And then there is this bit of admiration:
"Here and elsewhere, Lewis appears to see them as clever underdogs, David to Goliath, Muhammad Ali to George Foreman. He inventories the great sacks of gold and silver and precious stones that, together with vast numbers of slaves and young women (harem-bound), they sent back to their caliph in Damascus, the capital of the empire. Included in the shipments were the heads, pickled in brine, that they had removed from Visigoth grandees."
Religion of Peace indeed.
"Eventually, many Jews and Christians did convert—probably, in many cases, to avoid the tax. At the end of the eighth century, the vast majority of people in Iberia were Christians. Two hundred years later, the majority were Muslims."
But there is no compulsion in religion the RoP states.
"but he believes that Muhammad did not intend this severity, and that the Koran is kinder to women than either the Torah or St. Paul."
Especially when it comes to marrying six year old girls.
'The halting of their advance was instrumental, he writes, in creating “an economically retarded, balkanized, and fratricidal Europe that . . . made virtues out of hereditary aristocracy, persecutory religious intolerance, cultural particularism, and perpetual war.”'
T'is not that I love Islam less, but that I hate my own culture more.