re: #4 researchok
re: #5 Eclectic Infidel
1,500 years of history shows that on a level of 1-10 only China was at 10 being no repression what-so-ever that I can find.
The Islamic world was at various times a 9 to about a 7 before the founding of Israel.
Europe was full on repression until the Western European Enlightenment (continued in the east) and then a return to it after WW1 with the rise of the Nazis.
So to cherry pick the entire Islamic history to demonize Islamic civilization for modern purposes is very Pamela Gellerish.
I stand by my statement, Israel was the idea of European Jews to escape European Christian repression and by establishing a nation state in part to help end anti-semetisim had as a sad bi-rpoduct caused the Islamic world to switch over from being relatively tolerant of Jews to adopting European style anti-semetism. An example of the law of unintended consequences.