Why did Islam almost entirely disappear from Spain?

Islam was not driven out of Spain at a single stroke. Hostile governments pushed it back over more than two hundred years through pressure, laws, expulsion and forced conversion, and traces of that heritage are still alive today.

Muslims lived in Spain for about seven hundred years. They did not remain foreign rulers there but married into the local population. That makes it all the more puzzling how Islam could almost entirely disappear.

The common idea that a sword swept Islam away within a few years is a myth. It belongs more to novels than to history. Even after Muslim rule ended, Muslims went on living in the country. But the pressure on them grew step by step.

What followed was a long process. Laws were changed that forced people to choose between becoming Christian and losing their homes. Some were expelled, some were killed, and others were driven into remote regions and into the mountains. For more than two hundred years one hostile government followed another. Over such a long time it is not hard to almost wipe out a religion.

Even so, the heritage has not vanished completely. Descendants of the Muslims still live in Spain today, and in some of them the memory of their origins is awakening again. Some families keep old objects as a precious inheritance from that time, and many buildings clearly bear the stamp of the Islamic era.

The second verse above shows how differently Islam itself thinks. Faith that is forced is no faith at all. What happened in Spain was exactly what the Holy Qur’an rejects.