzantine empires. Under Islamic occupation, citizens in these lands enjoyed extensive freedom they would not otherwise get from their former masters. The people then willingly converted into Islam, enticed by the promise of eternal paradise.

Trade and Commerce

The spread of Islam can also be attributed to the trading between the Middle East and other parts of the globe. In its height, Mecca was a city of prosperity and wealth. Commerce in the region was highly concentrated in this city, and foreign merchants flock there to trade their goods for spices, dates and other local products they could not get from anywhere else.

Arab merchants also conducted trade in many parts of the globe. Along with opportunities to net a profit, these merchants also traded Islamic customs and ideas. They also acted as missionaries and advocates of Islam, who preached the Qur’an to curious natives. Eventually, these natives would also be influenced by these teachings and would adopt the ways of Islam as their own.

A case in point is the opening up of trade routes into Southeast Asia. Muslim traders would set up outposts where they can also spread the message of Islam. These outposts would later develop into towns and the natives would convert into the new faith, thereby securing a foothold for Islam in the region.

Missionary work

The work of itinerant scholars and imams also contributed in the rise of Islam. Missionary activity came to a head after the death of Muhammad. Along with various conquests being waged in the Middle East, individuals would travel to different places. Many of these preachers and missionaries embraced Dawah, which makes it a noble duty to spread the message of Allah throughout the world.

Important periods in history such as the Golden Age of Islam which started from 700 to 1000 AD noted the rise of Islamic missionary work under the guise of commerce. The work of these individuals have resulted in many communities embracing and adopting Islam.

Through these factors, Islam’s adherents had grown significantly, rivaling that of Christianity.