Historian and travel writer Tharik Hussain shares his experience writing history through a reinterpretive lens in his latest book, Muslim Europe: A Journey in Search of a Fourteen Hundred Year History.

For over 1,400 years, Muslims have been an integral part of Europe’s story, yet their contributions have been pushed to the margins or erased altogether. In Muslim Europe, award-winning author Tharik Hussain restores this forgotten history. The book tracks the footsteps of the first Muslims who arrived on European soil in 647 AD, travelling through Sicily, Malta, Portugal and Spain, and covering the continent’s great Caliphate culture and Muslim commonwealth.

For the first time, Muslim Europe lays bare the cause of our collective Islamic amnesia by mapping Europe’s ‘anti-Muslim DNA’ through medieval Crusade narratives and nation-building myths. It posits Islam as integral to the development of Western culture for over 1,400 years, rather than as a sideshow. Deep, learned and utterly convincing, this first Muslim Eurocentric history of the continent dismantles the myth of Europe’s Judaeo-Christian cultural foundation, and offers nothing less than a profound shift in our self-understanding.

This book talk is an opportunity to hear about the work from Tharik's own perspective, and an opportunity to discuss Muslims' forgotten contributions to Western civilisation and culture.