I am allergic to the buzzword of Islamic golden age imposed by the western historians when they rediscovered a remote part of the world, so let me reflect upon it:
This is said a lot before, but still. Claims such as Saying Islam brought us a lot of scientific advances:
To paraphrase Monty Python, what has Islam ever done for us? You know, apart from the algebra, the trigonometry, the optics, the astronomy and the many other scientific advances and inventions of the Islamic Golden Age.
is like saying Christianity gave us the Renaissance. They were just co-existing in the same region and were counter-forces most of the time. Many of the scientist of the so-called Islamic golden age were self-claimed atheists or had philosophical agenda or personal life styles quite against the dominant Islamic ideology. One could argue that actually reviving the Islamic faith by scholars like Al-Ghazali and the extermination of reasoning and philosophy eventually put an end to the golden age of the Middle East. An age that owes Islam (as a religion, what it is) nothing, perhaps except its sunset.