As a Christian I have often wondered why Islam has grown so much and at the reasons for its initial success. The contention of this thread is that God allowed Mohammed (whom most Christians consider to be a false prophet) because more good came out of his rising than bad. Basically by raising up an enemy of Christianity God has encouraged Christians to trust Him more , destroyed some insidious and deeply rooted heresies and got people talking about the Trinitarian and incarnational nature of God more than they would have done otherwise. Also he challenged the ways in which the state had encroached on personal freedom by raising up an oppressive opponent that would make people realise where a theocracy without free choice would ultimately lead. Also he destroyed a bunch of pagan idolatries in favour of worship of the One God.
1) FAT, complacent Christians needed the challenge of the desert warriors to wake them up
In context much of the Byzantine empire(Or Roman empire as it knew itself) still prospered within boundaries that had remained broadly secure for many of its inhabitants since before the days of Jesus. The Muslim invasions made many who were rich poor and removed many who were influential from power. They learnt once more what it meant to trust God and not in their own resources. For many that feeling of security and experience of prosperity and status that they had attached to Rome rather than God was gone forever.
2) Doctrines were settled and formalised in a way that people were no longer challenged by the mystery and questions they posed. Or in a way that many people in the areas that were later conquered disagreed with but for false reasons.
Some people were blindly repeating the creeds without wrestling with the mysteries and challenging questions they posed for our view of God. Some people like the Monophysites in the areas Islam conquered in the Byzantine world or the Nestorians of the Sassinid empire needed a wake up call.
Interestingly the empires and nations that survived Islams golden age of expansion or ultimately triumphed over Islam and took back its conquered Christian territories were Trinitarian and incarnational in outlook. The nations or areas that fell entertained more heretical Christian positions by contrast. God spared the faithful and allowed the heretics to be subjugated being the basic lesson here.
3) The Christian empire of Byzantium had encroached on the private realm of faith to a considerable extent in order to mobilise forces and motivation for its war against the Sassinid empire.
In the name of God it fought its wars and encroached increasingly on individual freedoms on order to win a desperate struggle for survival. n doing so it forgot or neglected the freewill at the heart of the Christians walk with God. The Christian state had become itself quite Islamic in its approach and needed the wake up call of an oppressive theocracy to bring it back to its early years.
4) Islam was the force that ultimately destroyed the Nestorian heretics of Persia and much of central Asia.
The areas of the Byzantine empire that fell had strong monophysistic tendencies. The Sassanid empire had a more Nestorian outlook
5) The pagan idolaters of Mecca and the wider area were utterly wiped out by Islam in favour of worship of the One God
One could argue that no Christian would seriously miss the idolatry that Islam exposed and destroyed.
So my question to Muslims is:
Given the real reasons for your rise and the real fruit of that rise why would you think of your faith as anything more than a challenge for Christians , who should know better, to think a little harder about their faith and to trust God a lot more?
