How did this apparently inevitable Western dominance come about? What led to the clash of these two universes on 11th September 2001? Are we really experiencing a clash of civilizations? The apparently inevitable dominance of the WestĪnsary not only compares the lives of caliphs, sultans, and reformers he also probes the big questions that still characterize the tense relationship between Orient and Occident today. The 61-year-old, who now lives in San Francisco, has written an entertaining book, replete with anecdotes, that relates “what happened from a Muslim perspective” – a “human drama”. “Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes” is not a schoolbook, nor is it an academic thesis. “And because the West was more powerful, its narrative prevailed and suppressed the other.”Īnsary now tells the other version in his book. He comments that it was only in the 17th century that the two perspectives began to overlap. For a long time, writes Ansary, each regarded itself as the centre of world history. Like two parallel universes, the West and the heartland of Islam existed alongside each other for centuries – and ignored each other. In Destiny Disrupted, Ansary recounts world history as it looks if one assumes that the heart of the world is situated somewhere between the Indus and Istanbul He argues that it could be discussed as part of the school curriculum alongside communism, democracy and fascism, as it is also a social project that regulates politics, economics and justice – as well as a civilization of its own that has achieved outstanding accomplishments in arts and crafts, and one of many world histories. “A completely independent and alternative history of the world a competing narrative to the one I was supposed to write for the Texan publisher.”įor Islam is not simply a belief system, Ansary claims.

Yet Ansary believes that there is a second history that exists alongside the Western version in the text books.

Only his family name reveals that he is a descendent of the Ansar, the “Supporters”, the name given to the first Muslims from Medina. The author, who came to the United States at the age of 16 on a high school scholarship, is not a missionary he is not even a practising Muslim. But which thirty events represent the history of mankind? There was to be not more than one chapter on Islam, at any rate, the publisher insisted.įor Ansary, who grew up in Kabul, it was not enough to include Islam in this history as a glossary, a digression, a note in the margin.

The publishers envisaged ten units, with three chapters each. Ten years ago Tamim Ansary was contracted by a Texan schoolbook publisher to develop a new history of the world for the junior high school curriculum.

Destiny disrupted book review