Perhaps, in the East it wasn't the case, yet I think that Islamic world was no exception to the general tendency of the time, so one so knowledgeable of it as you would have find plenty of cases when heretics/atheists were murdered or otherwise suffered for their views (or at least for expressing them in public). For example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansur_Al-Hallaj
Yes, Mansur al-Hallaj was the guy I quoted in my post. The point I was making is that he wasn't an atheist, but a heretic.