In follow-up to Luke's post on reform in Islam-I note Abiola's entry on this article that recounts the tale of the Golden Age of Islamic Science:

1) Abiola makes some good points correcting the historic hyperbole in the article. The assertion that Islam was at its apogee up to 1500 is ludicrous, Christendom was intellectually the more dynamic civilization by 1300, and likely by 1200.

2) The article asserts that Americans are ignorant of Islam's contribution to the European intellectual revival that ushered in the Modern Age. Well, yes, ignorant Americans are ignorant of Islam's contribution, and in fact, ignorant Americans are just plain ignorant. Most people of modest middle-brow aspirations are well aware that "without Spain, Europe would still be in the Dark Ages," after all, The New York Times tells them so. But, they are not told that a significant portion of scholars in Muslim Spain were Jews and to a lesser extent Arabic speaking Christians (Mozarabs). They are also not told that most of the original translators of Greek learning into Arabic were Christians and Jews of the Near East. They are also not told that the Byzantines preserved some elements of classical learning, and scholars like George Plethon found ready students in the cities of Italy. They are also not told that much of Muslim science was explicitly derivative from Greek & to a lesser extent Indian sources.

The "Muslim" Golden Age is nothing to sniff at-but its proper comparison should be with the Aristotelian Renaissance of High Medieval Europe, not the post-Copernican scientific period of the modern era. Also, I put "Muslim" in quotes because though Muslims were the dominant ruling caste during this period (that is, up to 1000 CE), during this period, they were not the overwhelming majority of the population, rather, it seems that taken over the whole of the Dar-al-Islam in 1000, Muslims might have been a bare majority, while in the period before 900, they were likely a minority [1].

Finally, on a contrarian note, I would like to add that I believe that one of the problems with Islam is that its "Reformation" was far too successful. While Martin Luther did not succeed in his initial aim of reforming the One True Church-the scholars culminating in al Ghazali did establish a broad unity of the Sunni Ummah, and the period of faction that climaxed with the Mutazilites subsided. In contrast, Christianity shattered after 1648 beyond a point of no return, and heterodoxy always found a home somewhere from the Urals to the Atlantic....

[1] Ergo, the time period when Islam was the world's dominant intellectual force, it was a pluralistic culture, which went into decline concomitantly with the conversion of the majority of the populace to the ascendent religious paradigm. From what I have read, Egypt did not have a Muslim majority until after 1000. Iran became majority Muslim only in the 10th century. It also seems plausible that large segments of the Levantine countryside was still mostly Christian into the Abbassid Caliphate.