Reddit reviews Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes
We found 17 Reddit comments about Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
PublicAffairs
All my knowledge comes from the book Destiny Distrupted
Tamim Ansary goes into great length to describe the fortifications of Baghdad saying that in his opinion it was the most well defended city during that time period (at least on par with Constantinople). It was built between the narrowest part of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and had walls multiple layers of towering walls surrounding it.
In the "Islamic World" at that time Baghdad was the end all be all. It was a cultural and scholarly city, rich in trade, and arrogant with power. Up until that point Islam had spread rapidly and suffered few defeats and no demoralizing ones. The Library of Baghdad is less famous, but probably more important than the Library of Alexandria in just the sheer amount of books and knowledge that it held. Backing up these realities are the teachings of Islam that preach it is the one true religion and all must acknowledge it. The common thought was "with God on our side, how can we lose?"
So when Baghdad DID fall it wasn't just barely, it was complete and utter defeat and it destroyed the Islamic world's confidence in itself.
The Khan had no bridge with which to cross the river to continue his conquests, so he ordered the books of the library to be thrown into the river and the troops to walk across them. It was said that the river ran black for a month! The defeat of Baghdad was not a local event, but sent shock waves throughout the entire Muslim world and in the author's opinion it has never recovered. Even today Islam reviles the invading Mongols and sees nothing great about Genghis Khan or Hulagu Khan. They destroyed Islam's confidence, their knowledge, and a part of their culture.
Not OP, just someone who likes reading about other cultures.
I really like Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes.
It's a nice change of pace from the Euro-centric, Christian-centric history of US schools. It's also a really good read.
Let me recommend to you Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes. The author is a fantastic writer (as well as a narrator, the audio book is quite good), as well as being from a devout Afghan sufi family. He gives a thorough account of the intellectual and philosophical traditions of the Islamic world couched within the frame of historical events from the pre-islamic world up to modern day.
It's a good read and goes into what so unsettled the Islamic world into fundamentalism.
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You dont think history is full of such examples of arab 'kings' and 'princes' doing shit like this for petty gains? The 40th descendant of prophet Mohammed secretly allied with british against the turkish caliphate in WW I so him and his descendants would form the next caliphate over all the arab lands. He literally begged them for what? so he can call himself a Caliph.
Read Destiny Disrupted https://www.amazon.com/Destiny-Disrupted-History-Through-Islamic/dp/1586488139 to see what the 'Muslim' rulers of the past behaved like. Much like today they used Islam to benefit themselves. The Salman's, the Saddam's, the Mubarak's, the Bhutto's, the Shah's of the muslim lands are not a modern phenomena. Their brand of retard goes back a long, long way in Muslim history.
I am Catholic and learned most of what I know about Islam though university classes and independent research. I can give you a list of books I have read about Islam that will get you started.
Oxford English Koran
Obviously the primary text is important to have and the book is pretty small. Much smaller compared to the bible.
Hadith of Bukhari: Volumes I, II, III & IV
Half of Islamic law is derived from the Koran and the other half from the Hadith. The Hadith is the collection of events, and quotes by Mohammad and his followers. This book is huge and you shouldn't try to read the whole since it is just list quotes and who they are by. But it is a good reference source and something to page through.
Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources
Biography of Mohammad using historical sources. Good reference.
Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes
Brief 350 page run of Islamic history until now as told by a Muslim. I felt the book was a bit preachy and accusatory towards the end but I read it 6 years ago so my memory might be hazy. Still a good read if you want to try to understand how mainstream moderate Muslim scholars see things. It has a good bibliography too.
There are probably a bunch of other ones I am forgetting. Take a look through Amazon and see what else they have. I would only buy books from university presses or published by academics though. They can be dense and difficult but they are peer reviewed which is important since there is so much anti-Islam, pro-Islam publishing out there.
Destiny Disrupted by Tamim Ansary. Easy read, consistently interesting, and a good primer for anyone looking to learn about Islamic history.
Yeah, I was just making a stupid joke.
As for the Islamic view of Genghis Khan, it depends on perspective. Genghis Khan was tolerant of Muslims and even sought after their intellectuals. But he also destroyed their populations. A lot of the estimates of the deaths caused by Genghis Khan's conquest are exaggerated, but that doesn't really affect the perception in much of the Muslim world. There are also a lot of dubious claims as to Genghis Khan's brutality.
It's true, from any perspective, that the Mongol conquest put an end to a long period of Muslim prosperity. Since the days of Mohammed, they had seen very few serious military losses. The common belief among Muslims prior to Genghis Khan was that their prosperity and military success was undeniable proof of the validity of their beliefs. They felt that Allah had blessed them with the ability to win battles and spread their religion. So Genghis Khan turned their world upside down.
All of my understanding of Genghis Khan and Muslim history come from Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World and Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes, both of which I highly recommend.
this is a great book on the history of islam, egagingly written as an introduction to the religion and its history for casual readers. he writes with pretty much no bias. highly recommended.
Thank you very much. I think my professor's source was Ansary's Destiny Disrupted, which we've been reading as a sort of overview of Islamic history. I'm enjoying it, although it doesn't profess to be a history book exactly.
The problem is that most readily available books are written through the lens of 9/11. That's what people want to read about, and that is what is on authors' minds. 9/11 is one link in the chain.
Older books that take a more in-depth approach are difficult to find or very expensive.
Jihad In Classical And Modern Islam: A Reader is a book that takes a broader approach but is difficult to find. The edition I read was from the mid-90s.
A good recent book is Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes
I agree with this review:
>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.
and
>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.
Had I reviewed that book I would have written something nearly identical.
I forgot to add this in my other comment (which focused on academic books), but if you want a really easy but informative/accessible read, perhaps comparable to Lesley Hazleton's book, you might want to check out Tamim Ansary's Destiny Disrupted, which is a history of the world through Islamic eyes (not exclusively focused on Shi'ism) though. I'd recommend the audiobook specifically, as it's read by the author.
"Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes"
>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.
It's truly a classic, a must-read and it's on Amazon for 10 bucks.
book: destiny disrupted.
By who? We're told by our media that it's basically the Shi'as vs. the Sunnis. Anyone who picks up a book on Islam and Islamic history will see that there is more to Islam and Muslims than a bullet point summary.
Yes, the vast majority of Muslims are Sunni. They're divided into 4 schools of Islamic thought, Hanafi, Shafi'i, Maliki, and Hanbali. The Shi'ites aren't a sect by themselves. 13% of Muslims in the world are Shi'i, and they're divided into further sects such as the Twelvers, the Zaidis, the Ismailis, Alawites, etc. 80% of those 13% of Shi'ites are Twelvers. Then you have the Ibadi sect, which is roughly 1% of all Muslims, mostly concentrated in Oman and pockets in North Africa.
Those are the traditional sects, the newer "sects" consist of Salafis, Ikhwani fundamentalists, Progressives, Secularists, etc. Most of these newer sects are more of a response to the political situation in the Muslim world over the past 100 years or so. Almost all the newer sects were born towards the end of the colonial era to the present era.
If you want to have a comprehensive view of Islam that is easy to read and understand for a non-Muslim, I would suggest reading Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes by Tamim Ansary
If you don't want to read a book, then check out r/Islam's wiki page that covers this topic in a well written and easy to understand manner
http://www.reddit.com/r/islam/wiki/theology#wiki_what_are_the_sects_of_islam.3F
It's not explicitly about the conflict in the Middle East, but Destiny Disrupted provides a ton of good context for the Islamic perspective.