4. Muslims were and are at least as tolerant as Jews and Christians. They have made a major contribution to Western civilization.

It was not Muslims who invented "holy war", joined Crusades under the rallying cry "Deus lo vult – God wills it" (Urban II) and in the process massacred more than four million Muslims and Jews. It was not Muslims who waded "ankle-deep in blood" in Jerusalem before they "rejoicing and weeping from excess of happiness … came to worship and give thanks at the sepulcher of our savior Jesus," as a contemporary reported.

Islam never associates the word "holy" with war. Jihad means "exertion, a struggle on the pathways of God" (Hans Küng), an effort that can involve defensive war. Nowhere in the Qur'an does jihad mean "holy war." Wars are never "holy", only a just peace is holy.

Nor was it Muslims who massacred up to 50 million people in the name of colonizing Africa and Asia. It was not Muslims who instigated the First and Second World Wars, in which almost 70 million people perished. And it was not Muslims, but we Germans, who ignominiously murdered six million Jews - fellow citizens, friends and neighbors - in an industrially organized breach of civilization. No other culture has been more violent and bloody over the past centuries as Western civilization. When have so-called "Christian" politicians ever honored Christianity, this wonderful religion of love?

Nobody can deny that the territorial expansion of the Muslim dynasties between the 7th and the 17th centuries - like that of the European powers over the same period – was conducted also with the sword. On the Muslim side as well, there were inexcusable massacres.

Muslim conquerors did not however, as a rule, attempt to force Christians or Jews to accept Islam, expel them, or exterminate them. When Saladin won back Jerusalem after a hard-fought battle in 1187, he made a point of not exacting revenge and let the Christians go free in exchange for a ransom. He even waived the ransom for poor Christians.

Tolerance towards Christians and Jews was the law and the pride of Muslim civilization. Under Muslim rule entire peoples remained Christian or Jewish, while the "Christian" Inquisition burned those who held different beliefs at the stake.

When the Muslim general Tariq ibn Ziyad landed on the Iberian Peninsula in 711, a period of cultural and scientific blossom began, which was to last for more than seven centuries and contribute enormously to Western civilization. In Andalusia, then  the most modern state in Europe, the coexistence of Muslims, Jews and Christians proved to be an unparalleled success. The Jews fared much better under Muslim rule than under "Christian" hegemony.

It was only when the "Christian" King Ferdinand of Aragon completed the Reconquista in 1492 by taking Granada, the last Muslim bastion in Spain that the merciless expulsion of the Jews began. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were forced to leave the country. For centuries the Jews had been respected, held high office, and lived together in harmony with their Muslim contemporaries. Most fled to Muslim countries around the Mediterranean.

The coexistence of Christians, Jews and Muslims in Muslim countries only became troubled with the advent of colonialism and nationalism in the 19th and 20th centuries, when some Muslims came to see Christians and Jews as party to aggressive Western imperialism. The Armenian tragedy in Turkey was a result of nationalist, not religious intolerance.

Muslims in the enlightened Andalusian era not only salvaged for us the sunken treasures of Greek and Roman culture and philosophy, they also created new sciences. They pioneered experimental optics, invented the compass, discovered the paths of the planets and crucial elements of modern medicine and pharmacy. Even if we do not want to believe it: We live in a culture that was formed by Judaism, Christianity AND Islam.

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