Spread Of Islam Dbq Research Paper

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Mohammad, the chosen messenger of God, spread Islam throughout the Arabian Peninsula. At first, he received little support for the emerging monotheistic religion in Mecca, his hometown. Mohammad then set out on a journey to Medina, which later became known as the Hijra. While in Medina, his ideas were welcomed and supporters began to follow him. The magnitude of followers eventually prompted the religion to develop into one of the five major world religions. Due to the immense amount of conquest, conversion, and Muslim’s respect for other monotheistic religions, Islamic ideas grew rapidly which formed an extensive empire throughout the Middle East. Conquest—a method of invasion involving force in order to gain control over more territory—was …show more content…

This increased the spread of Islamic ideas, causing the empire to expand through their religion. As referred to in document one and two, those conquered were required to convert to Islamic practices, otherwise they would face severe punishment. Punishments varied from required tributes to death, but were often severe. Although the punishments were cruel, they were effective as they increased the number of followers in their religion; furthermore, promoting Islamic ideas throughout the Arabian Peninsula. As mentioned previously, exceptions to this rule existed for Christians and Jews since these are monotheistic religions. Document five refers to this and offers the alternative of paying tribute to the empire rather than converting. Though this does not assist with the spread of Islamic ideas, the population of the empire increases, causing the empire to grow physically. Overall, the conversion regulations greatly increased the growth of the Islamic empire. Islam—a monotheistic religion—had little tolerance for other religions, specifically those with polytheistic beliefs, within their empire. An exception to this is other monotheistic religions such as Judaism and Christianity. As said in document five, these two groups were respected by Mohammad and not forced into conversion. A caveat to this is that Christians and Jews were required to pay a tribute, which partially funded the expansion of Islam economically—while also increasing the empire's population. On the other hand, document six contrasts this evidence. The document claims that Islam was never persecuted in order to expand, but Christian’s were persecuted in order to expand. This document portrays Christianity in a negative way, while document five portrays Christianity in a more neutral way. Part of this could be due to the fact that the author of document six—Syed Ameer—practices Islam. This

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