The David Kilcullen Collection (merged thread)

[Tukhachevskii]

Even the explosion of Islam across the Middle East in its first two generations were far more about power, plunder and domination than they were about spreading the good word. Ideology of Islam was "merely" the essential ingredient, the catalyst to rally the masses to take on and sustain the endeavor.

...but I could be wrong. Although I agree with much of the above I have to say that the proposition that Islam was an ideological catalyst for the explosion of the forces of Islam seems to imply that the Arab tribes that had embraced it( or equally, were coerced into embracing it, especially after the Battle of Badr) were already predisposed to desiring power and dominion and Islam merely freed them to go about their bloody business with a free consicence. In your schema Islam merely becomes a universal and rationalised form of assabiyyah. I would take the opposite view; that Islam is what exploded (although the other forces added to the mix). I would also see assabiyah as having been superviened upon by Islam (as a meta-habitus)Plunder, OTOH, was always a traditional tactic of Bedouin/tribal pastoralists.