Curious hypothesis

[mahnmut]

A World Without Islam

What if Islam had never existed? To some, it's a comforting thought: No clash of civilizations, no holy wars, no terrorists. Would Christianity have taken over the world? Would the Middle East be a peaceful beacon of democracy? Would 9/11 have happened? In fact, remove Islam from the path of history, and the world ends up exactly where it is today.

Comments

[johnny9fingers]

Protestants and C'tholics would have made Europe even more of a battleground than it was. Hindus and Buddhists would have had many wars East of Suez.

Europe would have conquered the world a lot easier without the Sublime Porte being in the way. Germany and Russia are bigger and stronger earlier, so the religious wars of the C16th are even more horrible. Jan van Leyden's heirs rule the North German Protestant hegemony, which is not a nice place until sometime in the C19th.

The world gets to somewhere pretty similar, but the route is very different... And we might not get Bach or Mozart or Beethoven. There are some consolations to this universe and this timeline.

[tcpip]

I am just imagining the Christian holy wars with Catholicism, Orthodox, Monophysite, Coptic, Nestorian et al.

And then the Reformation...