Your unfounded hostility towards the Inquisition is a cultural artifact deriving from English propaganda when they were first getting started on their centuries-old habit of vicious hostility to anyone who might threaten their preeminence as a world power. In the 16th century, Spain was the big dog, so England had to be hostile to her, and those hostilities carried over in the parts of the world where they were settling at the same time. Such ancient prejudices are the reason why English has such expressions as "Dutch uncle" "Dutch treat/go Dutch" "in Dutch" and "Dutch rub." The Dutch were major commerical rivals of the English.

Anyway, the Black Legend (la Leyenda Negra) was spred as anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish propaganda, exaggerating the worst cases and citing aberrations as facts. In fact, the inquisition was set up to provide a formal process of inquiry and means for sorting out the truth of accusations of collaboration and sympathy with the finally-evicted Muslims and other offenses which were considered treasonous at the time. It was a commonly established & long-standing practice throughout Europe to consider heresy and other such offenses to be civil matters as well as religious. The point of the inquisition was to give the people accused of such things a fair trial. The state and the Church each had their own inquisitions, in both cases being attempts by the crown and clergy to take the authority away from the local lynch mobs. Contrary to what rabidly anti-Catholic writers are Voltaire portray about the Inquisition, you did not fall under its scrutiny for refusing to eat pork in a restuarant. That was the sort of method the lynch mobs took as an excuse. The inquisition looked into such complaints and charges and generally found such specious accusations groundless. Commonly attributed "tests" such as drowning a suspect and declaring him guilty if he floated were more commonly known in regions where not only did the Inquisition have no authority, but where the people looked upon the standardized forensic procedures and requirements for evidence of the Inquisition with horror and much preferred such issues to be decided by mob violence.

It may not have been perfect, but for its time, the Inquisition was one of the most advanced and humane judicial systems in the known world. Such offensive practices (to our modern eyes) as it employed (such as the judge acting as the lead investigator rather than separating those roles, or the use of torture) were not innovations of the inquisition, but rather were standard usages of the time, practiced as well by the inquisition's harshest critics. People were tortured all the time in those days. Under the Inquistion, however, it was not because the local aristocrat decided you looked suspicious and was determined to beat a confession out of you, but as a last resort after a defendant was proven guilty by the evidence, and to obtain a confession. Not only that, but strict guidelines were imposed on the use, which would be familiar to WoT readers from Vandene & Adeleas description of White Tower restrictions on torture of their initiates, except the Tower is more liberal in their allowance of torture than the Inquisition was. The Inquisition would also never have been taken in by Siuan's false accusations about Elaida & the Red Ajah, because they automatically dismissed any testimony from a personal enemy (as defined by the defendant). Would that the Inquisition were afforded the same courtesy by history! Most importantly the Inquisition did not spring up to persecute people for crimes they invented; those things had long been generally accepted for hundreds of years as evil and societal ills that needed to be stamped out. The Inquisition arose in an effort to reform the prosecution of such crimes and to prevent them from being excuses to act out local grudges or property seizures & protect the rights of the accused.

I suppose it is the same willingness to look at the facts of supposed historical villainy and make my own decision that prevents me from accepting the opinions of a character in a novel as an absolute guide to right and wrong.