German Islam

In this world, the late Roman penetration of Christianity into the German lands would lead to a reaction, in the form of a Mohammed-like figure, who in the story as it would be told would take a walk at night in a holy grove, and be overcome with visions. Syncretizing Christianity with various elements of Germanic belief, this monotheistic-with-some-frills religion would be an expansionist one, claiming to be an original truth than Christians and Jews had forgotten and would have to be reminded of, by the sword if necessary. So when the Germanic invasions got underway, it would be a religious crusade as well as a territorial migration...

Some elements carried over from Germanic myth: there were still sacred groves, although human sacrifice was forbidden, for nature was holy, a gift from God to man, a thing of beauty and occasionally terror - the notion, so often popular in Christianity, that we inhabited a Fallen world which would be put to order during the End Times (all those annoying mountains flattened out, for instance) was missing. Similar to Islam in it's universality and tolerance to the "people of the book" (never mind it took a couple centuries for the writings of the Enlightened One to be put onto vellum), the new faith was also different in many ways: it did not have the whole "succession problem" of Islam, in that descent from the Enlightened One was not considered necessary for a ruler, nor was the division of ruler and ruled that led many Islamic states OTL to create armies of slaves they could rely on. Jarls and Kings continued to sit relatively secure on their thrones and Moots and Things of various sorts remained influential, as long as they stuck to the principles of the faith. Submission was to God.

(I have named the faith "Submission" in honor of the very fine "Viking Islam" TL created by Anthony Mayer back in the 00's on soc.history.what-if. Some of it can be found here or here but the search function on yahoo groups is, alas, crap.)

Christianity would not be wiped out, but would survive on the southern side of the Mediterranean, and retained footholds in the Balkans and Iberia from which it would be able to carry out a reconquista of sorts (more successfully in the west than east), aided by a tendency of Submission states (I'm not saying Submissive, sounds silly) towards fragmentation (the old multiple sons problem in the absence of a semi-divine universal ruler), and would, like Islam OTL, expand by horse and camel across the Sahara and by boat from Arabia to East Africa. The contest between Christianity and Submission would continue, with Submission (once it had gotten the trick of primogeniture down) gaining an edge from the generally dictatorial tendencies of the Christian states (with the Roman papacy snuffed in the cradle, the tendency was for secular rulers to also be the leaders of their own churches, and the OTL influence of Germanic semi-democratic traditions removed, the Roman High Imperial model tended to be the norm), which if allowing impressive coordination and resources under strong, competent rulers, also tended towards inflexibility and disaster under long-lived bad ones. Competition would continue in the Americas, and beyond.

In the modern day China, "pagan" China is unquestionably Top Country, having turned more outward looking and never fallen as far behind technologically as OTL (conflicts on three continent discouraged complacence, and if China did fall behind for a while, it never fell so far that it couldn't extract unacceptable costs from a would-be conqueror). The worlds of Christianity and Submission have to some extent kissed and made up in a more secular and scientific era, although neither is quite as secular as the OTL Christian-more-or-less west (think of a world made up of variants on OTL religiosity and you'll be not too far off.  ) and are concentrating on (1), not being bought and sold by the Chinese, and (2), dealing with advanced global warming, worse in a TL where industrialized modernity is rather more widely spread...

So, here's the map. Some spelling errors are deliberate to indicate divergence in languages and spelling conventions, so don't be so swift to tell me I screwed up there. China has a lot of economic influence all over the place, but it's busy and note-filled enough, so taken it as given.