Indian Muslims and Arab Muslims in response to colonialization

Abdel-Moneim Said, writing in Al Ahram Weekly:

The Indian response was not that different from the response of China to the historical injustices visited upon it, or from the response of the indigenous inhabitants of North and South America to the successive waves of European encroachment and colonisation, or to South East Asia where colonial armies trampled the peoples underfoot, partitioned their nations and spread colonies and settlements and even -- as was the case with Japan -- dropped atomic bombs on them. In all these cases, the solution was to build a multi-faceted economic, political, technological and academic project for the future that would enable them to compete with the Western project and interact constructively with the world. In none of these nations do we find that morbid sense of isolation and that destructive desire to be rid of the world, which has long inflicted pain on other human groups, both Muslim and Christian.

This is not to suggest that other nations, ethnic groups and religions do not have their fanatics and even terrorists and suicidal martyrs among them. However, their anger is directed against their own countries and no one in those countries celebrates them or even tries to excuse or justify their actions. The difference between this part of the world and elsewhere is not just that we have projects that our trapped in the past whereas others have projects that look to the future, but also that we have organised political groups who dictate that our future resides in a return to the past. Perhaps this is where the problem really lies.