Destiny Disrupted:

A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes

  In the west, we share a common narrative of world history. This narrative runs from Mesopotamia and Egypt, through Greece, Rome, and the Enlightenment to the 20th century competition among secular ideologies such as Communism and capitalist democracy.
 
My book Destiny Disrupted presents an alternative narrative that places the Islamic world at the center. It shows what the history of the world looks if you assume that the classic Islamic heartland—that territory stretching from Istanbul to Indonesia—is the center of the world. From this perspective the career of Prophet Mohammed is the pivotal event of human history,the Dark Ages look like bright ages, the Mongol invasion becomes a major turning point, and the significant Renaissance is the rise of the Ottoman, Safavid, and Moghul empires.       

This is world history as it looks from the “middle world,” that enormous region situated between the western civilization centered in Europe and the eastern civilization centered in China. Tracing this other world-historical line from ancient to modern times illuminates, I say, the roots of Islamist extremism and helps make today’s turmoil between east and west a great deal more comprehensible.       

I spent many years working in the U.S. textbook industry. As an editor, I worked on several major high school world history books presenting the familiar Eurocentric narrative. But as a young history buff growing up in Muslim Afghanistan, I was exposed early on to that other narrative and in Destiny Disrupted, I tell that story. My chronicle begins with the other line of descent from Mesopotamia and Egypt—the one that runs through Persia instead of Greece. I follow this line through the time of Mohammed and the growth of Islam, both as a community and as a religion, through the rise and fall of many empires to the struggles and ideological movements that took shape in the modern Middle East and culminated in the events of 9/11.       

I introduce the people, events, ideas, legends, religious disputes, and key turning points in this vast narrative, not only in terms of what happened, but in terms of how the events were understood and interpreted. This chronicle shows why Western and Islamic civilizations grew up so 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.     

Readers weigh in… 

“Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes … is incredibly illuminating. Ansary pretty much covers the entire history of Islam in an incredibly readable and lucid way. I’ve been recommending this book to everyone I know.”
      –  Dave Eggars, author of What Is the What      

“This is a marvelous book. Ansary has written an indispensable historical account of the last 1500 years from a perspective that is all too often ignored in the West. Destiny Disrupted will be read for generations to come.”
      — Reza Aslan, author of No god but God      

“There’s not a page where you won’t learn something startling in Destiny Disrupted. Beautifully clear and endlessly engaging, it’s a romp through science, poetry, politics and religion, in the company of a wise and charming mind, the perfect antidote to the Islamophobia that clouds Europe and North America.”
      — Raj Patel, author of Stuffed and Starved      

“Wow! What a story he tells. I keep searching for a metaphor. It’s like watching a huge setup of dominoes get knocked over. One thing leads to another. Everything makes sense. But no, dominoes are too predictable. It’s more like surfing the ocean waves. I can tell you this. I felt like I was surfing gleefully along through the book until I crashed on the rocky shores of current events. I’d like to disappear, and reappear in about a thousand years, and read Tamim’s history of the world at that point in time.
      — Lois Drew, a reader