Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes [Hardcover]

Tamim Ansary (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 28, 2009

We in the west share a common narrative of world history—that runs from the Nile Valley and Mesopotomia, through Greece and Rome and the French Revolution, to the rise of the secular state and the triumph of democracy. But our story largely omits a whole civilization that until quite recently saw itself at the center of world history, and whose citizens shared an entirely different narrative for a thousand years.

In Destiny Disrupted, Tamim Ansary tells the rich story of world history as the Islamic world saw it, from the time of Mohammed to the fall of the Ottoman Empire and beyond. He clarifies why our civilizations grew up oblivious to each other, what happened when they intersected, and how the Islamic world was affected by its slow recognition that Europe—a place it long perceived as primitive and disorganized—had somehow hijacked destiny. Entertaining and enlightening, Destiny Disrupted also offers a vital perspective on current conflicts.

Editorial Reviews

Review

General Anthony C. Zinni, USMC (Ret)

"Tamim Ansary has written a truely superb history of the Islamic world.  His excellent analysis provides the reader with an insightful understanding of how that world and its people were shaped by events.  This is a must read for all those who want to understand the evolution of a significant global society and how it has interacted with the rest of the worl

Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns
“Ansary has written an informative and thoroughly engaging look at the past, present and future of Islam. With his seamless and charming prose, he challenges conventional wisdom and appeals for a fuller understanding of how Islam and the world at large have shaped each other. And that makes this book, in this uneasy, contentious post 9/11 world, a must-read.”

Shelf Awareness
“A lively, thorough and accessible survey of the history of Islam (both the religion and its political dimension) that explores many of the disconnects between Islam and the West.”

San Francisco Chronicle
"A must-read for anyone who wants to learn more about the history of the Islamic world. But the book is more than just a litany of past events. It is also an indispensable guide to understanding the political debates and conflicts of today, from 9/11 to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, from the Somali pirates to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. As Ansary writes in his conclusion, "The conflict wracking the modern world is not, I think, best understood as a 'clash of civilizations.' ... It's better understood as the friction generated by two mismatched world histories intersecting."

Portland Oregonian
“Never apologist in tone, meticulously researched and balanced, often amusing but never glib, Destiny Disrupted is ultimately a gripping drama that pulls the reader into great, seminal events of world history, a book which offers a wealth of knowledge and insight to any reader who wants to understand the movements and events behind the modern-day hostilities wracking Western and Islamic societies.”

St. Louis Post-Dispatch
“If you want to put today's headlines about jihadist suicide bombings into the much larger context of history, you'd be well advised to settle in with Destiny Disrupted. It's the story of a civilization that suddenly found itself upended by strangers and now wants to put itself right. And if author Ansary stops short of calling the result a clash of civilizations, he feels free to call it two one-sided views of world history. His book is a valuable tool for opening up a view of the other side.”

About the Author

Tamim Ansary is the author of the memoir West of Kabul, East of New York, co-author with Farah Ahmadi of the New York Times bestseller The Other Side of the Sky, and has been a major contributing writer to several secondary school history textbooks. Ansary is director of the San Francisco Writers Workshop. He writes for Encarta.com, the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Alternet, Edutopia, Parade, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs; First Edition edition (April 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586486063
• ISBN-13: 978-1586486068
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.3 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (106 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #658,951 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

90 of 100 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A wise, funny, compassionate history May 16, 2009

By Michael Chorost

Format:Hardcover

I could not stop reading this book. I loved the grand sweep of it and the author's wise, gently humorous voice.

He has the right background to speak about, and to, both cultures: Born in Afghanistan to an Afghan father and an American mother, Ansary emigrated to the U.S. in his teens and went to Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He has lived in the U.S. ever since, with trips back to Afghanistan and the Middle East.

I was fascinated by the book's discussion of Islam's early years in the 7th century, the discussion of Islamic reform movements in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the compassionate overview of the conflict between the Arabs and the Jews in the Middle East.

For that long-running disaster Ansary assigns blame and plenty to everyone involved, and I mean everyone -- including the British, the Americans, the Russians, and the Saudis. And that's just for starters.

His evaluation of the Six Day War in 1967 is eye-opening; he argues that it was a military triumph in the short term but did more harm than good to Israel in the long term.

I was hungry for a longer discussion of the meaning and impact of 9/11 from an Islamic perspective, and I hope the author will do that in some other publication. That aside, this is the perfect book for readers wanting a readable, friendly, big-picture story of how Islam came to be and the religious and cultural frameworks that shape its view of world history.

We desperately need more informed, compassionate, and wise writing of this nature from Mr. Ansary, who has lived in both worlds and can help each understand the other.

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An Alternate "Outline of History" July 22, 2009

By Giordano Bruno

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Tamim Ansary's 'History of the World through Islamic Eyes' is purposefully reminiscent of H.G. Wells's 'Outline of History' or of Will Durant's many volumes, or of any high school textbook of Western Civilization, meaning implicitly everything worth recording. Ansary declares as much in his preface. He intends to write a universal history from the point of view of the 'Middle World', in which Europe will be peripheral until the final chapters. No, not Jung Gwo, the "Middle Realm" of China! In fact, China will be even more peripheral than Europe in Ansary's textbook. His Middle World will be Islam, as a culture and a civilization, and his middle point in geography, Mecca, will also be his starting point in time.

The European outline of history has always been the westward succession of leadership, from Greece to Rome to northern Europe to America, a viewpoint of manifest destiny that has justified much imperialism and jingoism. An Islamic history, Ansary says, would be an expansion from a center, rather like ripples spreading from the event of the Hijra in 622 AD, an expansion that should have been destined to encompass the whole world. For the first thousand years of this history, it was perfectly plausible for the most educated classes of Islamic societies to maintain such a viewpoint, Ansary maintains. But then that 'destiny' was disrupted by the unforeseen economic and technological revolutions of the rude barbarians of Europe. Such a perception of history, as a calamitous disruption of the proper order of things, underlies the resentment and hostility of Muslims throughout the Middle World toward the West.

Ansary writes very simply. His prose would pass muster for a high school textbook. But his simplicity is eloquent and lucid.... Even when events force him to pass harsh judgements on any party to any controversy, his words are never strident. It would be hard to take offense at what he writes unless, of course, the reader is passionately committed to one point of view and intolerant of any other. In short, this is a book that will infuriate bigots and outrage ideologues. All the more reason why it should be widely read!

Roughly the first half of the book, covering the centuries from 600 AD to 1600, ignores Europe and western Christianity entirely. These were the centuries when history followed its proper course, when the triumphs of Islam validated its sense of destiny, when a few losses at distant frontiers such as Andalucia were scarcely significant. Ansary outlines the growth of Islam from the cult of a few Arab clans to a multi-empire civilization stretching from Mauretania to Indonesia, divided by human rivalries but united by a religion that professed the same concept of lawful community. Among his subjects are the fateful schisms between Sunni, Shia, Ishmailis, and Sufis; the impact of Islam on Persia and the Persians on Islam; the arrival and incorporation of the Mongols and Turks; the rise of the Ottoman Empire in all its 'Byzantine' complexity. Unavoidably in a book of such scope, there are simplifications and oversights, as there are in Durant or Wells or any survey text. For an American or European reader, who probably knows almost nothing about the caliphates and sultanates, the point is not to get everything right in the most sophisticated analysis, but rather to get any sense of how an educated Egyptian or Iranian of today might comprehend the world.

The second half of the book depicts the delayed, astonished, dismayed recognition throughout the Middle World that the despised barbarians of the West had stolen history, thwarted destiny, invaded and infiltrated and corrupted - yes! corrupted! - Islamic civilization. Ansary's analyses of European developments will surely seem simplistic and imbalanced to readers with detailed knowledge of their own cultural history, but then perhaps that's how it all looks from another world. More significant for American readers will be his accounts of the evolution of various responses in Islam to the pressures of westernization, ranging from secularism to fanaticism.

I can promise that most readers will finish this book with a broader understanding of the raging conflicts in what we call the "Middle East" and with, hopefully, a little more tolerance in the face of profound differences and irreconcilable values. Read more ›

64 of 76 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I did not expect to read this book in 2 days May 4, 2009

By bookfan

Format:Hardcover

But I did. I liked Ansary's memoir and wanted to understand the East/West relationship. I ended up savoring every page for 2 days straight. Ansary is a great storyteller and a wise soul. It's not like reading academic history. It's like sitting down with a sage and listening to him tell you a terrific story. It's fascinating that the Islamic world has a totally different (yet legitimate) view of history that emphasizes different events. Europe's dark ages were their Renaissance. Western domination after WWII was their humiliation. Yet both sides steal each others' ideas. I don't think I really understood the world until I read this. Interesting fact: we would know nothing about Aristotle if it wasn't for Persians preserving his work.

96 of 119 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Valuable Perspective, Important Admissions, But Still Biased July 9, 2010

By growingtrees

Format:Paperback

Overall, this book is well worth reading because of the narrative, fluid way it ties together the arc of Islamic history. I've read all these historical facts before, but it really helped to get that information all together and presented by someone coming from a culture who values that story as their own story.

I also appreciate the honest way that Tamim Ansary approaches Islam's history of offensive violence and jihad, going back all the way to at least the four Rashidun Rightly Guided Caliphs.

That being said, this book is riddled with gross omissions, Islamic chauvinism, a glaring contradiction, and some factual errors.

Gross Omissions:
1) Nowhere does Tamim Ansary discuss how Muslims treated pagans, Manichaeans, Buddhists or Jains. Why? Because Muslims weren't nearly as kind to them as they were to Christians and Jews. Sometimes Muslims treated Hindus & Zoroastrians as well as Christians & Jews, and of course Ansary highlights those some times while not mentioning the other times Muslims did not treat Hindus or Zoroastrians as relatively kindly as they treated Peoples of the Book.
2) Tamim Ansary goes to great lengths, in a book about "Islamic" history, to mention Christians enslaving Africans, but neglects to discuss the millions of Africans who were enslaved in Mesopotamia in the 8-10th centuries and who rebelled under the Zanj Rebellions. He also doesn't mention Muslims roles in facilitating sales of slaves to Christians, nor in how Muslim inspired Christians to start the colonial slave trade in the first place.... Tamim Ansary also loves discussing how colonial Europe treated Muslim societies, but doesn't at all discuss the constant Islamic slave raids on Christians lands all through the Dark Ages that hit Greece, Italy & Spain constantly and that even went as far as Britain & Iceland. Tamim Ansary doesn't discuss ANY of this history of slavery in Islamic societies, except to mention the Janissaries, and of course he put the most positive spin he could on stealing people's children against their will. Can you imagine a modern Australian trying to point out the upward social mobility benefits of putting Aboriginal children in boarding schools? That's the sort of claim Ansary makes about the Janissaries.
3) Tamim Ansary in general hardly mentions the history of Islam in Africa. He never talks about all the pagan African kingdoms violently conquered, their people forcefully converted, by Muslim jihads like the one the Fula waged against the Kaabu Empire.
4) Tamim Ansary also doesn't discuss all the wars that Muslim sultanates fought against the Majapahit Empire and other South and South East Asian societies.

Contradiction:
Ansary discusses (pg 81) the layers of societal stratification in Muslim empires in which non-Muslims were lower than Muslims, and mentions how Akbar the Great was an exception in not oppressing Hindus, and yet elsewhere (pp 78, 135) tries to call these Islamic empires "tolerant." (As an aside, Akbar the Great wasn't actually even Muslim. He made up his own religion with himself as the godhead and was denounced for such heresy by Sufi critics of his time.)

Islamic Chauvinism:
1)When discussing the Mongol invasion in the 13th century (pg 27), Tamim Ansary discusses the "Islamic world" without mentioning that in many places in this "Islamic" world the majority of the population were still non-Muslims being unjustly ruled by Muslims, and many of those non-Muslims (e.g. Nestorians in Iraq & Armenians in Cilicia) welcomed the Mongols as liberators.
2) Despite Ansary's relatively honest discussion of offensive Islamic warfare elsewhere, he (pg 43) says that the Islamic world "fortuitously" produced commanders who conquered Persia & Egypt. In reality, the Persians, Copts, and other ethnic groups unjustly conquered didn't end up viewing that as so fortuitous, and both ended up rebelling against Muslim rule many, many times, a fact that many modern Muslims do their best to downplay.
3) Ansary (pg 230) actually compares Europeans to viruses.

Factual Errors:
The two I noticed (besides the inaccurate depiction of Akbar the Great as a Muslim) are both related. Ansary appears not to have done his research in language classification. He calls the language of the Xiong-Nu "Turkic," even though nobody knows for sure what language family it belonged to, and there's a strong hypothesis that it was Indo-European just like the Tocharian language. And he (pg 289) calls the Armenian language non-European when in fact it is in the Indo-European language family, and its closest relative in the Indo-European language family is Greek.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised by Tamim Ansary ignoring some of the more unsavory parts of Islamic history, while going to great lengths in a book supposedly about "Islamic" history to highlight bad things Christians have done. He's not purporting to write a book from an objective perspective. His book honestly advertises itself as portraying history as modern Muslims perceive it. And that's exactly what we get, because modern Muslims love complaining about the bad things Christians have done while spreading a propagandized white-washed version of their own history. It's important to understand that perspective, because it's unfortunately very common, but Ansary didn't have to perpetuate its chauvinism by writing the book as an almost complete true believer of it. Read more ›