The men who built up the first Islamic Empire only had the most basic notions of what being a “Muslim” meant.

Since the Quran was only compiled and later circulated over the 7th century, Islam lacked not just established clerics or clear rules, it even lacked a holy book or any sort of clarity on what it stood for, beyond the notoriously unreliable verbal traditions about the deeds and sayings of its prophet.

It’s in this context that it can be stated that Islam did not really create an empire, and rather that it was the creation of this empire that necessitated the precipitation of Islam as an organized religion.