The European Islamic Centre in Oldham will host a book launch and discussion with renowned travel writer, Tharik Hussain.
The event, to be held between 4pm-6pm on Sunday 21 December, hopes to educate people about the contributions of Muslims to Europe and the rest of the world. Contributions that are largely ignored or completely whitewashed from history.
In his book, ‘Muslim Europe’, award-winning author, Hussain restores this forgotten history.
Hussain, who is British Bangladeshi, said about his journeys: “I came across palaces built by Italian Emirs and Spanish Caliphs; I visited towns where Muslim philosophers taught the world what Aristotle had really said; I stood in the ruins of Muslim cities that had street lighting and plumbing when London was a ‘filthy, muddy, squalor’
“I learned that Europe’s Muslim children in the ninth century were more literate than adults in Paris, Rome and Berlin; I read that while Anglo-Saxons were using fried and crushed black snails to treat spider bites, Muslim physicians in Cordoba were being scientifically trained to perform caesarean sections.
“I came across the words of medieval Jewish poets pining for a Golden Age that came and went in Muslim Europe; I marvelled at the free Muslim hospitals in Spain and Portugal, a thousand years before the NHS; I even learned that an Anglo-Saxon king had once minted a coin with the Muslim declaration of faith on it. What I didn’t learn was why none of this was in my European history books.”
Hussain is also a journalist specialising in global Muslim heritage and culture. He has written for newspapers such as The Times, Guardian and Telegraph. He has also written for Al Jazeera and the BBC. He produced the award-winning radio program ‘America’s Mosques’ for the BBC.
He has written or contributed to travel books on areas including the Middle East, Southeast Asia and Europe, and his book on Islam in the Western Balkans ‘Minarets in the Mountains’ won the Adele Evans Award.
