Tharik Hussain

Author and journalist Tharik Hussain demonstrates how Islam has been central to the development of Western culture over the last 14 centuries.

Hussain takes the story from the Sufi lodges of Cyprus, where Muslims arrived in 647AD through to the modern day. The story includes forgotten Muslim pioneers, such as Abbas Ibn Firnas, who gave us flight, and Ibn Sina, who gave us modern medicine. Hussain explains how Islam-inspired art of 14th-century Christians helped to inspire the Renaissance and he uncovers the tombs of European Muslims who knew Mohammed.

‘Hussain reminds us of the long history and the complex, mixed syncretic culture of European Islam, and nudges us to remember the massive debt Europe still owes to the Muslim world’ William Dalrymple

Hussain is a writer and journalist specialising in global Muslim heritage and culture. He produced the award-winning America’s Mosques for BBC radio and is author of Minarets and Mountains, winner of the British Guild of Travel Writers’ Adele Evans Award.

Part of the festival’s programme of Islamic literature and culture.