In some cases, the diffusion of Islam depended on its adoption by local ruling families. In others, it appealed to urban classes of the population, or tribal communities. The question of why people convert to Islam has always generated intense feeling. Earlier generations of European scholars believed that conversion to Islam were made by the point of the sword, and that conquered peoples were given the choice of conversion or death. So a lot of, according to Ira Lapidus, these early European scholars viewed it analogous to things like the Spanish Inquisition, or some aspects of the Crusades, or some of what we saw in the New World on Quistodors, where it really was convert or die. But according to Lapidus, it is now apparent that conversion by force, while not unknown in Muslim communities, so in Muslim countries, so there was some forced conversion, but according to Lapidus, was in fact rare. Muslim conquerors ordinarily wished to dominate rather than convert, and most conversions to Islam were voluntary.