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Originally Posted by UnderseaLcpl
That's a little different from the way I heard it. My understanding was that Muhammad was a self-styled prophet in Mecca, who was shunned by his neighbors and family. Disillusioned, he went to Medina and began leading raids against Meccan caravans. Eventually, he got enough guys together to go back and sack Mecca.
IIRC, part of the reason Islam is so radically divided between the Sunni and Shiite sects is because after the prophet's death, some chose to follow his closest friend and other followed his brother, who he disliked but who was his closest kin.
Is that all true or am I mistaken?
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You missed some parts.
When Muhammad started receiving his "revelations" in Mecca, he started spreading them. Part of his sermons criticized the powers that be in Mecca for their corruption, arrogance, and ignorance of the poor. This did not make him very popular among the local elites, so they decided to kill him. He got wind of the plot beforehand, so he fled, along with his followers.
He had family connections in Medina, and the local leaders decided to invite him in as a neutral arbitrator to resolve a local dispute. He agreed to arbitrate, on the condition that Medina accepted his authority and brought in his followers. They agreed. He gained a reputation as a wise and just arbitrator, and others began bringing their disputes before him. Soon he was the ruler of the city.
He then took his skill in settling disputes to another level, and began to settle disputes between warring Arab tribes. A condition of his arbitration was always that the parties involved accept his authority. Through this he united the Arab tribes under his rule. Mecca was still independent, but eventually submitted without a fight after Muhammad assembled an army to attack it.
This had all been peaceful, aside from a brief unsuccessful attack on Mecca a few years before. The first large scale use of force came when some of the tribes tried to break away, and Muhammad attacked them to force them back into the fold. After that Muhammad began to expand aggressively, conquering the Arabian peninsula and later attacking the Byzantines and Persians.
There was a bit of dispute about who should succeed Muhammad, but the Shia movement didn't really get going until the next century.