On the other hand, there's always a certain quiet "don't do it in public" toleration that was surprisingly wide spread before Qutib and his ilk spread everywhere in recent years. Remember who we have to thank for the noble art of distilling.
AHC: Islamic Scandinavia by 1000
- Thread starter Kayin Dreemurr
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On the other hand, there's always a certain quiet "don't do it in public" toleration that was surprisingly wide spread before Qutib and his ilk spread everywhere in recent years. Remember who we have to thank for the noble art of distilling.
Not to get into too many specifics, but last time I checked, there were statues of the Buddha in Scandinavia from the vikingr period, so who's to say that there weren't already a few Islamic vikings splitting skulls? They were magnificent traders and raiders, and evidence shows they made it to the Constantinople and beyond, and with their tolerant society (compared to other countries at the time) it was pretty much follow what ever gods you wished. So my two cents is that the Scandinavians probably had a few Muslim Scandinavians walking about, the only question is if some powerful leader would ever convert. Maybe a wife could be a follower of Muhammad, and you could have something like what happened to the Anglo- Saxons in Britain when St. Augustine of Canterbury showed up and found a Christian married to the powerful King of Kent, helping speed up the conversion process. So maybe a wise Imam shows up, finds a sympathetic ear that leads to one of the most powerful kingdoms being converted.
pretty much impossible without a unrelated PoD and Butterfly
1. the Frankish Empire doesn't push anywhere near as far northwest, leaving Scandinavia far away from Christian lands instead of having Christians just across the traditional border at Danevirke.
2. Rus' States convert to Islam somewhere in the late 800's at the latest. Most likely reason would be that ERE collasping in the Arab-ERE wars, say PoD being Khalid ibn al-Walid not being dismissed from military service, leaving Rashidun Caliphate conquering large parts of Anatolia, followed up by later wars conquering all of Anatolia.
1. the Frankish Empire doesn't push anywhere near as far northwest, leaving Scandinavia far away from Christian lands instead of having Christians just across the traditional border at Danevirke.
2. Rus' States convert to Islam somewhere in the late 800's at the latest. Most likely reason would be that ERE collasping in the Arab-ERE wars, say PoD being Khalid ibn al-Walid not being dismissed from military service, leaving Rashidun Caliphate conquering large parts of Anatolia, followed up by later wars conquering all of Anatolia.
Zlorfik
Banned
well, in the 10thc. AD there was for decades an arab fort in southern Latium (at minturno). this you'll recognize as being the region containing Rome, the beating heart of western christianity.
there was also one in provence earlier in the same century (fraxinetum, apparently)
really puts the "too close to christianity to survive" thing in perspective
a muslim rus and their brethren in scandinavia have decent odds of holding on against baltic crusades, I think
Wasn't pork a major foodstuff in Northern Europe at the time? It'd be very damn hard to implement a religion in a region that has that religion's banned animal as its primary source of meat.
There is nothing preventing Vikings - who had recently converted to Christianity - to also convert to Islam.
Christianity and Islam share most of the same values, creeds, dogmas, etc....
Islam recognizes Jesus Christ as a major prophet, just not the most important prophet.
It is all part of the 600-year cycle of prophets: Moses, .... Buddha, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Moses Mohamedes, Bahai, etc.
Christianity and Islam share most of the same values, creeds, dogmas, etc....
Islam recognizes Jesus Christ as a major prophet, just not the most important prophet.
It is all part of the 600-year cycle of prophets: Moses, .... Buddha, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, Moses Mohamedes, Bahai, etc.
Pork was a status symbol for the upper classes in Scandinavia, and the upper classes are who you want to convert so they can impose it by the sword on the rest.
Rejecting pork is probably more serious than rejecting alcohol. It really puts the noble classes that adopt Islam into sharp opposition with their peers, ancestors, and even commonfolk, while undermining their special status.
Why would they go for it?
Just as the arabs they abadoned it too, jeez people invent excuses against islam so easy when adopting it is pretty easy(maybe as adopted as teenager and was more ambibalent stuff like pork or alcohol). And Islam never convert by force, that show ignorace in the religion talking that.
So cease to make excuses why people would refused and how can trulyl propagated as the pod ask for it.
But Islam did spread with military conquest, especially in the first few centuries. Besides, any Muslims wanting to take Scandinavia have to cross a huge distance and then fight a strong enemy in a harsh climate. Trying to proselytize probably wouldn't work, not just because of pork and drinking problems but also because the Christians would probably do their best to convert the Nordic people to the Christian religion and would without a doubt have more success. So an attempt at making a muslim north might end up in them becoming catholics earlier
I seriously doubt Arabs were big pork eaters to the point where it was core to their culture and self-identity, considering they were already surrounded by cultures that eat very little of it and in fact generally have prohibitions against it.
You basically have no idea what you're talking about regarding how Scandinavian society did social signaling in the period.
Yeah, okay. You're on a site that at least pretends to have a modicum of respect for the history that inspires our fiction. Please do try to fit in, because yours is a statement that can only be defended by some really really spectacular no-true-Scotsmanining. Islam has basically spread by conquest everywhere it's prevalent today, except partly for South East Asia, which is probably the closest we can come to a case study about how Scandinavian elites could adopt it. You'd best start looking there.
The Volga trade remaining dominant over the Dniepr/Dvina and the Wisla routes, and the caliphate remaining relevant, are a good starting point. A good enough starting point? Don't know. Islam proved utterly unattractive to the Volga Finns on the whole despite a millennium of presence there. On the other hand it seems to have impressed the nomadic Turcic people a lot. Mid-Volga population shift?
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I don't think it's so much a case of this website being filled with compulsive drinkers, it's more a case that ere are certain cultural and economic norms which are incompatible with certain religious norms. It isn't so much neccesarily just Islam that suffers from this, Jainism for instance in which it is hard to justify violence even in a defensive manner would have been impossible to translate to the roman empire which was sustained through land domination and conquest.
Likewise, hardy pigs, various benefits of alcohol and the like makes any standard interpretation of Islam incompatible to Scandinavian history for at LEAST a while. As someone who drinks maybe once every few months, trust me when I say it has nothing to do with any personal biases on behalf of the people of this forum, nor anything specifically against Islam in favour of alcohol
There were Jain Emperors who expanded their realms through conquest, though.
Nivek ... lets make a deal... we won't try to claim that Islam is everything it aren't and you don't try to claim that its so easy to adopt, as its flying in the face of so many core tenets of even non-religous life in Scandinavia that the idea is a lead balloon to begin with.
Pigs was the primary source of meat in Scandinavia, as Cattle in the Scandinavian Peninsula (Norway, Sweden) is (only) just on the wrong side of superior livestock due to being on the edge of them being able to survive, even not accounting for the fact that domisticated Pigs are easier to hold as they can eat some of the organic waste a family no doubt creates (leftovers, inedible parts of vegetables etc). In Denmark the difference was so minor that it was largely a question of tradition and how other populations with communicated with did. The primary reason why Cattle was still used to the degree it was in scandinavia was that it was seen as a luxury food that only the wealthy was able to allocate resources for.
Mead was the primary source for liquids as it stored well and, prehaps more importantly, due to the process of how it was created it was clean for paracites and other unclean stuff that could cause diseases of different kinds... Everyone drank mead in Scandinavia, even the kids and slaves (although their mead was near, or just above, what can legally be sold as non-alcoholic), without some very good replacement, going off mead would probably be one of the surest ways to let epidemics take some local tours with concerning regularity.
Pigs was the primary source of meat in Scandinavia, as Cattle in the Scandinavian Peninsula (Norway, Sweden) is (only) just on the wrong side of superior livestock due to being on the edge of them being able to survive, even not accounting for the fact that domisticated Pigs are easier to hold as they can eat some of the organic waste a family no doubt creates (leftovers, inedible parts of vegetables etc). In Denmark the difference was so minor that it was largely a question of tradition and how other populations with communicated with did. The primary reason why Cattle was still used to the degree it was in scandinavia was that it was seen as a luxury food that only the wealthy was able to allocate resources for.
Mead was the primary source for liquids as it stored well and, prehaps more importantly, due to the process of how it was created it was clean for paracites and other unclean stuff that could cause diseases of different kinds... Everyone drank mead in Scandinavia, even the kids and slaves (although their mead was near, or just above, what can legally be sold as non-alcoholic), without some very good replacement, going off mead would probably be one of the surest ways to let epidemics take some local tours with concerning regularity.
My understanding though is that they never had the cohesion to sustain the conquests or the full support of holy men who had the greatest sWay in Jain empires.
Wait what
Buddhist statues in Viking Scandinavia? I mean if that's true then that is pretty damn cool.
Never converted by force?!!! I really hope you are joking, i know that Christianity isn't exactly the best of role models but, have you any idea of how things were in the Iberian Peninsula during the Muslin occupation?
If they didn't convert by force then why the invasion, why the 800 years occupation of our lands?
I'm from the peninsula, i know our religious historic isn't good, but intolerance by our part only begun in the late XV century, and we have the fucking Spaniard's to thank for inquisition.
And by our part, i mean intolerance from part of Portugal, Spain was, is, and will always the one to bring shit to us.
But Islam regardless of branch agrees that Muhammad was the Khātim an-Nâbîyīn or the seal of prophets. As in he is the last and after him there is no more revelation. So your assessment on prophets after Muhammad is false in all sects of Islam and only relevant to maybe Baha'i. Christians also do not consider jesus an important prophet but as God or the Logos of Yahweh Elohim.
In many ways Christianity is a Abrahamic religion turned Hellenic. Rather than Islam, a Abrahamic religion made Arab. At least if you believe that Judaism is the "base" Abrahamic religion.
In 1000, Norway was being converted at sword point, Iceland by bribery, and the rest of the north save Sweden by economic embargo. Christianity would in most circumstances not have not gotten this far this soon but for a few determined individuals and the fact that most missionaries were culturally Norse (mostly English Viking descendants).
Islam would have need some of these advantages and I don't see them getting them. It's not ASB, but it is in the neighborhood.
Keeping Scandinavia pagan for a few centuries would be easier.
Islam would have need some of these advantages and I don't see them getting them. It's not ASB, but it is in the neighborhood.
Keeping Scandinavia pagan for a few centuries would be easier.
Do they have to be literally Islam or could they be a Norse cultural equivalent? For some reason there's an AH meme that left to their own devices, the Nordic could have created their own Islam-type monotheist religion based on their pagan traditions, if they only the right figure had arisen among them. Maybe because Vikings and Arab nomad raiders are culturally similar? There's a whole timeline about it.