” . . . Muslims invented universities, libraries and were, and are, the most humane people who ever existed.”
The Myth of Islamic Scholarship was utterly refuted for me in my reading of “The Lost History of Christianity,” by Philip Jenkins. (Harper One, 2008). When Islam by military conquest overran the Christian centers of intellectual and scientific inquiry (churches, monasteries, etc.) in southwestern Asia, it captured the libraries and other collections of recorded knowledge, in addition to the scholars, and claimed credit in the name of Allah. What we call the Arabic numeral system is a product of Indian culture, including, I think (not sure about this) the concept of the numeral zero.
I strongly recommend the book named above.
Origin of Universities:
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~bump/OriginUniversities.html
For the West, after the debates by Plato in the town square.....were started by the Catholic Church.
Also see the University of Salamanca.