The powerless, freed from the responsibility of consequences, can wallow in their misery, create imaginary histories, and nurture delusions of promised grandeur. In imposing their new order, the European powers took away both the capacity of governance from Muslim rulers and the possibility of challenges to this governance from reformers, leaving a vacuum in political thinking. In time, this vacuum was filled by the detritus of history – revivalist ideologies and fantasies in the quest to reclaim a mythical lost state of purity and virtue – leading directly to the situation before us today.

Source: www.3quarksdaily.com

Very informative piece.