How did the Islamic faith unify Arab peoples and what was the impact of the spread of Islam?

Answer 1

These are actually two questions. Please see each individually below (the questions are links to the main page for those questions which may have other answers than simply mine, which are below):

• How did the Islamic faith unify Arab peoples?

The Islamic Faith served as a proxy for a common national identity. Arabs did not see each other as one large community prior to Islam but instead harbored strong loyalties towards their own tribe and strong antipathies towards other tribes, especially ones that they had fought with in the past. As a result, Islam was able to unite them in contrast to the their tribal identities which had driven them apart. Regardless, at various points in Islamic History, Arab tribalism resurged within Islam.

• What was the impact of the spread of Islam?

In the Islamic World, the spread of Islam led to increased toleration of minority groups, economic growth, support got knowledge seeking, and other critical events in cultural growth. In terms of religious minorities, the Byzantines had strongly persecuted Christian religious groups other than the Byzantine Orthodox Church, such as Copts and Nestorians, as well as Non-Christians, like Jews, Zoroastrians, and Polytheists. In the Sassanid Empire, there was a similar Zoroastrian theocracy that punished all other religious minorities. Under the Islamic system set up after the conquest of these two empires, these minorities were tolerated as long as they paid taxes and supported the Islamic hegemony. This version of repression was far lighter than what they had previously experienced and gained the respect of these minorities. Over the subsequent centuries, the economic and social benefits of conversion to Islam would lead many of these individuals to convert to Islam, reducing substantially the Non-Muslim populations of these regions.

Islamic Rulers, in contrast to their Christian counterparts, believed from roughly 700-1100 C.E. that the best way to understand God was through scientific and literary endeavors, making the Islamic World the premier patron of the arts and sciences. This inexorably led to the growth of knowledge and development in the Islamic World. This would eventually serve the Europeans well when they would copy this knowledge and start the Renaissance. Unfortunately for the Muslims, around 1100 C.E. this philosophy of finding God through science was defeated by a more repressive and theocratic vision that saw science and reason as the enemy of faith and resulted in the deterioration of this progress in the coming centuries.

Outside of the Islamic World, the Spread of Islam fundamentally changed the political geography of the Middle East and split the Mediterranean for the first time in over 600 years. The Mediterranean was called Mare Nostra (Our Sea) by the Romans because they controlled all parts of it and used it for vast amounts of trade and commerce. Conversely, after the Islamic Conquests, the Mediterranean became the site of perilous sea battles and corsairs attacking European merchant ships, enslaving European Christians, and establishing control over islands like Sicily. This violence against Christian Europe eventually served as the catalyst to create medieval Christendom and, ultimately, the European Wars of Religion Against Islam, such as the Crusades and the Spanish Reconquest.