Henri Pirenne aptly describes the contraction of Western Mediterranean trade with the Christian Byzantium empire and beyond, due the Muhammandan invasions of the 7^th century.  Ports were emptied, urban life was circumscribed, raw materials began to vanish, gold circulation dropped, papyrus disappeared, and Western Europe become a collection of localities and long-distance trade almost vanished.  This is simply common sense, when one views the Roman empire, as one centred around and dominated by the Mediterranean, now sliced in half and largely controlled by Muhammadan ships, pirates and armies.  Rome sacked in 840, Genoa in 945, all the major islands and coast lines in the Tyrrhenian sea controlled by Muhammad’s cult.

The only part Islam had to play in helping establish modernity was as a trading zone stretching from Morocco to the borders of China – but one controlled by Muslims and one which discriminated against trade with Western Europe.  Venice, an outpost of Byzantium grew wealthy from trade with the Christian and Muslim states to its east and south.  But in the rest of Europe, until Genoa and Pisa, along with the Spanish Christian Reconquista during the 10^th century, rolled back the Muhammadans, everywhere was contraction.  There is no evidence that in any other realm be it in medicine, the arts, sciences, math, philosophy, economy or politics, Islam invented anything of value.  All was known and developed by non-Muslims who simply squatted on far richer civilisations – ones weakened by a century of plague and war. 

The oft-repeated lie – that Islam was a vital part of creating the modern world – is ridiculous. Islam's modern poverty in all matters secular and ecclesiastical has been apparent since the beginning of Arab imperialism. Arab culture created and spread Islamic doctrine. The Koran is the uber-tool of Arab imperialism. Is it not curious that Muslims must chant in Arabic when 80% don't speak the language? If that is not a bizarre form of imperialism than what is it? [or do you really believe that the moon cult deity spoke a minor language to an illiterate pagan Arab circa 615 A.D.?].

Islamic apologists including respected academics like Bernard Lewis who is portrayed as a crank and critic of Islam, always trot out the 'golden age' of Islamic brilliance between 900 A.D. and 1100 A.D. when Europe was in the 'dark' ages and European civilisation apparently lagged so far behind that of the conquering Arabs and Muslims. In this bizarre view, only the Arab-Muslim world was rich, wealthy, educated and on the path to 'inventing' modern medicine [wrong] and implementing the creation of the zero [a Hindu invention], as well engaging in rapturous and learned enterprises of literature, philosophy, astronomy, and resurrecting ancient Greek texts of all varieties on all subjects.

It sounds so romantic and just – handsome Bedouins in flowing robes with papyrus texts earnestly discussing Aristotle over mocha coffee in a Baghdad madrassa. Honest, caring Muslims, so accepting of all cultures, religions and ideas, intent on furthering the powers of civilisation. Peaceful Arabs striving to create modern science, modern economy, modern politics and the theorems that underpin the modern world. How sweet and how ridiculous.

Islam was created by the Arabs as a tool of imperialism. The Arabs conquered the Near East, North Africa, parts of Europe, the Sudan, southern Russia, Persia, and parts of India and beyond. The Arabs by design and luck conquered far richer empires and this wealth allowed the Muslim empire to survive and thrive. It was not something that the Arabs invented or did that created civilisation or wealth. It was what they took that made them rich, and it was how they used Infidels, Dhimmis (second class citizens) to further develop some areas of Spain (eg. Cordoba in a limited way), or the former Persian metropolis at Baghdad. 

Byzantium, weakened by almost 100 years of plague (‘Justinian' plagues) which killed maybe 1/3 of its total population and the constant wars with Persia and 'barbarians' to the north, was still the richest and most cosmopolitan centre of civilisation in the world when the Arabs quickly defeated the emasculated and poorly led empire in Israel and Syria. Though the city of Constantinople held out until 1453, the richest areas of the Eastern Roman empire inexorably fell to the Arabs – including all the loot, assets and trade of the key region straddling modern day Anatolia, Lebanon, Syria and northern Iraq. Once shorn of its rich provinces the end for Byzantium was a matter of time and only staved off through great tenacity, military prowess and invention [including the use of Greek fire, a pre-modern flame thrower], and control over the Black sea trade routes.

The same is true of Persia, a much more advanced civilisation than anything the Arabs could imagine and a main conduit of east-west trade and commerce. Vast irrigation, canal works, engineering feats and imposing cities with running water dominated the Zoroastrian-Farsi culture. For 1500 years the Persians had believed in the teachings of Zoroaster a man with similar views to that of Christ, until the Arabs forcibly converted – on pain of death or higher taxes – the Farsi elite to Islam. It must have been bitter indeed for the Persians, once the conquerors of the Arabs and the world's super-power, to submit to Islamic imperialism.

The Jewish and Christian states were likewise far more civilised and modern than anything that the Arabs had ever seen. Straddling key trade routes these states showing precocious urban and engineering development, but were however, quite weak militarily and easy conquests for the Arabs. As with Persia, Jewish-Christian wealth flowed to the new Arab leadership and the Jews and Christians were either killed, taxed or deported [with their assets stolen by Arabs]. In any event by 900 A.D. the richest areas of the Near East and North Africa were in Arab hands. Such was the basis of the 'Islamic Golden Age'. In modern parlance we call it 'squatting'.

The Islamic and Muslim empire was of course hardly monolithic. It stretched across a wide area of the world. Arabs, Turks, Persians and others took leadership turns or established regional empires or sub-empires. Yet just because these states squatted on, and took advantage of pre-existing trade routes, urban centres, engineering development, and all manners of learning, does not make them 'enlightened' or advanced. Once the Arabs and their successors took over these lands what happened? What was developed and improved? What was invented? These are the key questions which are never answered.

The short answer is not much.

Science in the Muhammadan ‘Golden Age’ was premised only on translated texts of ancient Greek thinkers – translated it should be said by Nestorian Christians and Jews. No independent empirical deduction existed in Islam. Roger Bacon and others, during the supposed 'Dark Ages' of Europe in the 13th century, invented the scientific method, much of it premised on socio-cultural developments starting in the early 11th century. No improvement was thus made on the ideas and 'laws' of the ancient Greeks by the Muslims, nor did they advance rational inquiry which is the premise of scientific discovery. Pythagoras, Euclid, Archimedes and others who existed 1300 years before the Golden Age of Islam, were I do recall, Greek mathematicians and experimenters.  Christian scientists - not Muslim - embarked on the investigations which led to the rational revolution and modern science.

The Muslims were inferior to the Greeks in geometry, calculus, the basic sciences, engineering [the Greeks were building domes and advanced arches that the Arabs could never replicate], philosophy, history [see Herodotus], and agriculture. They were also inferior to the Hindus in algebra where the zero became a revolutionary and entirely Hindu creation. As well the Muslims were far less advanced less the Zoroastrian Persians in matters of urban and irrigation technology including the building of canals, irrigation systems and even roads.

So, in essence what was this mythical Muslim golden age? It appears likely that the main Muslim commitment to helping develop the modern world was three-fold. First, they incorporated the learning, techniques and advances of the more sophisticated empires which they conquered. This amalgam of various influences can be seen in the development of Islamic society over the period 800-1400 A.D. Second, they helped spread knowledge, abetted by the Greek and Jewish translations of once forgotten Greek inventions and ideas. Lastly, they provided the means of trade between east and west which facilitated the exchange of everything from products to new military technology.

This then is about the sum of the Arabic-Islamic 'Golden Age'. One should also note this. The 'Dark Ages' in Europe were not that dark. They are called the dark ages because of the lack of information and description about society at that time. Yet inventions aplenty populated Europe during the rise of the Islamic empire. Agricultural techniques, harnesses, new military technologies, medicine, urbanisation and the rise of the burgess or merchant bourgeois, the building of roads and canals, all this and more dominated the so-called 'Middle Ages'.

The Europeans took a thickly forested, difficult, and rough land and turned it, over a painfully long period, into the centre of world civilisation. They were also able to equip and send out vast expeditions of men to the Holy Land, in a series of crusades designed to reclaim historical Christendom from the Turk, as well as roll back the Islamic invasion of Europe. Such a feat of logistics resulting in a 200-year occupation of the Holy Land would not characterise a poor and muddled civilisation. The Europeans learnt a lot from the Crusades about commerce, trade, building and military techniques. The Muslims, never interested in kaffirs, learnt a lot less. The decline of Islam was thus assured.

The Muslims and Arabs never advanced civilisation. They were content to squat and let the 'dhimmis' in their midst engage in building modern commerce; conduct inquiries and invent and create. The Koran as tool of power might be effective in making people submit and stay submissive. It is a tool of fascist-pagan oppression, designed to keep the masses ignorant and the wealthy powerful. Melding church and state, not allowing inquiry or risk [for instance disallowing biopsy or commercial interest], disavowing individuality, not creating institutions of law, politics and free expression – these defects and more reflect the anti-modern program of Arab imperialism.

Since these factors were in play 1000 years ago, how could there ever have been a Muslim 'Golden Age'? How does one explain this beautiful time of 300 million dead, due to racist and supremacist ideals? Even the divided and far less populated Christian states of Europe, never united against Islam, and in fact at times allied with it in their various internal wars, were in the case of France, England or Northern Italy more than a match for the entire Islamic world by 1300 A.D. Why was this?

The reasons should be obvious. Never forget that Islam was spread by the sword. Conversions were forced or taken by people to avoid the dhimmi [apartheid] tax and social repercussions and oppression of being a 'kaffir' [Arab word originally denoting a black slave]. In this vein Islam for many centuries was concerned with power and with military force. The men involved were originally pagan, and much preoccupied with original lusts – money, land, and women. Higher culture was an afterthought. Creating the modern world was a non-issue since the Koran ruled.

Islam is the ultimate pagan cult. Submission, rituals, chanting, and non-thinking obedience, encased in an apartheid society, is the goal of Islam.

There was no 'Golden Age' of Islam. If you think there was, then try this exercise – list all the Islamic inventions that created the modern world. The paper will be blank.