In the eyes of history, religious toleration is the highest evidence of culture in a group of people. It was not until the Western nations broke away from their religious law that they became more tolerant and, on the contrary, it was only when the Muslims fell away from their religious law that they declined in tolerance and other marks of the highest culture. Tolerance had existed here and there in the world, among enlightened individuals; but those individuals had always been against the prevalent religion. Tolerance was regarded as un-religious, if not irreligious. Before the coming of Islam, tolerance had never been preached as an essential part of religion.
One of the commonest charges brought against Islam historically, and as a religion, by many Western writers is that it is intolerant. This is turning the tables with a vengeance when one remembers various facts: that not a Muslim is left alive in Spain or Sicily or Apulia; that not a Muslim was left alive and not a mosque left standing in Greece after the great rebellion in l821; how the Muslims of the Balkan Peninsula, once the majority, have been systematically reduced with the approval of the whole of Europe; how the Christians under Muslim rule have in recent times been urged on to rebel and massacre the Muslims, and how reprisals by the latter have been condemned as quite uncalled for.
In Spain under the Umayyads and in Baghdad under the Abbasid Khalifas, Christians and Jews, equally with Muslims, were admitted to schools and universities - not only that, they were boarded and lodged in hostels at the cost of the state. When the Moors were driven out of Spain, the Christian conquerors held a terrific persecution of the Jews. Those who were fortunate enough to escape fled, some of them to Morocco and many hundreds to the Turkish Empire, where their descendants still live and still speak among themselves an antiquated form of Spanish. The Muslim empire was a refuge for all those who fled from persecution by the Inquisition.