When the Arab armies surged out of the Arabian Peninsula in the seventh century, they created an empire larger than Rome in barely a century. By 750 C.E., they controlled 13 million square kilometers, ruled more than 50 million people and redrew the map of three continents. Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, North Africa, Persia and as far as Spain were absorbed into a vast imperial system built on conquest and domination.

However, when “colonialism” is invoked today, this empire is rarely mentioned. Only Europe and other Western nations are put in the dock.

This selective memory distorts history. It erases the suffering of entire peoples and presents conquest and subjugation as if they were merely cultural diffusion. The Arab-Muslim expansion was not a benign flowering of civilization, but a de

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