

As Ansary writes in his conclusion, "The conflict wracking the modern world is not, I think, best understood as a 'clash of civilizations.'. 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. But the book is more than just a litany of past events. "A must-read for anyone who wants to learn more about the history of the Islamic world. Especially when people are looking for a comprehensive-but-approachable way to look at world history through the lens of Islam, there's no better book."- Dave Eggers, I've been recommending this book to everyone I know. Ansary pretty much covers the entire history of Islam in an incredibly readable and lucid way. "I'm in the middle of Tamim Ansary's Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes, and it's incredibly illuminating. Khaled Hosseini, author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns And that makes this book, in this uneasy, contentious post 9/11 world, a must-read." 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. "Ansary has written an informative and thoroughly engaging look at the past, present and future of Islam. Destiny Disrupted offers a vital perspective on world conflicts many now find so puzzling.


With storytelling brio, humor, and evenhanded sympathy to all sides of the story, Ansary illuminates a fascinating parallel to the world narrative usually heard in the West. He clarifies why two great civilizations-Western and Muslim-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-had somehow hijacked destiny. He introduces the key people, events, ideas, legends, religious disputes, and turning points of world history, imparting not only what happened but how it is understood from the Muslim perspective. His story moves from the lifetime of Mohammed through a succession of far-flung empires, to the tangle of modern conflicts that culminated in the events of 9/11. In Destiny Disrupted, Tamim Ansary tells the rich story of world history as it looks from a new perspective: with the evolution of the Muslim community at the center. Destiny Disrupted tells the history of the world from the Islamic point of view, and restores the centrality of the Muslim perspective, ignored for a thousand years. The Western narrative of world history largely omits a whole civilization.
