[achilles2000]

You’re wasting your time. Too many people are invested in being victims. The scholarship on the Inquisition tells a very different story from the false one originally propagated by humanists and my fellow Protestants that everyone “knows”. In fact, the common understanding is about as unhistorical as the “flat earth” myth.

Another historical lie is the myth of the “Andalusian Paradise”, according to which everyone in Spain got along and prospered under Mohammedan rule. See, e.g., The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise by
Professor Darío Fernández-Morera here: http://www.mmisi.org/ir/41_02/fernandez-morera.pdf

Morera, interestingly, notes the persecution of Karaite Jews (who rejected authority of the Talmud) by Orthodox Jews in Catholic lands and that at times during the Mohammedan occupation of Spain Jews collaborated with the Mohammedans against the Catholics.

In an adult reading of history, Jews, Christians, and Mohammedans have each been victims and victimizers. The cartoonish narrative that casts certain groups as beyond criticism and others as merely evil oppressors is just an attempt to create guilt so that people today can be manipulated into doing absurd things - Affirmative Action, for example.

[Tzfat]

Too many people are invested in being victims.

Surely you are not speaking of the Jewish people? For 2,500 years Jews have been persecuted... severely. Yet, they quietly picked up the pieces and kept on. For a victimized people, they are easily the most remarkable on earth.

Don't ever mention the word "victim" to a Jew. Jews don't want your sympathy - after the holocaust, Jews are simply sick of denial on the part of people like you.

[dervish]

You sound like a multiculturalist. Everyone and every culture was and is the same. No absolute good or evil.

Jews got a lot of affirmative action. That must be those quotas they had in universities. Numerus clausus.

[rmlew]

You forgot the role of Arianist Christians in Spain.
And while I happen to like Karaites, they were not always victims, especially under the Czars.

[muawiyah]

The Reconquista took 700 years. A lot can go on in that much time. The Moslem rule had 4 main periods. Initially they established a branch of the Umayyad Empire (located in what is now mostly Iraq).

In the course of time that became the ONLY part of the Umayyad to survive various conquests, wars, plagues, and sufferings. That was the end of the first period. It sure wasn't a sweet deal for Christians outside the small Christian states in the North

Finally, the Umayyad state broke down into a series of small principalities ~ which were open to conquest by small Christian states (e.g. Leon, Castile, Carvajal).

That's when things improved. Even intermarriage happened.

At some point a North African Moslem kingdom invaded to punish the local Spanish Moslems for having fallen away.

That was period three.

Finally there was the fourth period where the small Christian states became LARGE Christian states who attracted thousands of the younger sons of French knights. The entire leadership class in Spain became intertwined with that of France and England and first thing you know Isabella and Ferdinand had taken over the peninsula.

We all know most of the history after that.

I've noticed a tendency for Moslems to focus on the first period ~ which really was a bit more liberal than Christians imagine, but Christians focus on the fourth period which had less warfare than Moslems imagine. There are long stretches in between where Spanish society built laws, architecture, and a Jewish intellectual and engineering class. That's usually not much appreciated.

BTW, all those Jewish trade names with "Smid" or "Schmid" in them? That's from the Spanish period ~ "Scmei de" is from Ladino ~ the latinate language Jews used in Spain. There are an awful lot of Jewish trade names ~

Some analysts argue that Jews in Spain constituted the world's first industrial class ~ and certainly served as the major mercantile class North of the Mediterranean for centuries.

The Christians and Moslems busied themselves with gentlemanly pursuits ~ farming, herding, making war.