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It's just that: liberal anti-Catholic PC BS.

Islam was a very new religion when Muslims, mostly from Persia - a very sophisticated society, at the time - conquered Spain. Within a couple hundred years in any place it conquered, Islam snuffed out learning, something that happened throughout the Middle East. In the case of Spain, even the more learned and moderate "new" (formerly Middle Eastern pagan or Christian) Muslims who first arrived there were conquered by a more aggressive group of North African Muslims, who set about destroying what the first group had brought from Baghdad.

The Muslims were in Spain for almost 800 years, but their domination was secure only in certain parts of southern Spain - they were driven out of the North very rapidly, and pursued by the Spanish kings all the way to their stronghold in the South.

And the famous "three cultures" (Christian, Jewish and Muslim) that people gush about was the city of Toledo, in Christian territory, ruled over by a Spanish Christian King (Alfonso X).

The only reason there was any luster at all to Moorish Spain is that it was far enough away from some of the hotbeds of Islam to permit the more moderate rulers (the caliphates) to develop some of the things that had been strengths of pre-Islamic Middle Eastern culture (astronomy and medicine, for example), in many cases because of the earlier influence of Greece and Rome.

That sounds to me like a pro-Catholic PC BS.

And the famous "three cultures" (Christian, Jewish and Muslim) that people gush about was the city of Toledo, in Christian territory, ruled over by a Spanish Christian King (Alfonso X).

Most notably it was not Toledo but Seville, and the relationship were increadibly harmonious between for over 700 years.

Incidentally, that has not been the case at all ever since Isabella the Catholic who quickly made Spain sterile: she expelled not only Moors but her own non-Christian subjects subjects as well -- Jews and Roma. I find it interesting that, after the greatest of catastrophies, the Holocaust, there are bout 7,000 Jews in Munich 50 years later. In ontrast, there are no Jews in Spain, even 500 years after expulsion.

It was also very telling, when the official guide of Alhambra first of all pointed to the church on the hill. There you are, standing in the most magnificent creation of the Moors, suspended in time and space, but the lecture had to begin with the church that Isabella erected after tearing down the mosque.

The Sunday school history may not always be the authentic one. (FOr another good comparison consult Fiske on the Albigences affair, and then consult the official Catholic Encyclopaedia: what a difference).