"Before the seventh century, the desert peninsula of Arabia was unimportant to world history"(Walker324).Yet today its a major religion, only second to Christianity in number of followers. Home to over one billion followers of this religion, the religion of Islam. How did this insignificant piece of land, transform into being shelter to one of the greatest religions of the world you might ask. More specifically what kind of factors led to this remarkable rapid spread of Islam, because a religion cannot grow in numbers that rapidly without factors that led to it. As I went through more research, i found many factors that lead to this rapid spread of Islam. People like Prophet Muhammad" the Arab founder of the religion of Islam"(Walker324). Islam's holy book, the Quran. Another is when Muslims would conquer land using the concept of jihad. The khalifs(Umar and Abu Bakr) and the Umayyad Dynasty and their success in taking lands. These are examples of factors that lead to the rapid spread of Islam, which I will speak in more depth as I go on.
One huge factor that lead to the rapid spread of Islam is no other than prophet Muhammad, "the Arab founder of the religion of Islam"(Walker324).Followers of Islam which are called Muslims believe in the same only one god which is the same as what Christians and Jewish people do, which Muslims call Allah. The followers of these three religions are considered the 'people of the book', due to the fact that all these three religions have their own holy book which they consider to be the words of God. Islam differs from Christians and Jews because" ' Muslims consider Muhammad to be the last and most authoritative of all prophets" (Walker326). "Muhammad was born to a family of poor merchants around 570 (Walker326)". During the night of Ramadan in 610 Prophet Muhammad experienced a vision." While sleeping in a cave on mount Hira, near Mecca, the angel Gabriel appeared, telling him to recite the words of God"(Walker327).
