Which makes me feel that the feelings of pride my Muslim friends feel are unjustified as they have very little in common with the world that made al-Jazari. Or perhaps more importantly, the rest of the world has advanced in 700 years, but they have staid behind.
We'll talk over the phone periodically about football, and my predictions about his team are usually spot on for the season. When he asks me how I'm so good at predicting what will happen with his team given that I really don't follow them all that closely, I just tell him that the Saints finally won a Super Bowl, and hence my knowledge was greatly enhanced.
You can probably substitute any us-and-them term for “nationalism”.