Draica wrote:I'm aware that the crusaders were no friends of the Byzantines.
Who said anything about the crusaders?
Draica wrote:The Muslims had more than a capable military force that would have crushed any Christian rebellions, even though the first caliph were plauged by more problems than the fear of the Christians uprising.
The Rashidun Caliphate had a relatively small army when compared to the Byzantines and Sassanids. They conquered both, after all, due to a case of historical good luck - both empires were exhausted from warring with each other and beset by internal strife, and were easily taken in comparatively few battles.
Draica wrote:It doesn't change the fact that they invaded Europe, that they took Christian lands over, that they invaded Jerusalem and killed thousands while doing so(yes, the crusaders were no better as they also killed thousands in the multiple attempts to re-take Jerusalem,). They were not nice people. They were radicals who had immense power and immense sway and used that to their advantage against the European and non-muslim cultures in their scope.
The Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates (ie the dynasties that did the conquering) had comparatively little interest in religious persecution - both for practical reasons (such things usually incited more rebellions than they did convert people and if everyone converted to Islam, they'd lose quite a hefty chunk of their tax revenues) and ideological ones. The Caliphate, as an institution, wasn't meant to convert the whole world to Islam, it was meant to bring the world under the control of the Viceroy of God on Earth (a translation of the title 'Caliph', and, incidentally, not that far removed from the Byzantine concept of the position of emperor) and thereby back into the hands of God. Christians and Jews in particular were considered to already be following God's word, and were thus to be a protected class, exempt from military service and allowed to practice as they wished.
