Class Reflection

In response to the Question given to us in class: Why did people convert to Islam

I think that people converted to Islam for a wide variety of reasons. One may simply have been mob mentality. When the faith was spreading so rapidly and people saw its success, they decided they should join too. Pretty soon, everyone was doing it. Once Muslims made up a majority, it followed that many others would convert. As we saw in our quote in class, some people in the upper class converted to hold positions of power. In the new Islamic governments, Muslims were preferred to hold power. Refusal to convert would be a total sacrifice of power. To the lower class, the doctrines of the religion would have been appealing. Spiritual equality appealed to both men and women. As a merchant, Muhammad had a middle-class appeal also. If fact, merchants held highly in Islam. This is an interesting contrast with Confucianism in which merchants were considered evil leeches of society who profited from others work.