The reason for radical Islam in Europe, especially in France, is often blamed on the colonial period. I do not deny that there were atrocities, oppression and persecution. My question is whether the same was done by the Muslim world at some point in history, or whether history is really one-sided.
I want to stress that I am not for one side or the other. I ask out of personal interest, as the subject of colionalism and radical Islam is often taken up in the Reddit comments, often answered with "The children should not be punished for the sins of the parents", but are there no historical events that refute this one-sided view.
In short, yes. Many Muslim kingdoms/states/societies have long traditions of conquest and colonialism.
The most obvious example is of course the Ottoman Empire. An empire built around the concept of conquest that directly controlled territories or indirectly controlled client states in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Europe. The Ottomans were doing this in part during the same time period that European nations were engaging in their own brand of colonialism. Although in general they were on the way down while Europeans were on the rise. An older but very well written book on this would be The Ottoman Centuries, by Kinross.
Muslim societies in Africa also have a long tradition of colonialism and slavery in Africa towards non-Muslim Africans. We tend to have a very Eurocentric view of the African Slave trade in the US/Europe, focusing on the Atlantic slave trade, but the oldest and longest lasting slave trade was Muslim slavers in Africa (as well as of course slavery between non-Muslim Africans) and the ME. A prominent example would be the Sultanate of Zanzibar in the 19th Century, which was a terror of Central African nations for its large slave raids into the hinterland, often transporting those slaves to Zanzibar on the Indian Ocean for export. Muslim and non-Muslim Africans had a centuries long history of fighting and conquest between themselves before Europeans ever arrived. The Scramble for Africa, by Pakenham covers this in some detail.
Muslim kingdoms also had a long history of conquest and expansion in the Indian subcontinent. The Mughal Empire is just one of many examples of expansionist Muslim kingdoms in that area. This struggle between Muslims and Hindus in the subcontinent is one of the factors that allowed the British to slowly control and absorb India into their own empire.
I don't think that Muslims were necessarily unique in their approach to other countries and peoples. History is generally full of societies of different race, religion, culture, etc... that engaged in conquest and "colonialism" when they had the opportunity and they thought it made sense for their strategic interests. That includes Europeans. I don't see what they did as one sided in terms of approach, but it was very one sided in terms of results starting in the late 16th Century and right up to today in some ways. The period of dominance of the European nations during that roughly 400 year period is arguably without equal.