Here's some quotes of orientalists that back up everything shaykh hamza yusuf said; also the Quran backs it up too in that Allah says that the Prophet [saw] was sent as a mercy to the whole world:
ps: the first paragraph of this is very important in terms of modern science and engineering being based on Islam too, for without the 'experimental method' science and inventions would not have got further than theories in the West:
Experimental Method
Observation and experiment are the two sources of scientific knowledge. Aristotle was the father of the Greek sciences, and has made a lasting contribution to physics, astronomy, biology, meteorology and other sciences. The Greek method of acquiring scientific knowledge was mainly speculative, hence science as such could make little headway during the time of the Greeks.
The Arabs who were more realistic and practical in their approach adopted the experimental method to harness scientific knowledge. Observation and experiment formed the vehicle of their scientific pursuits, hence they gave a new outlook to science of which the world had been totally unaware. Their achievements in the field of experimental science added a golden chapter to the annals of scientific knowledge and opened a new vista for the growth of modern sciences. Al-Ghazali was the follower of Aristotle in logic, but among Muslims, Ishraqi and Ibn-iTaimiyya were first to undertake the systematic refutation of Greek logic. Abu Bakr Razi criticised Aristotle's first figure and followed the inductive spirit which was reformulated by John Stuart Mill.
Ibn-i-Hazm in his well known work Scope of Logic lays stress on sense perception as a source of knowledge and Ibn-i-Taimiyya in his Refuttion of Logic proves beyond doubt that induction is the only sure form of argument, which ultimately gave birth to the method of observation and experiment. It is absolutely wrong to assume that experimental method was formulated in Europe. Roger Bacon, who, in the west is known as the originator of experimental method in Europe, had himself received his training from the pupils of Spanish Moors, and had learnt everything from Muslim sources.
The influence of Ibn Haitham on Roger Bacon is clearly visible in his works. Europe was very slow to recognise the Islamic origin of her much advertised scientific (experimental) method. Writing in the Making of Humanity Briffault admits, "It was under their successors at the Oxford School that Roger Bacon learned Arabic and Arabic science. Neither Roger Bacon nor his later namesake has any title to be credited with having introduced the experimental method. Roger Bacon was no more than one of the apostles of Muslim science and method to Christian Europe; and he never wearied of declaring that the knowledge of Arabic and Arabic science was for his contemporaries the only way to true knowledge.
read on;
salems2.tripod.com/sciences.htm
In these troubled times, when Islam is under seemingly perpetual attack, it is imperative to consider how much the West owes to the religion’s spiritual insights. Bestselling author Tim Wallace-Murphy presents the first major popular book to examine the common roots of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and to reveal Islam’s immense contributions to our society—which included laying the foundations for our systems of education, astronomy, mathematics, and architecture. He also illustrates how the European Western powers helped foment the current crisis in the Middle East, and why we must strive for a just, equitable solution to these problems. Understanding can begin with this compelling acknowledgment of our shared spiritual heritage, including religious tolerance, respect for learning, and the concepts of chivalry and brotherhood.
www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=1842932012
While Europe was being crushed and brutalised by the Dark Ages, Islam bloomed. Because the Prophet Mohammed enjoined followers to study and to revere wisdom, many Greek sciences were protected and investigated by Muslim scholars [my comments: and they were revised]. But perhaps more tellingly, under Islamic rule and at the height of the Moorish Empire, the three great monotheistic faiths coexisted in relative harmony, enjoying a high degree of religious tolerance in a flourishing intellectual and artistic milieu.
Wallace-Murphy points out that the many legacies we have received from this happy coexistence includes the fact that the Muslim colleges formed in Andalusia became the model for Oxford and Cambridge colleges in the United Kingdom. Europe’s first effective medical school was founded by Jewish doctors who had been trained in the Muslim world. Islamic culture also gave the West navigation, mathematics, and Gothic architecture.
Perhaps most of us know that alchemy traces its name and origins to Islam but you might not realise the magnificent stained glass “rose” window that dominates Chartres Cathedral is a legacy of Islam and the alchemists who devised this art. This influence later birthed the beauty of the Renaissance and the magnificent blossoming of Western art and culture.
www.newdawnbooks.info/Reviews/Wh … or_Us.html
HRH, The Prince of Wales:
. . . we have underestimated the importance of 800 years of Islamic society and culture in Spain between the 8th and 15th centuries. The contribution of Muslim Spain to the preservation of classical learning during the Dark Ages, and to the first flowerings of the Renaissance, has long been recognised. But Islamic Spain was much more than a mere larder where Hellenistic knowledge was kept for later consumption by the emerging modern Western world. Not only did Muslim Spain gather and preserve the intellectual content of ancient Greek and Roman civilisation, it also interpreted and expanded upon that civilisation, and made a vital contribution of its own in so many fields of human endeavour - in science, astronomy, mathematics, algebra (itself an Arabic word), law, history, medicine, pharmacology, optics, agriculture, architecture, theology, music. Averroes and Avenzoor, like their counterparts Avicenna and Rhazes in the East, contributed to the study and practice of medicine in ways from which Europe benefited for centuries afterwards.
Islam nurtured and preserved the quest for learning. In the words of the tradition, 'the ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr'. Cordoba in the 10th century was by far the most civilised city of Europe. We know of lending libraries in Spain at the time King Alfred was making terrible blunders with the culinary arts in this country. It is said that the 400,000 volumes in its ruler's library amounted to more books than all the libraries of the rest of Europe put together. That was made possible because the Muslim world acquired from China the skill of making paper more than 400 years before the rest of non-Muslim Europe. Many of the traits on which modern Europe prides itself came to it from Muslim Spain. Diplomacy, free trade, open borders, the techniques of academic research, of anthropology, etiquette, fashion, various types of medicine, hospitals, all came from this great city of cities.
Medieval Islam was a religion of remarkable tolerance for its time, allowing Jews and Christians the right to practise their inherited beliefs, and setting an example which was not, unfortunately, copied for many centuries in the West. The surprise, ladies and gentlemen, is the extent to which Islam has been a part of Europe for so long, first in Spain, then in the Balkans, and the extent to which it has contributed so much towards the civilisation which we all too often think of, wrongly, as entirely Western. Islam is part of our past and our present, in all fields of human endeavour. It has helped to create modern Europe. It is part of our own inheritance, not a thing apart. 1001 Inventions: Discover the Muslim Heritage of Our World
www.twf.org/Library/Renaissance.html
Maria Rosa Menocal:
"[It] is no exaggeration to say that what we presumptuously call 'Western' culture is owed in large measure to the Andalusian enlightenment...."
Akbar S. Ahmed:
"It is well to recall that Islam not only caused Islamic civilization to develop but also enabled the European Renaissance to take root and grow. The time when Islam was most strongly established was also the time when art, culture and literature flourished, whether in Spain or, later, under the Ottomans, the Safavids and the Mughals. Christian Europe was enveloped in darkness until Islam came to the Iberian peninsula. For centuries Islam fed Greek, Sanskrit and Chinese ideas into Europe. Slowly and steadily Europe began to absorb those ideas. In England, France, Germany and Italy society began to explore literature and art with a new perspective; thus the seeds of the Renaissance were sown". --
David Self:
We are indebted to the Arabic world not only for arithmetic but also for algebra and trigonometry. Logarithms were invented by a mathematician called Al-Khwarizmi in the 7th century. Test tubes, the compass and the first surgical tools were all pioneered by Muslim inventors. A thousand years ago, it is said, Baghdad had 60 hospitals.
This scientific flowering was accompanied by the establishment of the first universities - or madrassahs. In a madrassah, the sheik or professor taught, literally, from a chair. He was assisted by readers. When the west eventually replicated such places of learning, we borrowed such terms.
Jared Diamond:
In the Middle Ages the flow of technology was overwhelmingly from Islam to Europe, rather than from Europe to Islam as it is today. Only around A.D. 1500 did the net direction of flow begin to reverse. -- p. 253
www.twf.org/Library/Renaissance.html
Wow! isn't it a wonder that every verse of the Quran is proven to be true
:
21:107 and we have not sent you but as mercy for all the worlds.
We did not send you, O Muhammad (s), except as a mercy, that is, to [give] mercy, to all the worlds, [the worlds of] mankind and jinn through you.