Widely Promoted “Muslim Europe” Book Whitewashes Jewish History Under Muslim Rule
Penguin’s Muslim Europe book sanitizes centuries of Jewish legal subordination and persecution as a “sanctuary” while dismissing Europe’s Judaeo-Christian foundation as a “myth"
Penguin is promoting a paperback edition of Tharik Hussain’s Muslim Europe: A Journey in Search of a Fourteen Hundred Year History, scheduled for 5 November 2026, following Viking’s hardback publication on 4 December 2025. In the publisher’s own words, the book “dismantles the myth of Europe’s Judaeo-Christian cultural foundation.” It covers the military conquests that established Muslim rule in parts of Europe alongside later settlement and cultural exchange, arguing that the “cross fertilisation of faiths and cultures birthed Europe’s Christian Renaissance.”
Its most extraordinary claim, stated on Penguin’s paperback page and reproduced in retailer listings, is that “for twelve centuries, Muslim Europe was a sanctuary for the continent’s Jews.” The book received its official launch at the East London Mosque and associated London Muslim Centre. The UK government’s 2015 Muslim Brotherhood Review stated that trustees of both institutions were also members of the Islamic Forum for Europe.
The shock is not that a sympathetic history of Muslim Europe exists — it is that one of the largest trade publishers in the English-speaking world is actively marketing, in its own promotional copy, a description difficult to reconcile with episodes such as the Granada massacre and the Almohad persecutions.
What Penguin’s Own Description Says
Penguin’s paperback page and publisher-supplied listings carried by Audible, AbeBooks, and other retailers state:
“For twelve centuries, Muslim Europe was a sanctuary for the continent’s Jews. Recalling the poignant voices of Hasdai Ibn Shaprut and Abraham Ibn Daoud, Jews flourished under Muslim protection triggering the Jewish Golden Age.”
The same publisher-issued description concludes:
“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.”
That history includes the 1066 Granada massacre, when a Muslim mob killed and crucified the Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacred members of the city’s Jewish community. A later account placed the death toll at approximately 4,000. It also includes the 12th-century Almohad persecutions, which forced Maimonides and his family to flee al-Andalus.
Across much of the period, Jewish communities living under Muslim rule held dhimmi status, which entailed legal subordination and jizya for eligible adult men. In some periods and jurisdictions, authorities also enforced distinctive-dress requirements and restrictions on constructing or repairing synagogues. Penguin’s blurb collapses all of it into “sanctuary.”
The blurb compresses a highly uneven history. Historian Mark R. Cohen writes that the idealized interfaith “Golden Age” was partly mythical because it minimized Jewish legal inferiority and periodic violence. He nevertheless concludes that comparatively favorable Jewish conditions under Muslim rule contained substantial truth when measured against medieval northern Christendom. Cohen writes that discriminatory restrictions were frequently ignored in practice and that serious persecutions were exceptional, identifying the Almohads as the most infamous exception. His account therefore does not support portraying the entire twelve-century period as an uninterrupted sanctuary.
About the Author: An Al Jazeera Byline and a Penguin Book Deal
Penguin’s own author bio, attached to the book, states plainly:
“Tharik Hussain is an award-winning author and journalist specialising in global Muslim heritage and culture. He has written for newspapers such as The Times, Guardian and Telegraph, magazines such as National Geographic Traveler, and broadcast media such as Al Jazeera and the BBC.”
Hussain maintains a dedicated author page on Al Jazeera — the Doha-based network funded by the Qatari state. In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice determined that AJ+’s U.S. English operation was required to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The 2017 demand by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt that Qatar shut down Al Jazeera was one element of the four countries’ broader 13-demand ultimatum to Doha.
Hussain’s Al Jazeera bio describes him as “a London-based journalist and travel writer specialising in the Muslim heritage of the West.” His 2017 Al Jazeera feature described the Christmas observances and civic outreach of William Quilliam’s small Muslim community in Victorian Liverpool. The article presented the community as an early model of an indigenous British Muslim identity, a theme Hussain would later develop in Muslim Europe.
Beyond Al Jazeera, Hussain was featured in a March 2026 webinar hosted by the Muslim Council of Britain. The MCB has faced criticism over its opposition to the Prevent counter-extremism programme. In a 2022 Middle East Forum article, Muslim reformist scholar Usama Hasan criticized the MCB’s opposition to Prevent “alongside hard-line Islamists like CAGE.”
Protection Was Not Sanctuary
The Jews of Muslim-ruled Europe did not experience an uninterrupted twelve-century sanctuary. Across much of that history, Jewish communities lived as dhimmis, a legally subordinate population whose security depended on the authorities and could give way to coercion, exile or massacre. The 1066 slaughter of members of Granada’s Jewish community and the Almohad persecution that drove Maimonides and his family from Iberia were not minor historical episodes to be erased by promotional language. By portraying Muslim Europe as a Jewish “sanctuary” that “triggered the Jewish Golden Age,” the book turns conditional protection and a deeply uneven history into an uncomplicated story of tolerance.