How did people feel joining ancient Islam during military conquest?

[strateguy632]

a, how do you feel that islam "spread faith by military conquest"?

b, did the joiners "choose"? or no choice under the power of the victors?

c, did the joiners really believe, convinced it was true?

d, what about their children?

[BCA6010]

If it was anything like I saw in the middle east in the modern era, I guarantee that the majority who "willingly" joined the caliphate were motivated by fear or profit over religious zeal, and those with the means would switch sides regularly as long as it suited them. It's well documented that during the crusades, the European armies were able to consistently beat the Arabs in most major battles in large part because the Arab armies were heavily made up of slaves/conscripts and had to have significant numerical superiority to make up for inferior morale and training to stand a chance. This remained true for centuries, even all the way up to the final collapse of the Ottoman Empire, where even their victories in WW1 came at disproportionately high cost, and the middle eastern campaigns of WW2 are almost completely ignored and forgotten about.

In Iraq and Syria, it was not unusual to find basically Arab mercenaries who had bounced from one warlord's cell to another on a monthly basis just based on who was paying the best at the time. Part of our state department's strategy of weakening certain people over there was to offer more money to "fight" for us... And I use that term loosely because they weren't exactly dependable.

[EricSummer]

I think a lot depends on the previous belief system that the conquered people had. Islam is highly developed monotheism. If people still held beliefs involving a "god of thunder" getting angry in the sky and a host of similar personalities then Islam must have been a revelation to them. Within a generation or two you can expect most people to adopt the new faith.

This is different for Christians and Jews, not only because they could get "dhimmi" status. For example, in Hungary few converted in 300 years of Muslim rule. By contrast, in Bosnia they did convert. It depends on the cultural cohesion of the conquered lands.

Often people keep their customs or mix religions. In Iran, Nowruz is one of the biggest celebrations and it is completely un-Islamic, originally worshipping the sun. The Arabs could not get the Persians to stop this, Islam or not. In fact, the splitting of Sunni and Shia Islam is also an issue of similar struggles.