re: #2 Obdicut

Finally: I’d rather have been a Jew under the caliphs in Cordoba than under the Catholic Inquisition in Cordoba.

Damn skippy. There is a reason that the Jews sometimes backed the Muslims as they fought their way up Spain—Christian Spain was intolerant under the Visigoths, and it was intolerant under the Reyes Catolicos of the Reconquista.

People try as hard as they can to ‘undo’ the history of tolerance and interfaith cooperation in al-Andalus, but the truth is, by a medieval standard, it was a remarkable society, and an inspiring one.

If your ‘one size fits all’ version of Islam is so threatened by the knowledge that there have been benevolent and flowering Muslim societies, you need a better grip on something. History, human nature, reality.