Colonial encounters and a Quranic teacher shaped Abdirazak Hussen’s nationalist worldview.

Evidence

Hussen’s Quranic teacher from his madrassa days in Galkayo, who often asked his pupils why Muslims had fallen behind and others advanced, might have planted the concept of nationalism in the boy’s mind. His encounter with the British, Italian, and Ethiopian colonial authorities in various regions of the Somali-inhabited world concretized for him what the old Quranic teacher had in mind. Through these experiences Hussen internalized a worldview that would guide him for the rest of his life. — Abdi Ismail Samatar, Africa’s First Democrats, 217