It's true that some of the basic Aristotelian texts came into the West via Islamic editions. Most important, that's how some of the major Aristotelian texts reached Thomas Aquinas, who brought Aristotle back into the mainstream of western philosophy and theology.
On the other hand, if not for the Muslim invasions of North Africa and the Middle East, it's likely enough that this knowledge would have reached the West via other channels. Islam itself invented little or nothing. It destroyed several very ancient civilizations, including Egypt and Mesopatamia, which at the time was Persia. A little of the ancient knowledge came dribbling through. I don't know whether the Arabs should be praised for that, or blamed for destroying a great deal of other knowledge that might otherwise have survived.
In any case, the advancement of science and technology was a uniquely Christian achievement. There were deep scientific thinkers in China, Greece, and the ancient world, but they did very little with that knowledge. It was the Middle Ages (see Lynn Thorndike's histories of science) and the Renaissance that transformed thinking about science. This rested on at least two basic Christian principles that are not found elsewhere:
1) The Logos. The universe has a basic rationality built into it because it was created by and through the Logos, God's Word, the Second Person of the Trinity.
2) Free will. We are free to discover, invent, and change our lives.
Neither of these principles can be found in Islam, which stresses that Allah is totally arbitrary and that he governs the universe without extending any freedom of choice to men.
Is Lynn Thorndike considered truthful with the history?
Hi there. I finally got around to reading Oswald Spengler's Decline of the West. He didn't care for Cicero very much :-)