[Astromancer]

Originally Posted by malloyd

If Rome holds Mecca centuries before Muhammad is born, it's pretty unlikely he is born, let alone that he has the same life path. And I would credit him with quite a lot of innovation in the creation of Islam. It's *not* an inevitable development from the pre-Islamic faith(s) of Arabia, there's a definite imprint of the founder in there.

This is actually a rather underexplored feature of alternate timeline stories, probably because SF authors are not a strongly religious bunch, but most of them rather seriously undermine the basis of revealed religions, in that they usually vanish from altered timelines.

If they *don't*, say Islam does appear in this line anyway, then they support it instead - God forces the same thing to happen, or provides revelation to somebody else appropriate. Indeed if Islam is a genuinely true revealed religion, you probably ought to be turning up timelines where a similar monotheistic religion appears in 3rd century China, or half the suras of the Koran are present in the oral traditions of the Neolithic villagers of the Danube valley.

Either way there really should be significant influences on (un)believers at home who have to make "sense" of whichever of those they find out in the multiverse.

Of course, Islam doesn't need to be the only "True Revealed Religion." There could be half a dozen or more "True Revealed Religions" in this multiverse.