Despite its religious veneer, Islam can easily be defined and understood by one non-religious word: tribalism. The entire appeal of Muhammad's call to the Arabs of his time lay in its perfect compatibility with their tribal mores, three in particular: 1) loyalty to one's tribe; 2) enmity for other tribes; and 3) raids on the latter to enrich and empower the former. Muhammad's "genius" was to replace blood ties with religious ones, thereby dividing the world into two mega tribes: the believers in one tent, and their natural enemies, the non-believers in another. In short, by repackaging the tribal mores of seventh-century Arabia through a theological paradigm, the prophet of Islam also deified tribalism into a sort of hyper-tribalism, causing it to outlive its historic setting and dramatically spill into the modern era.
RaymondIbrahim.com