But let's ask our central question. Why did Islam emerge so rapidly where and when it did? And there's no clear right or wrong answer here, it's all going to be conjecture, but that's what's fun about history. We can think about what we think we know, and then we can debate and think about, are there some patterns here that we see over and over in history? Well, what's the context? So we know for a fact that Arabia was fragmented, that the law of the land in Arabia was tribal and tribal justice, and this is the world that Muhammad grew up in, the various tribes often worshiping different gods. We also know at this time that Muhammad had exposure to other religions, some of which had penetrated the various tribes of Arabia.