but, what we assign to muslims in this period was always tenuous to begin with - you had what were basically romans in spain, and basically persians in baghdad (which let us not forget was just a renamed babylon), as well as egyptians, doing the bulk of the actual work. there were no great discoveries made in the peninsula.

to use an example that readers can understand, consider isaac newton. isaac newton actually wrote volumes of work on theology - not because he wanted to, but because he had to. christians today will even argue that newton was a true believer. but, this was all a political necessity, given that he was overturning the christian world. how much more could we have gotten out of newton had he not wasted so much time writing theology in order to prevent himself from being executed?

the reality of the so-called islamic golden age is something much more like that. the religion was at best irrelevant, and in fact measurably worse than that.

here's a question for neil: does he think it's a coincidence that this interest in astronomy happened in babylon, the world's ancient centre of astronomy? the constellation names are greek and roman, but they're converted names. all of this work was initially done in babylon. so, what allowed the babylonians, the assyrians, the mesopotamians, the sumerians, to refind themselves in this period of arab military dominance?

the answer is peace. that is, the absence of war. what the arab armies brought was an end to a thousand years of war between persia and rome, fought in exactly the areas in question. when the war lifted, the people found their ancient roots - which were neither persian, nor roman, nor arab.

for the culture to flourish again, it needs to escape the consequences of being a culture of war. and, does religion help or hinder this?