Must read : Islamic Imperialism: A History By: Prof.Efraim Karsh

''From the first Arab-Islamic Empire of the mid-seventh century to the Ottomans, the last great Muslim empire, the story of the Middle East has been the story of the rise and fall of universal empires and, no less important, of imperialist dreams.'' 

There is a reason why even the most liberal will be the most hardened ideologue. Silent majority doesn't mind supremacy of Islam and regaining of the paradise lost of the Caliphate where Islam reigned supreme.

Professor Karsh's book is very significant, it rejects the customary hypothesis that Western Colonialism created the grave plague of Islamic fanaticism stretching from Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Indonesia. The author writes that the principal origin of Islamic radicalism is not merely a reaction to the Western prying in their nations affairs but rather a profound and ingrained craving in the predetermined Islamic belief to expand Islamic authority throughout the world. 

Karsh says that "Arabs and Muslims unabashedly dream for the restoration of Spain" under Muslim control even though Spain has been lost to the Islamic world for centuries since the Fall of Granada in 1492. Osama bin Laden himself lamentably referred to "the tragedy of Andalusia" after the September 11, 2001 attacks as if to suggest that Muslims were still the legitimate and equitable owners of Spain rather than measly invading occupiers. Same is the feeling of Lashker-e- Tyaaba and TTP vis a vis Hindustan in Pakistan. The desire of unfurling the Mughal flag on hte Red Fort never dies. 

The wish to repair Islam's past medieval regal glories and convert the world permeate the approach of a substantial portion/segment of the Muslims.  Muhammad himself shaped the contemporary political Islam when he said "to strive for a new universal order in which the whole of humanity would embrace Islam or live under its domination." Muhammad's dream was realised after his death with the growth of Islamic power from Arabia into North Africa, Turkey, Spain and Central Asia under ensuing Caliphs of Umayyads, the Abbasids and the Ottomans. 

This yearning to widen Islam's global reach and rebuild a global Islamic caliphate under Muslim rule helps to explain  9/11. September 11 was a reaction to the essential veracity that America's place as a great power essentially suspend all " Islamic aspirations of global supremacy.'' Muslims are vigorous contestants on the large-scale stage not as toothless foot soldiers, rather one strain run common in all Islamic fundamentalist movements from Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaeda and TTP; the wish to fashion a broad based Muslim caliphate. Conventional Muslim beliefs and perceptions are underlying cause of an underlying anger and rage, rage of inability to control vast swathes of the lands of infidels.

''There is, and was, no sympathy towards Western philosophy, according to the extremists. Islam promises its one billion plus faithful the rule of the world, and what they have discovered is that they are at the bottom most wrung of the ladder as a result of their own failure. The rage of impotence combined with blind craving to manage the human race through the 'will of Allah' is what propels hatred within the fringe elements.

It is dreams of rediscovering the history of Islam's golden age and the re-conquest of the world, like old Spain, that propels many lunatics to impose the 'will of Allah' on the unwilling. This is not about terror, rather this is about imposing a way of life through a 'regime of terror'. Appeasement only makes their work easier.''

(Waiting for Allah- Iqbal Latif, Defeatism in the Islamic World has become a currency and self-inflicted pain has become pleasure November 28, 2003 - The Iranian)

The Muslim world's deep rooted yearning for the glories of the old Islamic Empires make their societies vulnerable to the control of a dictators or autocrats. Most of the Islamic dictators relentlessly summon the idea of a restoration of past Islamic prominence. The idea of the entire 'Ummah' have a Muslim world's political sway. Muslims unfalteringly need to turn their sponsorship of pan-Islamic global hallucination and turn 'religion' a matter of individual belief rather than a tool of global domination. Unless this happens they will certainly not prosper in the contemporary world or be charitable to other philosophies.