Islam—submission to God’s will—was in many ways a classic second-wave Axial religion. Its founder came from the margins of the elite (he was a minor figure in a nouveau riche trading clan) and the margins of empire; he wrote nothing down (the Koran, or “Recitations,” was assembled only after his death); he believed that God was unknowable; and he built on earlier Axial thought. He preached justice, equality before God, and compassion toward the weak. All this he shared with earlier Axial thinkers. But in another way, he was a whole new creature: an Axial warrior.
