`  == Islamic golden age is a myth ==  ``The golden age of equal rights was a myth, and belief in it was a result, more than a cause, of Jewish sympathy for Islam. The myth was invented by Jews in nineteenth-century Europe as a reproach to Christians.`` - Bernard Lewis  Most of the scientists, poets and philosophers in Islam’s golden age (the time of the Abassid Caliphate) were Jews, Christians or Muslims who were suspected of apostasy or blasphemy. Many suffered harassment and even death. Thus if science did flourish during this golden age, it was in spite of Islam and not because of it. source: http://www.faithfreedom.org/Articles/Ohmyrus/islam_failed_muslims.htm  Muslims claim many, many accomplishments we know they had nothing to do with. Arabic numerals? From India. The concept of zero? From Babylonia. Parabolic arches? From Assyria. The much ballyhooed claim of translating the Greek corpus of knowledge into Arabic? It was the Christian Assyrians, who first translated to Syriac, then to Arabic. The first University? Not Al-Azhar in Cairo (988 A.D.), but the School of Nisibis of the Church of the East (350 A.D.), which had three departments: Theology, Philosophy and Medicine. Al-Azhar only teaches Theology. Speaking of medicine, Muslims will claim that medicine during the Golden Age of Islam, the Abbasid period, was the most advanced in the world. That is correct. But what they don't say is that the medical practitioners were exclusively Christians. The most famous medical family, the Bakhtishu family, Assyrians of the Church of the East, produced seven generations of doctors, who were the official physicians to the Caliphs of Baghdad for nearly 200 years… In his book How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs, O'Leary lists 22 scholars and translators during the Golden Age of Islam; 20 were Christians, 1 was a Persian, and 1 was a Muslim. This covers about a 250 year period… It was al-Ghazali… who denounced natural laws, the very objective of science, as a blasphemous constraint upon the free will of Allah… Christianity asks the believer to think and analyze, to interpret and deduce. Islam asks the believer to obey blindly and without question. source: http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=4D818187-782D-4AA9-BEFA-64C5A00D9677   Islam was impermeable to much of Greek thought, the Arab world's initial translations of it to Latin were not so much the work of ``Islam`` but of Aramaeans and Christian Arabs, a wave of translations of Aristotle began at the Mont Saint-Michel monastery in France 50 years before Arab versions of the same texts appeared in Moorish Spain… Bayt al-Hikma, or the House of Wisdom, said to be created by the Abassids in the ninth century, was limited to the study of Koranic science, rather than philosophy, physics or mathematics, as understood in the speculative context of Greek thought. source: http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=12398698  The architectural design of mosques, for example, long a source of pride among Muslims, was copied from the shape and structure of Byzantine churches… The seventh-century Dome of the Rock, considered today to have been first great mosque, was not only copied from Byzantine models, but was built by Byzantine craftsmen… The astrolabe was developed, if not perfected, long before Muhammad was born. Avicenna (980-1037), Averroes (1128-1198), and the other Muslim philosophers built on the work of the pagan Greek Aristotle. And Aristotle’s work was preserved from the ravages of the Dark Ages not first by Muslims, but by Christians such as the fifth-century priest Probus of Antioch, who introduced Aristotle to the Arabic-speaking world. The Christian Huneyn ibn-Ishaq (809-873) translated many works by Aristotle, Galen, Plato and Hippocrates into Syriac, from which they were translated into Arabic by his son. The Jacobite Christian Yahya ibn ‘Adi (893-974) also translated works of philosophy into Arabic, and wrote his own; his treatise The Reformation of Morals has occasionally been erroneously attributed to various of his Muslim contemporaries. His student, another Christian named Abu ‘Ali ‘Isa ibn Zur’a (943-1008), also made Arabic translations of Aristotle and other Greek writers from Syriac. The first Arabic-language medical treatise was written by a Christian priest and translated into Arabic by a Jewish doctor in 683. The first hospital, another source of pride among Muslims and often a prominent feature of Islamic accomplishment lists, was founded in Baghdad during the Abbasid caliphate by a Nestorian Christian. A pioneering medical school was founded at Gundeshapur in Persia — by Assyrian Christians. The world’s first university may not have been the Muslims’ Al-Azhar in Cairo, as is often claimed, but the Assyrian School of Nisibis. source: http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/006014.php  Islam's much-vaunted ``golden age`` was in reality 