Show Notes
For over 1,400 years, Islam has been woven into the fabric of Europe — yet this history has been systematically erased. In this conversation, award-winning historian and author Tharik Hussain joins Ali Zaka on The Prometheans to reveal the forgotten story of Muslim Europe: from the Prophet's family arriving in Cyprus in 647 AD, to the Islamic roots of the European Renaissance, to why this erasure still shapes politics — and Muslim identity — today.
Tharik's book *Muslim Europe* (Viking/Penguin, 2025) has been called "perspective-shattering" and "vital, important" by historians and writers including William Dalrymple.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHAT WE COVER ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ IN THIS EPISODE ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ • How Islam arrived in Europe just 16 years after the Prophet's death • The "anti-Muslim DNA" embedded in European civilisational identity • How Islamic scholars built the foundations of the Renaissance • Why even respected historians erase 1,400 years of Muslim presence • Convivencia: the truth about Muslim, Christian, and Jewish coexistence • What historical erasure does to the identity of Muslims living in Europe today • The interfaith implications of recovering this hidden history
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT THE GUEST ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Tharik Hussain is an award-winning author, historian, and journalist specialising in global Muslim heritage. His book *Muslim Europe* (Viking/Penguin, 2025) is the first Muslim Eurocentric history of the continent. His previous book *Minarets in the Mountains* was longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction.
Follow Tharik: @tharik_hussain Book: Muslim Europe (Viking/Penguin, 2025)
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