Humans rally around ideas because they solve some of our problems, because they offer the biological blessings of the illusion of control, and because they are the threads that hold us together in the vast network of a superorganismic mind, weaving scattered individuals into a cooperative entity of awesome power and size. 200 years after the Fall of Rome, a merchant named Mohammed lived in the desert town of Mecca, a bleak and isolated community on a caravan route over which passed camels carrying goods to far-off, elegant cities like Damascus. At age 12, still an apprentice to his uncle, he traveled to Syria to learn the import-export business. At 25, he married a well-to-do woman and became a respected burgher; his ideas were listened to. He has a mid-life crisis at 39. He began to have visions. Sitting in a cave, praying, he claimed that he had been overwhelmed by a blinding light, and the angel Gabriel had grabbed him an a great hug and forced him to recite a message from God. From that day forward, he would function as God's spokesman on Earth. Some hold Mohammed's story as sacrosanct, others believe that perhaps it was fits of epilepsy. His contemporaries might have believed the latter. Indeed, they mocked or ignored him. There is a story of one unbeliever who put a slimy camel fetus down his neck as he was praying. Others tried to kill him. Among those who believed? Close relatives, a good friend, and many slaves.
The uproar caused by city slaves ignoring their duties made Mecca a place of great tension. The community hatched a plot to kill Mohammed but he fled successfully to an isolated town 200 miles away, Medina. There, he found more willing listeners. Within a few years, he came to control much of the city's political structure.
He was not a man of peace. He held power by having opponents assassinated. He then began to attack Meccan caravans and the armed escorts sent to protect them. The Meccans, worried about Mohammed’s new power attacked Medina. The prophet led his followers against the intruders and won. This military success impressed some of the fiercest tribes in the area and soon they signed up for this new religion. A few years later, the prophet took his troops to the Jewish town of Khaibar and conquered it. He and his followers killed all the men and carried off the women and children as slaves.
In 630, eight years after he fled Mecca, He had his vengeance. With an army of 10,000, he marched on the city. The Meccans surrendered without much resistance, they had heard about the fate of the Jewish town. He was then able to convert the town that had so recently dismissed him over to his way of seeing things. The sword stayed out of the sheath after Mecca, wealthy merchants and Bedouin tribes joined the army and off they went to conquer the world. During the next hundred years, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Persia (all magnificent ancient civilizations) as well as Northern Africa, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, parts of India, Spain, and even some of France fell to the actions of the faithful followers. Amazing.
Within a few generations of the prophet's death, these followers of a street corner ranter, these men from backwater towns and primitive desert tribes, had built an empire of enormous size. The notions of a man who had claimed to meet an angel in a cave would spawn battles whose bloodshed would soak the earth for the next fourteen hundred years...and counting.
Think about that.
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