Was the medieval era dark and backwards as modern scholarship asserts?

The "Middle Ages" were neither dark, primitive, uncivilised or backward as Western medievalist scholarship would like us to believe. Rather, it was an era of High Ages for the Islamic civilization. The researcher Philip K. Science writes: "It is clear that the Middle Ages were not really dark in the sense that certain narrow medievalists report. Those historians have erred in their pronouncements on the course of scientific thought in the Middle Ages, showing us only the darkest side of the period. An exaggerated emphasis upon the least progressive elements and exclusive preoccupation with the limit domain of western thought are responsible for this grave injustice. The truth of the matter is that that stretch of history was not as dark as our ignorance of it. Simply because its greatest achievement were made by Easterners is no valid excuse for its deprecation. The unbiased verdict of history decrees that from the second half of the eighth to the end of eleventh century, Arabic was the scientific language of mankind"... (The course of Arab scientific thought, The American Journal of Islamic Social Science, Volume 8 Number 3, December 1991, "footnote on page 412 - 413")