In the past, everyone in a region was automatically part of the main religion or likely to be persecuted?

[repoman]

I was watching something the other day (can't find it now) with islamic scholars and it made me think of the concept of adherents to a religion.

In the past when you were conquered by a group of a particular religion they often made everyone convert. But "convert" not in the modern sense that you believe it in the way you see fit because you have a personal feeling about it, but convert in that you are now a part of that power structure because of the conquest. It didn't matter what your personal opinions were, you were now in the new religion and all the rules including punishment for apostasy or sedition against that religion were applicable to you. Imagine you village gets taken over by muslims and you convert to Islam to avoid a crushing jizya tax. If you deconvert you will be in mortal danger that may dog you for years.

It was not a consumer driven marketplace for religion, like many of these mega churches now.

I wonder if Islam will have a mega-mosque stage coming up where the imams start peddling pop psychology and prosperity gospel stuff as well as lectures from the Koran and Hadiths in a similar way to christians. I don't see it happening easily.

In a funny way, people's natural superstition about this stuff is pretty strong even now:



not everyone buys it though.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

And it seems obvious to me that persons and people who may have dismissed all such claims as superstitious would have been the most vulnerable of all and the most likely to be persecuted and killed, accounting for the fact that so very few were around for so very long.

 

[credoconsolans]

In the past when you were conquered by a group of a particular religion they often made everyone convert. But "convert" not in the modern sense that you believe it in the way you see fit because you have a personal feeling about it, but convert in that you are now a part of that power structure because of the conquest. It didn't matter what your personal opinions were, you were now in the new religion and all the rules including punishment for apostasy or sedition against that religion were applicable to you. Imagine you village gets taken over by muslims and you convert to Islam to avoid a crushing jizya tax. If you deconvert you will be in mortal danger that may dog you for years.

Are you talking about Christian/Muslim?

This wasn't the case for many pagan cultures.

 

[C_Mucius_Scaevola]

It wasn't the case in the years of Islam's early conquests, either, at least for Xians and Jews. The Muslim conquerors didn't encourage conversion among the natives of conquered lands, as that would have reduced their income from the jizya.

 

[repoman]

What income did the muslim leadership (mosques and so on) muslims get from fellow muslims? I see that the zakat was 2.5% of income or wealth for people well off enough.

The christians and jews still had to support their own religions.