Let’s start our conversation by going back to your first book Minarets in the Mountains, which is subtitled The Journey into Muslim Europe. Was that book a springboard into your latest book?

Yes, in many ways. From a publishing perspective, Muslim Europe comes after Minarets in the Mountains. However, chronologically, it is taking readers right back to the beginning of the Islamic presence in Europe and telling people that that history is a lot longer than they might think.

Both books explore the way in which popular European history has been written, and how Islam has been written out of European history and isn’t considered a European religion. However, as I show in Muslim Europe, Islam has been a European religion from the start of its arrival in this world.

One of the things that’s so moving about the book is that you don’t have all the answers from the beginning. You’re actually on a journey of genuine discovery throughout the book. Cyprus is the crucible to this book in a lot of ways, can you take us back to your first visit to there?

I was on my way to go and live in Saudi Arabia. The flight we took meant I had to stop in Cyprus for nine hours at a place called Larnaca. And I had no idea where this was, I’d never really travelled much at this point. It was only the prospect of visiting this mosque on Salt Lake that was the attraction.

I arrived at the mosque, and I was put out by it because I saw this tomb and I wasn’t comfortable with it being in the mosque. I walked away disappointed, thinking ‘well, that was a waste of time’. But this booklet that the caretaker hands me is the moment that really changes everything.

It was only later, when I started teaching in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, that I opened this booklet and discovered that the tomb I had visited was home to an aunt of the Prophet Muhammad. And then I learned that the very first generation, not even the first, the family of the Prophet became European.

I realised that I did not know my history, this was the problem. And what I mean by my history is my history as a European Muslim.

In the introduction, you talk about how the Muslim history of Europe has been reduced to a footnote for major historians. Why do you think that is?

Now, that’s a very complicated question to answer in many ways.

The popular arena is where we have a lot of issues. There are seasoned historians who have written books on Europe, and in all of them the negligence is shocking. But it’s not shocking to other people because to them it’s the norm, and it has been normalised over millennia.

The issue really begins with the early medieval Crusade narrative. Early on it’s called Christendom, and then it evolves into this idea of Europe. It’s this anti-Muslim narrative that begins in the Crusade period because these countries united to fight against the scourge of Islam, to ‘free the Holy Lands’, and so on.

Then it’s reinforced by things like the archaeological eradication that’s been done, ‘We won, they lost, let’s get rid of all their stuff.’ And this is perfectly normal. And I understand it happens all over the world, so this is a natural thing in many ways. This is what happens historically. But what we need to do is appreciate and acknowledge that it is part of our unconscious.

All the way through your trip, you meet people who, like myself, are very comfortable with that false binary of what Europe’s history was. Throughout the book, you’re very curious and you meet these people and you gently push back against these beliefs.

I think something that struck me in the book is that it must have been quite difficult for you to go to these places and hear those things. How was that experience?

It was difficult, Dan, but I was also on the journey of discovery as well. I didn’t, and still don’t, have all the answers, and there is no one book that is going to give you all the answers because history is vast and I’m not qualified to write the entirety of this history.

My title makes a huge declaration, but what I’m really doing is just opening the doors for readers to explore those 1,400 years of history.

I’ve had wonderful reviews for the first book where people have written me private emotional emails, non-Muslims who have said, ‘you’ve completely changed the way I think and I can’t believe I had this blind spot.’ And that is exactly what it is, it’s a huge blind spot.

So to push back against this blind spot is very tough. But I’m always gentle because I also want people to be gentle with me because of my ignorance. We all should be gentle with each other’s ignorance.

I’m very lucky that I was somehow able to go on these journeys and do this, not everybody has got that privilege. The thought, if anything, is one that we have to go back millennia, as I said, and we have to kind of undo things. And now it’s up to historians to take this on board and look at themselves and ask themselves, ‘next time I write a history on Europe, what am I leaving out? Why am I skipping so much of the history in Europe? What is it that makes me uncomfortable about that?’

In the book, I was so struck by the fact that the earliest Maltese text is actually sort of an Arabic poem. Is that correct?

Yes, it’s entirely Arabic. The reason I return to this moment with my colleagues in Malta—my wonderful guides David, Ibtissam and Jafar—is because the greatest living Islamic legacy on the Maltese island is the language.

Both Arabic and Hebrew are Semitic languages, so this is Europe’s only Arabic language. It’s the only European Arabic still spoken today.

On your journey of discovery, how did you approach using historical sources to fill in gaps in historical non-fiction?

When using these sources, I aim to balance existing narratives. I appreciate that they may embellish. Historians have historically enhanced their own side; I understand that.

I’m not saying every Muslim or Jewish historical source should be taken as fact, but quoting them illustrates a counter-narrative.

Much was destroyed and this explains why Europe has a blind spot regarding Muslim history. Physical evidence is often gone. That’s why I undertook a physical journey, to show it.

I tell stories in a way that allows people to revisit these places and see, even if just a stone remains, that it was once there. This is when it becomes difficult to refute.

It’s been a long process of writing and travel. What are your hopes for the book?

My hope is to broaden the spectrum of understanding history, not rewrite it. To show how unconscious biases may have shaped narratives.

Objectivity does not exist. I write from a Muslim perspective. I aim to be fair but this is my lens. Bringing all sides together shows a different narrative.

Who is your ideal reader?

The mainstream European reader. Not specifically Muslims. People who might think Muslims don’t belong in Europe. I’m gentle with their ignorance, hoping they are gentle with mine.