The conquests destroyed little: what they did suppress were imperial rivalries and sectarian bloodletting among the newly subjected population. The Muslims tolerated Christianity but they disestablished it; henceforth Christian life and liturgy, its endowments, politics, and theology, would be a private not a public affair. By an exquisite irony, Islam reduced the status of Christianity to that which the Christians had earlier thrust upon the Jews, with one difference. The reduction in Christian status was merely judicial; it was unaccompanied by either systematic persecution or blood lust and generally, though not everywhere and at all times, unmarred by vexatious behavior.

XREF: Parallels the Christian disestablishment of Judaism, an ironic inversion this passage highlights.

Green, Todd H, The Fear of Islam_ An Intro…, loc. 115