Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes

Tamim Ansary

Apr 2009 · Blackstone Audio Inc. · Narrated by Tamim Ansary

About this audiobook

With storytelling brio and evenhanded sympathy to all sides of the story, Ansary clarifies how the Muslim world views the history of the world and what they therefore make of our own version of events.

Until about 1800, the West and the Islamic realm were like two adjacent, parallel universes, each assuming itself to be the center of the world while ignoring the other. As Europeans colonized the globe, the two world histories intersected, and the Western narrative drove the other one under. The West hardly noticed, but the Islamic world found the encounter profoundly disrupting.

By revealing that parallel “other” narrative to the chapter we are living today, this book will help us to make sense of today’s world conflicts. Ansary traces the history of the Muslim world from pre-Mohammedan days through 9/11, introducing the people, events, and key turning points, not only in terms of what happened but also in terms of how those events were understood and interpreted.

Ratings and reviews

This book is a good book to learn about the history of Islam as it particularly relates to the Arab and Persian lens. While it touches upon other contributors to Islamic history, this book does appear to exhibit some bias in terms of semantics used toward other contributors of Islamic history. For example, the contributions of the Turkish empires (primarily the Seljuk and Ottoman empires) are typically described in language that is more negative vs other empires. Semantic language used toward Arab and Persian contributors is often softer and more forgiving while language toward Turkish contributions is harsher and condemning while also dismissing the contributions toward Islam of said empires. I dislike this use of biased language and semantics. Despite this, there is good information in this book and the general presentation of other contributors of Islamic history.

About the author

Tamim Ansary is the award-winning author of Destiny Disrupted and West of Kabul, East of New York. He has been a major contributing writer to several secondary-school history textbooks offering an Islamic perspective.