AHC: Islam considered a "Western" Religion

Green Painting · Jan 31, 2015

And other religions (such as Zoroastrianism) takes the place of OTL Islam as the defining trait of an Oriental civilization.

It shouldn't be this difficult as Muhammad himself spoke favorably of the Eastern Roman Empire.

Ridwan Asher · Jan 31, 2015

Either Muslim Byzantine or an Ottoman Empire more accepted into European community. The later will not wash away the obvious state of matters east of Euphrat, however. Then again, Christianity also has Russia.

Beedok · Jan 31, 2015

People actually stop and think about it for a moment. If Islam isn't Western you can't call Christianity Western. (Definitely can't call Judaism Western.)

Green Painting · Jan 31, 2015

Ridwan Asher said:
Either Muslim Byzantine or an Ottoman Empire more accepted into European community.

I don't think the Ottoman Empire would ever be accepted, but a Byzantine Empire peacefully converting to Islam is an interesting one. The Palaiologos allowed a mosque in Constantinople, but I'm not sure how far it could go...

Ridwan Asher said:
The later will not wash away the obvious state of matters east of Euphrat, however. Then again, Christianity also has Russia.

I think's Russia is fundamentally a western country. There is nothing other than ideological schism that set it apart from the west.

Dathi THorfinnsson · Jan 31, 2015

But islam IS a Western religion.

Western = Abrahamic, Eastern = Dharmic, for a massive oversimplification.

Unless you want to consider large chunks (or all) of Christianity 'Eastern'.

???

SlyDessertFox · Jan 31, 2015

Dathi THorfinnsson said:
But islam IS a Western religion.

Western = Abrahamic, Eastern = Dharmic, for a massive oversimplification.

Unless you want to consider large chunks (or all) of Christianity 'Eastern'.

???

Yes, but in popular perception Islam isn't considered "western" but antithetical to everything the west stands for (not saying that's correct, because it isn't, but popular perception isn't always true). I think what the OP is asking is how can we get popular perception to perceive Islam as a western religion, rather than as anti-western.

A good way to do that would be to (somehow) get the Byzantines to convert, but I don't see how that can happen.

Green Painting · Jan 31, 2015

Dathi THorfinnsson said:
But islam IS a Western religion.

Western = Abrahamic, Eastern = Dharmic, for a massive oversimplification.

Unless you want to consider large chunks (or all) of Christianity 'Eastern'.

???

How would you classify Zoroastrianism, Shintoism, Daoism and Confucianism

Essam · Jan 31, 2015

I would say either (or both) a lasting Islamic Spanish-speaking population; Ottoman Hungry stays and allows for the Ottomans to focus on Europe. There were discussions between Protestants and Muslims, as well as Franco-Ottoman relations to start with as well;

We could see an East-West division in Islam with the Ottoman and North African Islam being part of the Western (Mediterranean) Civilisation, while the Persians and Moghuls et. al. are generally considered more Oriental.

John7755 يوحنا · Jan 31, 2015

Green Painting said:
How would you classify Zoroastrianism, Shintoism, Daoism and Confucianism

Eastern. Zoroastrianism would be in the same category as Hinduism and such. Daoism would also be eastern. Confucianism is not really a religion per say, but it's style is eastern and tied to the Chinese imperial administration. In many ways there is more like a far eastern group of religions (Daoism,Confucianism,Heaven Worship, Shinto and far eastern traditional), then Eastern (Dharmic/Zoroastrian/Zurvanism), Abrahamic (Islam/Christianity/Judaiism/Gnostic), traditional middle eastern (Yazidi/Babylonian), Steppe (Tengri), Various other Indo European religions (Greek pantheon/Roman pantheon/Slavic paganism/Norse paganism). Not counting American and African.

Dathi THorfinnsson · Jan 31, 2015

Green Painting said:
How would you classify Zoroastrianism, Shintoism, Daoism and Confucianism

Zoroastrianism is next to extinct these days. But it had huge influences on Judaism, and is probably 'Western' in terms of hard right/wrong, exclusivist and monotheist (OK, duotheist) philosophy.

The others definitely fit in the Far Eastern/Dharmic world view, even if they leave that particular concept to the Buddhism that usually accompanies them.

I did say "to grossly oversimplify".

EternalCynic · Jan 31, 2015

This is OTL. In China, India, Japan, and other societies, Islam is considered as western. They constitute one in two humans.

St. Just · Jan 31, 2015

Have it borrow less from Persian culture (the original Orient) and much more from the Greeks. Butterflying the whole language thing as well would help that acculturation.

Christianity is Western where Judaism and Islam aren't because it borrows so heavily from Hellenism. Its first holy language, after Hebrew, was Greek- and Paul Hellenized it and de-Judaized it to a great extent. It molded to Roman civilization as it developed.

Compare this with Islam, which not only kept many Semitic mores but also borrowed heavily from Persian material culture and civilization. This made it foreign to the Greeks, and even more so to the Western part of Christianity.

Non-Chalcedonian Christianity is not Western IMO. The Copts Arabized, and the Nestorians are the Church of the East...

Polish Eagle · Jan 31, 2015

Green Painting said:
And other religions (such as Zoroastrianism) takes the place of OTL Islam as the defining trait of an Oriental civilization.

It shouldn't be this difficult as Muhammad himself spoke favorably of the Eastern Roman Empire.

The only way to do this I can think of is for there to be free transmission of ideas between the Muslim and Christian worlds and for there to be some great other menace against which they fight together. Though bloodshed between Catholics and Protestants has often exceeded that between Catholics and Muslims, most Catholics would sooner identify the Calvinist or Lutheran as one of their own than a Muslim. This is because the Church and the Protestant groups have interacted on a cultural, social, and economic level, and because Protestants and Catholics have often been forced into alliances of convenience.

So, how can you get Muslim armies and kingdoms fighting alongside Christian ones against some pagan foe?

Have the Muslim conquest of the Holy Land and Anatolia fail, leading to a Muslim North Africa allied with the Roman Empire (and possibly some Latin crusaders) against Persia?

B_Munro · Jan 31, 2015

Muslims and Christians allied against the dread Manichean Mongol empire?

pa_dutch · Jan 31, 2015

Green Painting said:
I don't think the Ottoman Empire would ever be accepted, but a Byzantine Empire peacefully converting to Islam is an interesting one. The Palaiologos allowed a mosque in Constantinople, but I'm not sure how far it could go...

I think's Russia is fundamentally a western country. There is nothing other than ideological schism that set it apart from the west.

I think the lines between "Western" and "non-Western" are very blurry in Eastern Europe, but generally those countries that followed Eastern Orthodox churches and used scripts other than the Latin alphabet are much further away from Western. Countries like Poland, whose cultures are histories are both intertwined with Eastern Europe and Western Europe, really blur the line.

Then there's Greece, the outlier, which many like to claim for Western culture based on recent history (participation in NATO) or some strange notion that ancient Hellenic influence on the development of modern Western culture makes Greece a Western country, despite the fact that pre-modern Greek history and modern Greek culture, religion, language, and geography are just as distant from Western Europe as Russia's is.

Lateknight · Jan 31, 2015

First of all what do mean by western because that could mean many things.

mrmandias · Jan 31, 2015

Two words: "Yellow Peril"

It should be possible to make China a world power in the 19th C. without too many horribly unlikely PODs. If the resulting state is very successful and aggressive and alien (the latter is almost a given), then you have the ingredients for the Middle East and the West to try to make nice to each other, or at least for the West to try and propagandize the Middle East that the Middle East is really part of the West. In ATL they'll talk about traditional Abrahamic values.

Green Painting · Feb 1, 2015

EternalCynic said:
This is OTL. In China, India, Japan, and other societies, Islam is considered as western. They constitute one in two humans.

My impressions tend to agree with you, but I don't really have scholarly evidences for this.

Tsar Gringo said:
Have it borrow less from Persian culture (the original Orient) and much more from the Greeks. Butterflying the whole language thing as well would help that acculturation.

Christianity is Western where Judaism and Islam aren't because it borrows so heavily from Hellenism. Its first holy language, after Hebrew, was Greek- and Paul Hellenized it and de-Judaized it to a great extent. It molded to Roman civilization as it developed.

Compare this with Islam, which not only kept many Semitic mores but also borrowed heavily from Persian material culture and civilization. This made it foreign to the Greeks, and even more so to the Western part of Christianity.

Non-Chalcedonian Christianity is not Western IMO. The Copts Arabized, and the Nestorians are the Church of the East...

Yes, It's the closest to what I want

But was Greek culture as it was during the eighth century the same as the Hellenism during Paul's time?

Polish Eagle said:
The only way to do this I can think of is for there to be free transmission of ideas between the Muslim and Christian worlds and for there to be some great other menace against which they fight together. Though bloodshed between Catholics and Protestants has often exceeded that between Catholics and Muslims, most Catholics would sooner identify the Calvinist or Lutheran as one of their own than a Muslim. This is because the Church and the Protestant groups have interacted on a cultural, social, and economic level, and because Protestants and Catholics have often been forced into alliances of convenience.

So, how can you get Muslim armies and kingdoms fighting alongside Christian ones against some pagan foe?

Have the Muslim conquest of the Holy Land and Anatolia fail, leading to a Muslim North Africa allied with the Roman Empire (and possibly some Latin crusaders) against Persia?

B_Munro said:
Muslims and Christians allied against the dread Manichean Mongol empire?

Having Muslim conquest of Persia fail, and Persian Zoroastrianism remains the defining ideology of the "east".

Meanwhile, the muslims turned to Helenism for cultural inspiration.

And when the Mongol horde came as per OTL, the Muslims and Christians corporated the same way as the Crusaders and Mamelukes did before Ain Jalut, but on a bigger scale.

Green Painting · Feb 1, 2015

pa_dutch said:
I think the lines between "Western" and "non-Western" are very blurry in Eastern Europe, but generally those countries that followed Eastern Orthodox churches and used scripts other than the Latin alphabet are much further away from Western. Countries like Poland, whose cultures are histories are both intertwined with Eastern Europe and Western Europe, really blur the line.

Then there's Greece, the outlier, which many like to claim for Western culture based on recent history (participation in NATO) or some strange notion that ancient Hellenic influence on the development of modern Western culture makes Greece a Western country, despite the fact that pre-modern Greek history and modern Greek culture, religion, language, and geography are just as distant from Western Europe as Russia's is.

Lateknight said:
First of all what do mean by western because that could mean many things.

I think it's definitely more about status and allegiances than any realy cultural differences.

Green Painting · Feb 1, 2015

EternalCynic said:
This is OTL. In China, India, Japan, and other societies, Islam is considered as western. They constitute one in two humans.

mrmandias said:
Two words: "Yellow Peril"

It should be possible to make China a world power in the 19th C. without too many horribly unlikely PODs. If the resulting state is very successful and aggressive and alien (the latter is almost a given), then you have the ingredients for the Middle East and the West to try to make nice to each other, or at least for the West to try and propagandize the Middle East that the Middle East is really part of the West. In ATL they'll talk about traditional Abrahamic values.

These two posts can be viewed together.