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Once the Muslim armies had conquered these vast regions, it came down to the caliph to rule them. Being a government based on religion, the best way to turn resentful conquered states into loyal territories of the empire was to convert the majority of them to Islam. The first major push of this movement occurred when the ruling caliphs allowed freedom of religion. This would be a shock to captured territories that were used to having the religion of their conquerors forced upon them. However, along with the right to practice what religion you wanted, there was also a tax you had to pay if you were not a Muslim. For peasants attempting to survive during this time, the less tax the better. The idea of converting to Islam to avoid the tax occurred to many people and soon the conquered states were full of converted Muslims. While at first the point was to avoid tax, eventually as more children were raised Muslims, they became more devout and fervent for their religion. While the armies conquered these lands, the conversion to Islam solidified the bond of these states to the religion-centered government of the Islamic world. The originally conquered people with resentment towards their conquerors turned into devout Muslims who connected the Islamic world. .
The next movement was spearheaded by the Abbasid Dynasty. The former ruling dynasty of Islam had lost its power by focusing exclusively on Arabs. The Abbasids rode on the resentment against the former Umayyad dynasty to gain power. When they controlled the caliphate, the Abbasids worked to distance the Arab elitism of the Umayyad dynasty and make Islam an appealing religion to outsiders as a whole. An example of their efforts is evident in the fact that they moved the capital of the caliphate from Mecca to Baghdad. This physically separated the idea of the religion from the Arab world. The Abbasid's effort worked in solidifying more territories into Islamic states.
