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But what are the contributing now? The Romans contributed a great deal to the world, yet they don't seem to be doing so any more as there seems to be none left.

I'll call your attention as well to Dr. Tyson's speech on the matter. It's the start of Session 2. I encourage you to watch all of it, but the bit on Islam starts at about 27:00.

You are right that the Arab part of the world used to be the centre of this sort of thing. However that collapsed and it has never recovered.

http://beyondbelief2006.org/watch/

In the Beyond Belief series he gives a general talk about science and part of it is about Islam in science. He's at the beginning the second video session. The part about Islam is at about 27 minutes.

http://beyondbelief2006.org/watch/

Or you could point to their website which has all the sessions for that matter:

http://beyondbelief2006.org/

This is somewhat offtopic, but if anyone is interested, here is a series of video lectures on religion and atheism by some prominent scientists: http://beyondbelief2006.org/
I especially liked Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Sam Harris, and Richards Dawkins is always nice to hear although he does manage to sound a bit pompous even to an atheist, must be that accent. =P

While I'm at it, I'll include a short overview of my own beliefs.
I'm an atheist.
I define anything in the world as natural and therefore the supernatural does not exist by definition.
If there is any consciousness having powers so much beyond that of humans in the natural world that you would call it godlike, i have seen no evidence to its existence, and even if i did, i see no reason why it would merit unquestioning worship.
I think that a major part of religion is the belief that there are some things that are in some sense universally special, as opposed to personally special.
I don't really care what other people believe as long as they don't try to impose their beliefs on me (and we have quite a bit of that here in Israel).
That's pretty much all i can think of at the moment.

Short answer? Religion happened.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_in _the_Islamic_World#Decay_of_Islamic_science

Long answer (do you have two hours?):
http://beyondbelief2006.org/Watch/watch.php?Video= Session%202
http://research.amnh.org/~tyson/PerimeterOfIgnoran ce.php

I've been watching the lectures from Beyond Belief 2006 using Google Video and the audio and video quality are pretty good, and are very interesting and intellectually stimulating. If it hadn't been for Google Video, I probably wouldn't have seen this footage. Hosting video is extremely expensive and

In other words, there's more to internet video than naked women.

/me waits for the inevitable "You must be new here" reply.

Philosopher Daniel Dennett often uses the expression "belief in belief" in his lectures. There are many fascinating audio and video lectures of his found here:
http://www.reitstoen.com/dennett.php

Also, in the general debate of Science vs/and Religion, there are a number of great video discussions here (15 hours worth!):
http://beyondbelief2006.org/Watch/

Session 9 includes particularly fired up conversations...