The Islamization of the Silk Road

Foltz's article clearly supports Bentley's arguement (well atleast it says so in the 'Thinking Historically' section). Pressure was a pattern of conversion featured in Foltz's passage. For example Muslims were pressuring non-Muslims by "inflicting damage on their former persecutors" through caravan raids (Foltz 227). Another pattern of conversion featured was voluntary association. For example, Foltz states that "many locations townspeople threw open the gates to the Arabs and welcomed them as liberators" due to the oppressive treatment from the Sasanian Persian and Byzantine Greek empires in Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt (Foltz 228). Assimiliation was the third pattern of conversion. For example, the children of a Muslim man would be rasied within the father's new community rather than his original one. Also, if a Muslim man marries a non-Muslim woman, the children are required to be raised as Muslims. However, there was a blend between Islam and pre-Islam tradition because "pre-Islamic religion survived through transmission by non-Muslim wives of Muslims" (Foltz 231).