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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Islam and Nationalism Part Six: Dangers of Nationalism Ego-centrism and prejudice Among the greatest dangers of nationalism is prejudice: a violent affective state where the individual or the group, become ego-centric, leading them to ignore reality and be harsh and inflexible in their judgments.

Nationalistic sentiments in one country usually leads to prejudice against other nations, and sociologically speaking, it encourages the 'we-group' or 'I-group' feeling and the people to love and praise their own nation and regard all those outside this 'in-group' as contemptible enemies. Self-glorification becomes the rule and no sympathy or tolerance is shown to others.

This ego-centrism, an offshoot of this unbalanced nationalism manifests itself in various ways under different conditions: Ethno-centrism, chauvinism, race-centrism, racism etc. Superiority complex and misinterpretation of history Walter Lecquer, well-known sociologist says: “One of the main peculiarities of nationalism is an over-estimation of one's own nation, and a depreciation of others, a lack of self-criticism, sense of responsibility and observance of fairness.

Nationalism abandons realism and allows an idealistic and mythical vision to dominate society[^1].” To glorify itself, nationalism generally resorts to suppositions, exaggerations, fallacious reasonings, scorn and inadmissible self-praise, and worst of all, it engages in the distortion of history, model-making and fable-writing. Historical facts are twisted to imaginary myths as it fears historical and social realism.

Will Durant says:[^2] “The 19th century discovered nationalism and corrupted almost all historians.” Treilschke, Von Sibel, Michellet, Martin, McCaulay, Green, Banderft and Fetik were patriots first and historians later. Every nationalist considers his country as God's select realm and the whole world full of wickedness and barbarism.

Nationalism has made history so corrupt and tumultuous, that a wise man suggested that for attaining universal peace, it would be better to discard history instead of drawing up pacts of friendship and commerce. Misinterpretation of history is one of the greatest harms of nationalism. It may be argued that the case is so where an extreme form of nationalism exists. But that is not the case.