Does anybody really understand history?

An Egyptian writer argues that terrorism is counterproductive and that the way to avenge the wrongs done to the Arab world is by out-competing the West with its own technologies and methods, following the approach adopted by the Chinese. I guess as a rhetorical position this works, but, as Carlos Alberto Montaner points out, it misstates history. Islam was not a victim, he argues, since it expanded its empire at the expense of existing Christian societies. Arabs understand their own history only partially, because they only see that part of it after the West began to drive them back and made colonies of their countries.

Their religious views make it impossible to view the expansion of Islam as anything other than positive, let alone justification for the Christian world to fear it or strike back. My impression is that the only thing they can see is injustice done to them after they began losing confrontations with the West, which fuels their shame because they've always been taught that Islam is God's will and must conquer everything before it. Most traditional Muslims would take this as reason to redouble their efforts to live a holy life. But to the Wahhabis, like bin Laden, and other radical elements, the failures to continue to spread Islam and its contraction after the West began winning wars, along with the cultural stagnation that occurred in Arab countries under the Ottoman Empire, makes them feel that they are unworthy of God's approbation, which they can only regain by restoring the Caliphate and growing the ancient Arab empire. So they respond with exhortations to jihad. In this view, emulating the West would be a greater sin than being defeated by it.

Montaner's conclusion:

Trying to find in the past a justification to commit violence today is a colossal stupidity. When the jihadists invoke the expulsion of the Moors from Spain in the 16th century as a reason to set off bombs in Madrid (an outrageous claim they have actually made), it's as if the Spaniards were to attempt to avenge with contemporary bombs set off in Morocco the atrocities committed in Spain by the Almoravides, the Arab dynasty that ruled Southern Spain during the Middle Ages.

There is no power on Earth that hasn't in the past been the victim of another, stronger entity. The British, who subjugated the Chinese in the 19th century, were themselves subjugated by the Normans in the 11th century. The sensible thing to do, therefore, is to disengage radically from the past and to look only toward the future -- and that's where the Arab people have a major problem. They are prisoners of a sectarian way of understanding history, and that usually leads them to commit worse crimes.

No matter how you look at it, the likelihood that countries with no industrial base, who import all their armament, are unlikely to conquer anybody. Even if they withheld oil, what good would that do? That would mean no income. They're going to conquer the world by attacking their customers?