For one thing, they don’t proselytize like other religions, and they’ll actively try to deter you from converting.
As a Jewish person myself its for a few reasons:
- We don’t forcibly convert, we also actively convince people not to convert (I mean using every argument possible to convince people). Jewish Philosophy states that if someone is holy enough to go out of their way to join they’re holy enough to be Jewish (the conversion process is long and if it’s not sincere they aren’t accepted).
- Jewish power structures have always been contained, in Israel for example Jewish religious leaders have little power.
- Judaism has a long history of expulsions and being massacred, also forced conversations away from Judaism
- Due to Jewish fundementalism its common to see people stop identifying as Jewish. For many people the Jewish community can be extremely hostile and unwelcoming, a few examples include: women, Neurodivergant people, Queer people, people without a Jewish education, people who dont fall into traditional gender roles/expressions, etc
So in addition to what pretty much everyone else says, you should note the conditions of emergence. Judaism not only doesn’t seek converts; the people it considers its followers were a subjugated people. Not in a position to spread anything. And then after the Romans drove them out of their land a couple centuries BCE, they were basically the world’s biggest refugee population. Again, not a situation that helps proselytization even if they wanted to do it.
Meanwhile Christianity managed to become the state religion of Rome and basically all of Europe after the collapse of Rome. Added up that’s more than 600 years as the state religion of a global superpower (or superpowers) that actually cared to spread their religion. When you also remember how European colonization was a thing, you basically have three continents’ worth of Christians and significant populations elsewhere.
Meanwhile Islam came and united the Arabs under one banner. These people, who were only concerned about writing poetry, trade and killing each other for a while, suddenly had both the means and (material and spiritual) incentive to expand. With the two extant superpowers greatly weakened, nobody could do anything about their light cavalry and sheer zeal (remember the Syria crossing?) for a while. You know how the Mongols were united by Genghis Khan and conquered basically everyone? Yeah that’s basically how it went. Muslim merchants, with their country now the wealthiest in the world (sans China I don’t know much about them in that time period) went everywhere and had a tendency to convert trade partners, which got Islam a foothold in places Muslim rule never reached. BTW here I’d like to correct a common mistake: Islam usually didn’t force people to convert. However, Islam was still the state religion and at the top of the socioeconomic ladder, and depending on time and place non-Muslims had significantly harder lives than Muslims. These factors fueled conversions and in a few centuries Islam was the majority religion in these countries.
I’d like to correct a common mistake: Islam usually didn’t force people to convert.
Christians and Jews were free to convert but pagans were absolutly forced to convert. Another thing is that like other invaders, locals were forced to pay annual duty and it varied from ruler to rules. Those who couldnt pay for whatever reason could only choose between death and conversion. Muslims were also forced to remain Muslim or die.
so while not everyone was forced, a lot were
Christians and Jews were free to convert but pagans were absolutly forced to convert.
That also happened, but I’m pretty sure most of the time dhimmi rulings were adopted. That’s why, say, Zoroastrians got to stay Zoroastrian.
Also remember that Islam and Christianity have been shown to be a very mallable tool for political power. The upper echelons were those who controlled the religion, state, and military.
In all islamic and Christian countries, the state religion was essentially a branch of the government.
I know this was the case for Christianity, but was it for Islam? AFAIK in Muslim lands religion was more of a grassroots thing since there wasn’t a capital C Church like in Europe. Maybe there’s something I’m missing, but if I’ve got my history right Islam served as a justification for a caliph’s claim to power but wasn’t really bent by individual rulers, as the most influential scholars (and the, again, mostly grassroots scholarly community at large) were their own people and not beholden to the state more than an average citizen.
Islam started with the rulers being the head of the church. Not as a completely separate entity adopted by the rulers like Christianity. Most of Islamic traditions in the Hadith is traced back (with very little supporting evidence) to the original founders. The Hadith was the “oral tradition” of what Mohamed said written down a century or two after his death by “scholars” who totally were not fully funded and directed in any way by the rulers.
The Hadith has everything from religious practices to economic laws. These laws amazingly create social classes of elites and everyone else. The elites control the state, military, and religion completely. The non-elites are essentially banned from any legal economic engagement other than worker for an elite. This has created extreme social inequality in most Islamic states today.
I want to note that there isn’t actually a lot of historical evidence for Jewish people being driven out of Judea in any large numbers by the Romans.
The area did get conquered as part of the Arab conquests though, and while Islam didn’t actually do conversion by the sword, as you mention, they did do conversion by tax relief. It wasn’t just a social heirarchy, they would literally tax you more money if you didn’t convert.
What almost certainly happened to the Jewish majority in Judea was simple conversion. I was easier to follow Allah than Yahweh, and if they’re theoretically the same god anyways…
Judaism is what’s called an ethnic religion, rather than a universalizing religion. Ethnic religions generally don’t seek converts. There are accounts of forced conversion by Jewish fundamentalists in the Second Temple Period, but even then it tends to be of peoples they regard as ethnically related and ‘fallen astray’ rather than people they see as out-and-out foreigners. Ethnic religions are regarded as a pact between the Divine and a specific set of people - and outsiders are either viewed neutrally or negatively coming (or trying to come) into the faith. As such, ethnic religions generally only propagate by birth or, less often, intermarriage. They don’t want outsiders flooding into their private ethnic pact with the Divine, and, indeed, sometimes regard it as religiously offensive.
Universalizing religions, on the other hand, are quite explicitly peddling a view of the world that does not, theoretically, have ethnic or cultural borders. Christianity and Islam, both universalizing religions, desire Asian Christians as much as African or European Christians. Theoretically. There is a… great deal of difference between what is taught and what is executed, but in general you can assume that universalizing religions like those more or less always want a person as a convert, regardless of their background. The pact with the divine is regarded as personal, rather than ethnic, and the divine regarded as largely impartial to all the minute divisions of mankind.
One thing no one mentioned yet.
Christianity really spread once it became Rome’s state religion, and Islam was always about expanding.
Once the Jews got kicked out of their homeland they were stateless people. Pretty hard to go against local religion when you’re a guest with no army.
