Schopenhauer contrasts the peaceable historical record of the Hindus and the Buddhists with the wickedness and cruelty of the monotheists, and then concludes:
Indeed, intolerance is essential only to monotheism; an only God is by nature a jealous God who will not allow another to live. On the other hand, polytheistic gods are naturally tolerant; they live and let live. In the first place, they gladly tolerate their colleagues, the gods of the same religion, and this tolerance is afterwards extended even to foreign gods who are accordingly, hospitably received and later admitted, in some cases, even to an equality of rights. An instance of this is seen in the Romans who willingly admitted and respected Phrygian, Egyptian, and other foreign gods. Thus it is only the monotheistic religions that furnish us with the spectacle of religious wars, religious persecutions, ourts for trying heretics, and also with that of iconoclasm, the destruction of the images of foreign gods, the demolition of Indian temples and Egyptian colossi that had looked at the sun for three thousand years; all this because their jealous God had said: “Thou shall make no graven image” and so on.
Nearly a hundred years earlier than Schopenhauer, Hume with his customary genius saw the same advantages of polytheism:
Idolatry is attended with this evident advantage, that, by limiting the powers and functions of its deities, it naturally admits the gods of other sects and nations to a share of divinity, and renders all the various deities, as well as rites, ceremonies, or traditions, compatible with each other…. While one sole object of devotion is acknowledged [by monotheists], the worship of other deities is regarded as absurd and impious. Nay, this unity of object seems naturally to require the unity of faith and ceremonies, and furnishes designing men with a pretext for representing their adversaries as prophane [profane], and the subjects of divine as well as human vengeance. For as each sect is positive that its own faith and worship are entirely acceptable to the deity, and as no one can conceive that the same being should be pleased with different and opposite rites and principles; the several sects fall naturally into animosity, and mutually discharge on each other, that sacred zeal and rancor, the most furious and implacable of all human passions.
The tolerating spirit of idolaters both in ancient and modern times, is very obvious to any one, who is the least conversant in the writings of historians or travelers…. The intolerance of almost all religions, which have maintained the unity of god, is as remarkable as the contrary principle in polytheists. The implacable, narrow spirit of the Jews is well known. Mahometanism set out with still more bloody principles, and even to this day, deals out damnation, tho’ not fire and faggot, to all other sects.
Professor Watt, in his enormously influential and important two-volume biography of Muhammad, has presented an interpretation of the rise of Muhammad and his message that is still accepted by many despite skepticism of scholars such as Bousquet and, more recently, Crone. Watt’s entire account is permeated, unsurprisingly, with the assumption that the monotheism preached by Muhammad is superior to the polytheism prevalent in Central Arabia. Watt contends that the very success of Muhammad’s message lies in the fact that this message responded to the deep spiritual needs of the people. Mecca, at the time, argues Watt, was beset with a social malaise—nay, even a spiritual crisis—that found no answers in the local cults and gods. The Meccans were sunk in moral degradation and idolatry until Muhammad came along and lifted them up onto a higher moral and spiritual level. Such is Watt’s argument. But as Crone and Bousquet pointed out, there is very little evidence for a social malaise in Mecca. As Crone argues:
The fact is that the tradition knows of no malaise in Mecca, be it religious, social, political or moral. On the contrary, the Meccans are described as eminently successful; and Watt’s impression that their success led to cynicism arises from his otherwise commendable attempt to see Islamic history through Muslim eyes. The reason why the Meccans come across as morally bankrupt in the [Muslim] sources is not that their traditional way of life had broken down, but that it functioned too welclass="underline" the Meccans preferred their traditional way of life to Islam. It is for this reason that they are penalized in the sources; and the more committed a man was to this way of life, the more cynical, amoral, or hypocritical he will sound to us: Abu Sufyan [a leader of the aristocratic party in Mecca hostile to Muhammad] cannot swear by a pagan deity without the reader feeling an instinctive aversion to him, because the reader knows with his sources that somebody who swears by a false deity is somebody who believes in nothing at all.
As for the spiritual crisis, there does not appear to have been any such thing in sixth-century Arabia.
But how do we explain the mass conversion of Arabia to Islam? As we saw in Chapter 2, society was organized around the tribe, and each society had its principal deity, which was worshipped in the expectation that it would help the tribe in some practical way, especially with bringing rain, providing fertility, eliminating disease, generally protecting them from the elements. The tribal gods did not embody “ultimate truths regarding the nature and meaning of life,” neither were they “deeply entrenched in everyday life.” Hence it was easy to renounce one god for another since it did not require any change in outlook or behavior. Furthermore, the Muslim god “endorsed and ennobled such fundamental tribal characteristics as militance and ethnic pride.” The Muslim God offered something more than their own idols: He offered “a program of Arab state formation and conquest: the creation of an umma [a people or a nation], the initiation of jihad [holy war against the unbelievers].” “Muhammad’s success evidently had something to do with the fact that he preached both state formation and conquest: without conquest, first in Arabia and next in the Fertile Crescent, the unification of Arabia would not have been achieved.” Of course, as Muhammad proved more and more successful in Medina, his followers increased, realizing that Allah is indeed great, and certainly greater than any of their own deities: the true God is the successful God, the false, the unsuccessful. Scholars such as Becker had argued that the Arabs had been impelled to their conquests by the gradual drying up of Arabia, but as Crone maintains:
We do not need to postulate any deterioration in the material environment of Arabia to explain why they found a policy of conquest to their taste. Having begun to conquer in their tribal homeland, both they and their leaders were unlikely to stop on reaching the fertile lands: this was, after all, where they could find the resources which they needed to keep going and of which they had availed themselves before. Muhammad’s God endorsed a policy of conquest, instructing his believers to fight against unbelievers wherever they might be found…. In short, Muhammad had to conquer, his followers liked to conquer, and his deity told him to conquer: do we need any more?
But holy war was not a cover for material interests; on the contrary, it was an open proclamation of them. “God says… ‘my righteous servants shall inherit the earth’; now this is your inheritance and what your Lord has promised you….” Arab soldiers were told on the eve of the battle of Qadisiyya, with reference to Iraq: “if you hold out… then their property, their women, their children, and their country will be yours.” God could scarcely have been more explicit. He told the Arabs that they had a right to despoil others of their women, children, and land, or indeed that they had a duty to do so: holy war consisted of obeying. Muhammad’s God thus elevated tribal militance and rapaciouness into supreme religious virtues.