The Islamic Golden Age

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Al-Indunisiy

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:sl:

Greetings, before I start, I would like to reveil my reason for making this thread. I need an unbiased view of the Islamic Golden Age.

It revolves mainly around these questions:
1. What is the supposed Islamic Golden Age?
2. Did it even exist?
3. If yes, is it really as grand as it is portrayed?
3a. If yes, what are the factors that made it so? or Did it really owes more to Sunni orthodoxy instead of liberal attitudes?
4. If no, then what is the reality thereof?

In my approach to this, I have made a dichotomy of sources. The Pro-views and the Anti-views with an additional(if there are any which I deem so) Neuter-views.

The Anti-views I've found so far are these:
http://i-cias.com/e.o/islam-golden_age.htm
http://www.globalpolitician.com/22797-islamism
http://www.sullivan-county.com/x/islam_myth.htm
http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2009/10/part-2-the-golden-age-of-islam.html

The Pro-views I've found so far is this:
http://www.muslims.eu/The_Islamic_Golden_Age.html

Can anyone criticise or comment the sources and or give a link to a reliable histoy site about these?

Thanks/Shukran
 
This is not my area of history (I'm studying Stalin right now), although if I may, I believe that the Islamic Golden Age was a period in history that involved an Islamic caliphate that encompassed an empire from Spain to India, and made brilliant advances in advances in Islamic literature, poetry, theology, architecture, and perhaps most useful to me, science. That's really all I know.
 
If I may know, what site would you suggest as to be a realiable history source material for this?
 
:sl:

This is a very interesting piece of research. I think you would need to investigate as many sources as possible, including books and journals etc. One link that is quite good is:

http://www.muslimheritage.com/Default.aspx

And another one I have come across: http://famousmuslims.com/index.html

Insha'Allaah once you've done enough research, you can come back and present your findings or direct us to the book/article you've written! :smile:
 
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Sites that are outright unIslamic should just be ignored, because they are doing anything and everything to distort the pure teachings of Islam and hence their work will be baseless. The type of sites to look at are those that are aiming to provide factual information in an objective manner.
 
Insha'Allaah once you've done enough research, you can come back and present your findings or direct us to the book/article you've written!
Click to expand...

I intend to write it in three languages:
-Indonesian
-English
-Some altered form of Latin with heavy borrowings from Arabic
 
Some more sources:
-http://www.worldpolicy.org/journal/articles/wpj04-3/ayoob.htm
-http://www.jonathantan.org/handouts/Islam/Islam-H111af-sciences.pdf
-http://www.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=z3kZb4LTsf0C&oi=fnd&pg=PA13&dq=islamic+golden+age&ots=YKns_DFPxA&sig=WTD02-LZmxqib1KY4Ew_Pf7jlH8#v=onepage&q=&f=false
-http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/short/20/10/1581
-http://www.jstor.org/pss/1046702
-http://www.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=mOquCzBX3xcC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=islamic+golden+age&ots=OOVV272Vhf&sig=urBZkhrT-VPLfrQsH-LBIasavs8#v=onepage&q=islamic%20golden%20age&f=false
 
 
In my opinion it was an impressive age for the muslim world. No one should undermine the muslim science, architecture, literature and medicine those times. It was really progressive period of time. An european and american should respect and aprecciate the achievments of islamic civilization, chinese civilization, indian civilization, japanese civilization, persian and babilonian civilization, egyptian civilization. A smart person doesnt reject something that comes from foreign place, if it is valuable and wise.
 
Al-Indunisiy said:
Oh yeah, forgot another thing:
-an aditional link that I classify as Anti: http://europenews.dk/en/node/1385
-And if anyone is familiar with history I would like to read a comment

:wa:
Click to expand...

Rofl this guy is a joke.

Excerpt:
Furthermore, the intellectual achievements of Islam’s "golden age" were of limited value. There was a lot of speculation and very little application, be it in technology or politics.
Click to expand...
God, what was he expecting them to do? Build thunderbird 2 with rocks and sand?! So biased it's not even funny - and this guy got a PHD?

And what is this bs of limited value? Muslims were at the forefrunt of science AND trade at that time! Sure, not much was done on politics but so what?! How many things did muslims do compared to what they didn't? A LOT. Give em a break for not revolutionising every aspect of the world (compared to any other group of humans who were doing jack-all at the time!)

At the present day, for almost a thousand years even speculation has stopped, and the bounds of what is considered orthodox Islam have frozen, except when they have even contracted, as in the case of Wahabism.
Click to expand...
Irrelevant potshot at modern islam/muslims. Check!

Those who try to push the fundamentals of Moslem thought any further into the light of modernity frequently pay for it with their lives. The fundamentalists who ruled Afghanistan until recently and still rule in Iran hold up their supposed golden age as a model for their people and as a justification for their tyranny. Westerners should know better.
Click to expand...

More potshots. What a turd. Though, he does have a point about stagnation, which I agree with. But he's still a turd.

Al-Indunisiy said:
It revolves mainly around these questions:
1. What is the supposed Islamic Golden Age?
2. Did it even exist?
3. If yes, is it really as grand as it is portrayed?
3a. If yes, what are the factors that made it so? or Did it really owes more to Sunni orthodoxy instead of liberal attitudes?
4. If no, then what is the reality thereo
Click to expand...
Look, the golden age of Islam was pretty good - a lot of contributions were made that are still being used today (and/or were the basis of what is being used today). But, there were also areas of corruption (caliphate assinations, power struggles for leaderhips, monarchy rule etc) and pockets of poverty during that time, which some people either don't know or ignore.

There was a lot of good and some bad (noone is perfect). Unfortunately, that's the opposite today (that's why our parents moved away from our homelands!) and that's also the reason why some muslims talk about going back to the golden age - because it was 10 times better than it is today!
 
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