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The fascistic pagan culture which dominated Europe disappeared in stages with the spread of Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, first to Rome, and then to all of Europe. Christianity carried to European society the basic ethical characteristics of the true religion revealed to man by the Prophet Jesus. Europe, which had once encouraged violence, conflict and bloodshed as sacred, and been composed of different tribes, races and city-states constantly at war with one another, underwent an important change.
1) Racial and tribal wars disappeared:
In the pagan world, all tribes and races saw each other as enemies, and there was constant fighting between them. Each pagan society had its own gods and totems which it invented, waging war in their name. With the coming of Christianity, there was a single belief, culture, and even language in Europe as a whole, thus the conflicts of the pagan world came to an end.
2) Peace and compassion came to be considered sacred, instead of violence:
In pagan societies, inflicting bloodshed, suffering and torture was seen as heroic, actions that appeased the imaginary "gods of war." Under Christianity however, European societies learned that people should love each other and exercise compassion (even for their enemies), and that the shedding of blood was a great sin in the sight of God.
3) The perception of human beings as a species of animal disappeared:
The Spartans regarding their warriors as equivalent to "watch-dogs" was an extension of the "animist" belief widespread in pagan societies. Animism implied ascribing a soul to nature and animals. According to animism, there was no difference between a human being and an animal, or even a plant. But when religion came to predominate, this superstition disappeared, and European societies realized that human beings possessed a soul given to them by God, and were completely different from animals, and could not, therefore, be subject to the same laws.
These three aspects of paganism—racism, bloodshed, and equating human beings with animals—are also the basic characteristics of fascism. In Europe, they were vanquished by Christianity. In the Middle East, the same victory was achieved by Islam over Arab paganism. Before the advent of Islam, the Arabs (and other Middle Eastern and Central Asian societies) were warlike, blood-thirsty, and racist. The Spartans' barbaric "abandonment of unwanted children to die" was adopted by the pagan Arabs, in the form of burying their female children alive. The Koran mentions this savage practice:
When the baby girl buried alive is asked for what crime she was killed. (Koran, 81: 8-9)
When any of them is given the good news of (the birth of a daughter) the very thing which he himself has ascribed to the All-Merciful his face darkens and he is furious.(Koran, 43:17)
The Arabs, and other Middle Eastern and Central Asian cultures, were only transformed into peaceful, civilized, intelligent societies opposed to bloodshed after they were enlightened by Islam. Thus they were freed from the old tribal wars and nomadic savagery, and found peace and stability in religion.