Ignorance and bigotry are a dangerous mix

Exhibit 1: Dumber than a Fig, Newt Gingrich loves to go on about how the Muslims having conquered  Cordoba, Spain established the city as the capital of the caliphate and subjected the Christians to the horrors of Sharia law in the 10th century.  What Newt fails to tell us is the truth in that during the middle ages, Cordoba, Spain was the most progressive city in Europe with a population of 400,000 compared to Paris with a population of 38,000.  The great Mosque of Cordoba also had a library containing hundreds of thousands of volumes.  More importantly, Christians and Jews were allowed to practice their religions freely and self govern.  Meanwhile in the rest of Christian Europe, its citizens were having a blast with the Black Death, crimes of heresy, religious intolerance, witch dunking….in other words just like Monty Python and the Holy Grail.    
Exhibit 2: In fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.  I remember that little ditty from elementary school and thought Ferdinand and Isabella were heroes for sponsoring Christopher Columbus’s voyage.  That was until I learned that these great Christian Rulers expelled all the Jews from Spain, at least the ones who were weren’t executed during the inquisition.   That’s right convert, leave, or risk death.  Not very Christian.  80,000 Jews who lived freely under Muslin rule, suddenly had to leave.
So I leave you with the facts, not what Newt and his ilk spew on a regular basis.  Do your own research, and don’t listen to the politicians and demagogues.  On the douche nozzle scale, Gingrich gets 9 douchies for his version of history.

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