What is your opinion on the supposed Golden Age of Islam? Do

>>1539257

How about you at least read the Wikipedia article first, then we can discuss that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age

What do you mean, did it exist? Are you retarded? Look it up moron.

>>1539263
>>1539291
Many people state that the Muslims merely discovered older teachings and writings by peoples like the Persians and passed them off as their own. Also, you didn't address my other question regarding the fall of the Golden Age and the factors contributing to the overall deterioriation of development and quality of life in the Middle East

Especially Iraq. How did that country end up in its current state? "Mongols" can't be the only reason, more than enough countries have recovered from their capital being sacked. Iraq took one hell of a nosedive however.

Also, when exactly did Islam become more radical? The Golden Age seems to have been conducive to societal, cultural and scientific progress, I'm also aware of how tolerant the Ottomans were towards other religions, especially Jews.

When did it become so reactionary?

>>1539257
Whether you measure it by the number of famous figures/works of art/literature produced or by comparison to the era before and after it, it was a golden age. Whether you want to call it Islamic or otherwise is a better debate, but I lean affirmative.

I would say it lasted between the 9th and 12th centuries, but not evenly throughout the known Muslim world at the time as centers of economic and intellectual activity moved about. A lot of interesting things happened after this period (especially architecture and literature) but much of what made the earlier period stand out was in sharp decline.

It came to be in the aftermath of the establishment of an Arab empire, its common bureaucracy, its common language, and the rise of a mercantile middle class replacing the rigid aristocracy of the Classical world in major commercial activity. Its ramifications include the creation of an Imperial Arab-Persian culture whose language and customs eventually extended from Morocco to Indonesia, the largest and most extensive trade network in the world until the European Age of Sail, and the combination of Eastern and Western philosophy, mathematics, and architecture that would greatly influence all its neighbors for centuries.

It all went wrong when increasing political instability and foreign invasion turned minds and hands towards closing ranks both within and without the Muslim world, promoting vanity institutions and projects over individuals, and religious populism.

>>1539257
As a Christian Arab, I hate the term "Golden Age of Islam". Many of the philosophers, physicians, poets, scientists etc. were Christian Arabs. It wasn't all Muslims. Call it "Golden Age of Arabs."

There's nothing I hate more than non-Arab converts to Islam who think they are somehow entitled to take credit for Arab achievements.

>>1539340
Dude you are asking people to explain how events in medieval times affected conditions in the modern age, you're not going to get a meaningful, digestible explanation any more than you could get a concise explanation of, say, how the collapse of the Inca empire led to most terrorism in late 20rh century Peru, it's a fool's errand. But to answer your question using more proximal causes, the major factors in the radicalization of the Middle East were a series of major review changes, first the collapse of the Osman empire, later the poorly planned withdrawal of France and Britain from the region after WWII along with the creation of Israel, and a series of puppet regimes during the cold war. American interventions right after the USSR collapse helped piss them off even more. These were the real precipitating factors which mostly have their origins outside the region.

>>1539340
The discovery-plagiarism argument never made much sense. The major Arab and Persian works from the Islamic era are not known for being copies of earlier texts, and we mostly piece the Classics from them when they directly quote and source something from a much older work.

As for Iraq, both Arab and Persian Iraq, the Mongols certainly did a number on the country. But so did the Black Death, and the militarized border between the Ilkhans and Mamluks, followed by the Ottomans and Safavids, and also the migrations of Turkic and Beduoin tribes over centuries. All of this combined with climate change and exhaustion of what was already by then farmland continuously worked for thousands of years affected agricultural output, irrigation, and urbanization.

Desertification is a bitch. A city like Rome or London can recover from ruin and overgrowth and swamps and blocked rivers with some hard labor, but recovering farmland from both the desert and the nomads is a different matter altogether.

And it's not so much that Islam became more radical, but that the radical elements within Islam managed to gain popularity from time to time, most recently and noticeably with the rise of Islamism starting in the 70's. Before then these sorts of radical, violent, or populist views had always existed, but as one of several valid or de facto lifestyles in a cosmopolitan society. Some lifestyles or classes were more valued or more equal than others, but the theory nonetheless was that each one had its place.

Modern communication and transportation technology combined with the nation-state brought that to a violent end.

>>1539340
>Also, when exactly did Islam become more radical?

The 1970s.

>>1539392
>who think they are somehow entitled to take credit for Arab achievements.

Then leave 4chan, /his/-/pol/ etc is full othem, just remove Araba and place white/persian/greek/british whatever

>>1539392
>Call it "Golden Age of Arabs."

Persians are not Arabs. Neither are north Africans.

A bit off topic but I feel /his/ is mostly Muslim or people of Islamic heritage. Like Arabs or Persians. There is an Islamic Architecture thread going on right now and I don't see the jihad or terrorism jokes I see on the rest of 4chan.

>>1539428
Why did it take until the 70s? Didn't American intervention start earlier?

Also Israel had also existed for more that two decades at that point and I'd assume its creation would've added fuel to the fire as soon as the country's existence was declared.

>>1539455
You're right about both of those things but Americans didnt care at all about the Middle East until the Iran hostage crisis

File: 1469794855986.jpg (90KB, 640x480px) Image search: [Google]

90KB, 640x480px

>>1539439
>'they aren't shitting on this culture so they must be from that culture'
>why are they not acting like people on the designated shitposting/meme boards?!

>>1539455
Until the 70's most of the Islamic world was nationalist or socialist (or national-socialist), and Islamic radicals were minor anti-government agitators. It's after the 70's that, with the Ayatollah Khomeini successfully co-opting the Iranian Revolution and the decline of secular political parties after the last failed war with Israel, the religious groups exploded (no pun intended) in size, helped along by dictators also co-opting the Islamist identity to hold onto power.