[muawiyah]

Mongols who ended up conquering most of the Middle East were already Moslem converts for the most part before they got there.

This was obviously a mistake on the part of the missionaries!

They nearly made the same mistake in Russia and Ukraine ~ still, it was common for Mongol overlords to become Christian. The Mongols in Estonia and Finland were also frequently Christian, and I would suppose some of them were still around when the Protestant Reformation took hold throughout Scandinaia.

(Hint: I know a bit about the history of the peoples who speak Uralic-Altaic languages, or the apparantly related Finno-Ughric languages. A neighbor girl affiliated with a church in Northern Virginia traveled to Mongolia as a missionary and helped found the first Christian church ever approved, authorized or recognized by a government in Mongolia!)

(Note: A few years back National Geographic featured the Mongol Conquests. They featured Ghengis Khan's Christian grandson).

[weenie]

Then choose a side and enlist with us. This is war...

[broadsword]

Interesting, but I have yet to encounter anything to convince me that the Mongols were ever predominantly anything but animist and then Buddhist... not that that matters much anyway. Thanks for the info.

The point here is that if you are anything but Muslim, you may be offered the sweet choice of a prayer rug or a coffin, and nobody else on earth is interested in forcing something like that on you.