i’m no apologist for christian history but you are both dancing around the nuances to make your own respective points. both things can be true but they require a lot of words:
the roman republic, and subsequent empire were happy to allow conquered peoples to maintain their own ways of life as long as a few basic (in their estimation) requirements were met (taxes, fealty, etc). it was ripe for corruption to the conquered peoples tended to rebel and they got put down with severe violence
christianity offered a unifying thematic message and de facto polity under which constantine believed he could more effectively maintain power and peace. this system was ripe for corruption but now the people are generally kept in line by the conflation of church and state.
islam arises primarily as a repudiation of polytheism and what is perceived as loose monotheism and nonviolently sweeps through the area quickly.
regional leaders quickly learn the same lesson that constantine learned and use islam to prevent rebellion and exert control, with the added lesson learned that it’s best to just ensure everyone follows the same code from the start so that you don’t have to do a lot of political cleanup in the transition to a new belief system.
fractured “european” leaders realize how much power they’ve lost and decide that they should unify under the christian brand to go take back their power.
> islam arises primarily as a repudiation of polytheism and what is perceived as loose monotheism
I doubt that “repudiation” of said things was the main driver.
I’m pretty sure by 600ad Rome was pretty solidly Christian (or at elite levels, perhaps secular), what other gods did exist were folk/syncretistic practices, which also existed in Islam (sufis, Zoroastrian stuff, gnostic stuff etc) and which still existed today in Christianity (in the Philippines, the Caribbean, Africa, etc)
It was kind of problem that by the time Romans really got into suppressing all kinds of “heresies” and imposing Orthodoxy across the empire. Since most in their Middle Eastern provinces and Egypt weren’t Orthodox Catholic most locals didn’t really bother that much fighting for them since the Muslims at the time just seemed like another Christian sect just with a more hands off attitude to government and possibly lower taxes.
Yeah, also it was the way it happened, we should not judge those times with our vision of things, different times, different values. All religions are a form of control over the peasants, Islam grew and evolved in an area with a set of political and social characteristics and Christianity the same but different ones and that's why you find the differences and the same reason that Islam and Christianity split in several branches. And you can see east Europe went Orthodox, South Europe went Catholic and North went Protestant, add to that the fights for the power.
christianity offered a unifying thematic message and de facto polity under which constantine believed he could more effectively maintain power and peace. this system was ripe for corruption but now the people are generally kept in line by the conflation of church and state.
islam arises primarily as a repudiation of polytheism and what is perceived as loose monotheism and nonviolently sweeps through the area quickly.
regional leaders quickly learn the same lesson that constantine learned and use islam to prevent rebellion and exert control, with the added lesson learned that it’s best to just ensure everyone follows the same code from the start so that you don’t have to do a lot of political cleanup in the transition to a new belief system.
fractured “european” leaders realize how much power they’ve lost and decide that they should unify under the christian brand to go take back their power.
and the cycle goes on and on