Who Has Been Tolerant, Islam or Christianity?

Various Muslim dynasties ruled Jerusalem up until Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade, in the 12th Century, which stirred up Christians to travel to "the Holy Land" to wrest it from control of the Muslims.

Under the Muslims, Christians and Jews in Jerusalem had been tolerated. Once Jerusalem was conquered by the Crusaders, nearly all the Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem were slaughtered.

A similar pattern occurred about three hundred years later in Spain during the so-called Reconquista, or the Christian reconquest of Spain, which was completed in 1492. In most of the Moorish (or Muslim) kingdoms of Spain—notably Andalusia,  known in Moorish days as el Andalus—Jews, Christians, and the Muslim Moors lived side-by-side, and most of the time the Muslims tolerated Christians and Jews. That ended in 1492 with the completion of the Reconquista. The Jews were immediately expelled in 1492 (actually, they were given three choices: convert, get out, or die). The Moors were promised toleration but, just 10 years later, that promise was broken and the Moors were told to convert or get out.

Many Jews and Muslims in newly-Christian Spain who agreed to undergo conversion were suspected of not being sincere in their conversions and were tortured by the Inquisition with various torture instruments or burned at the stake.

So in both cases, Jerusalem and Spain, Jews, Muslims, and Christians all co-existed peacefully when the Muslims were in power, and once Christians gained control the situation abruptly changed and the Jews and Muslims were driven out or killed.

Copyright © 2013 by Richard Stein