Islam’s spread clashed continuously with the ancient river-valley civilizations it conquered

Evidence

In a sense, the advent of Islam was itself a revolution, which after long struggles only partially succeeded. After the Islamic conquests of the seventh century, there was a continuing tension between the new religion and its message and the very old societies of the countries that the Muslims conquered. Islam came, not into a new world, like Christendom in Europe, but to lands of ancient civilization and deep-rooted traditions. This tension between Islamic dynamism and the older forces of the river-valley societies continued through medieval into modern times. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1491

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Echoes the tension in The Defeat of the Spanish Armada between revolutionary dynamism and entrenched orders.

Related

• Islam’s egalitarian message has been continuously contested by older river-valley social orders (similarity 0.93)
• Muslim-Western civilizational struggle reversed direction around 1683 (similarity 0.83)
• The rise of Islam blocked Europe’s eastern trade routes and shaped the Crusades (similarity 0.82)
• Islamization flowed from the cultural realm into social and political spheres. (similarity 0.82)
• Mass Christian conversion to Islam triggered theological response against Islam (similarity 0.81)
• Islam’s military success forced Christians to reinterpret church history as corruption (similarity 0.81)
• Muslim fury stems from a centuries-old reversal of dominance over Christendom (similarity 0.81)
• Muslims remember an era when Islam ruled as the Earth’s greatest civilization. (similarity 0.81)
• The Fatimid schism was untenable amid Islam’s unified front against Christendom (similarity 0.81)
• Medieval Christians read Islam’s rise as the predicted ferocity of Ismael (similarity 0.81)
• European scholarship on Islam turned disinterested only once Islam ceased threatening Europe. (similarity 0.81)
• Knowledge flow reversed from Islamic to Western centers by 1800. (similarity 0.81)
• Islam-West conflict is a civilizational clash beyond policy or issues (similarity 0.80)
• Europe’s image of Islam tracked its political and military needs, not theology (similarity 0.80)
• External world shifts left no room for a schismatic Muslim power (similarity 0.80)