that has nothing to do directly with Islam, any more than the fact that the West was Christian has much to do with Da Vinci or Newton. And the impact of knowledge preserved by the East, while important, has had much less impact on the progress of Western Civilization (especially technological progress) than the contributions of those poor benighted inhabitants of the Middle Ages in Europe who, being short of manpower, were forced by necessity to invent and improve machines that laid the foundation for the modern industrial world.

There are some things, despite a commitment to freedom, that you just don't tolerate. It's not legal today, as I understand it, to be a nazi in Germany. In my opinion, Islam is just as great an evil posing as a religion. It is the penultimate enemy of the values and culture of Western Civilization. If you remember, there's a phrase in the Bible "By their fruits, ye shall know them." I'm judging Islam by its fruits--violence, ignorance, intolerance, oppression of women. If I had my way, Islam would be similarly (and unquely) banned in the United States the way Naziism has (IMO sensibly) been banned in Germany.

As for what Christians did in Spain, read the following posting on the often-disparaged Crusades. It shows them for what they were--a purely defensive reaction to Islam conquering fully 2/3 of the formerly Christian world by fire and sword by the armies of Islam. It was resist or perish. But for 'ignorant barbarian fanatics' like Godfrey of Bouillon, Robert of Normandy, and Raymond of Toulouse, there would be no Europe as we know it today.

The Real History of the Crusades