Maybe that is why every character is suddenly Muslim and Ishmael is the most important son. I guess he did not even know that he was Egyptian and that Egyptian had their very own culture and language which died out.
Ishmael is not Egyptian in the Bible, he's half-Egyptian, the son of an Egyptian expatriate handmaiden and her Hebrew master!
He invented the "Holy War" (it is in the Qoran) and fought against the Jews and tried to force everybody to convert to the Islam. Muslims, who believe in all this, won't want to hear that, of course.
I don't know enough about early Islamic history, but for most of Islamic history, that has not been the case. Muslims want everyone to become Muslim, of course, but they do not force them. In such places as Spain during the Golden Age, Christians and Jews could live free of persecution. They were, however, subject to a tax on non-believers, so there was a financial incentive to convert, but I don't think you can call that forcing anyone.
The attitude that non-Muslims must be convert has only been other than a minority view for limited periods in history, I belief.
Re: Islam
Ishmael is not Egyptian in the Bible, he's half-Egyptian, the son of an Egyptian expatriate handmaiden and her Hebrew master!
He invented the "Holy War" (it is in the Qoran) and fought against the Jews and tried to force everybody to convert to the Islam. Muslims, who believe in all this, won't want to hear that, of course.
I don't know enough about early Islamic history, but for most of Islamic history, that has not been the case. Muslims want everyone to become Muslim, of course, but they do not force them. In such places as Spain during the Golden Age, Christians and Jews could live free of persecution. They were, however, subject to a tax on non-believers, so there was a financial incentive to convert, but I don't think you can call that forcing anyone.
The attitude that non-Muslims must be convert has only been other than a minority view for limited periods in history, I belief.