The “People of The Book”, i.e. Christians and Jews, are even much more compatible, since they believe in God and stick to moral code He revealed to man.
In the rise of Islamic science, the role of this open-mindedness is very clear to see. John Esposito of the Georgetown University, one of the most prominent Western experts on Islam, makes the following comment:
The genesis of Islamic civilization was indeed a collaborative effort, incorporating the learning and wisdom of many cultures and languages. As in government administration, Christians and Jews, who had been the intellectual and bureaucratic backbone of the Persian and Byzantine empires, participated in the process as well as Muslims. This “ecumenical” effort was evident at the Caliph al-Mamun’s (reigned 813-33) House of Wisdom and at the translation center headed by the renowned scholar Hunayn ibn Isaq, a Nestorian Christian. This period of translation and assimilation was followed by one of Muslim intellectual and artistic creativity. Muslims ceased to be disciples and became masters, in process producing Islamic civilization, dominated by the Arabic language and Islam’s view of life… Major contributions were made in many fields: literature and philosophy, algebra and geometry, science and medicine, art and architecture… Great urban cultural centers in Cordoba, Baghdad, Cairo, Nishapur, and Palermo emerged and eclipsed Christian Europe, mired in Dark Ages. 3
According to one of the great Muslim scholars of our time, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Islamic science was “the first science of a truly international nature in human history”. 4
Another Medieval Muslim manuscript describing the planetary motion.