Muslim Europe, Scotland’s Smallest Bookshop, A Book Festival and ‘Our Sponsor’:
Who Compromises?
Muslim Europe: A Partial Review of Tharik Hussein’s appearance at Wigtown Book Festival in 2026 to talk about his book: ‘Muslim Europe’ (with a word from ‘our sponsors’)..
Abbas Ibn Furnas; Ibn Rushd; Hasdai Ibn Shaprut or Abraham Ibn Daud: European Muslims with great sounding names: fourteen hundred years of Muslims in Europe. Our numbers, our languages, hiding in plain sight or buried, literally, in rubble. If not, buried in memory. Mohammed’s Aunt – yes, THE Mohammed – lying, anonymously, a heritage grant short of a plaque; a town bid short of a visitor center. Curiously, Tharik of London still feels a need to apologise when he tells us, the only time anger escapes him, how we do so well to receive our blue eyed, blond haired, migrants, while we stare idly in distrust at their browner equivalents. At the end I buy the book, the first I ever bought at a signing. It’s £25. I’m a bookseller. I don’t pay full whack. But I want a word with Tharik and I want to ask him why he apologizes: “because the people who review my books tell me it’s controversial to point it out”. “You mean our racism?” I ask. ‘Well, yes”. “Stop it. It’s the truth. Stop apologising for telling the plain truth”. “OK’. He smiles. I ask my other question: “I want to email you. I’m putting together some prints – a collection of erasures. I think you might have ideas”. “Oh I do. That’s great”. He’s surprised. “Go to my website”. “I will”. I head out, glad to have met Tharik. En route, the tall guy selling whiskey is disgruntled. The festival have failed to direct the audience to sample the whiskey from the distillery sponsor he represents. I know him. We’ve been discussing a wee project to start ‘Scotland’s Smallest Bookshop’ beside their car park inside a red phone box. He nods towards Tharik: “not much point here anyway?” “What do you mean? I ask. “They don’t drink, do they”.
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“Don’t you think ‘they’ might have friends who do?” – is what I, later, think I could’ve said, reflecting that, maybe for the wrong reasons, the only person in the room to whom it occurred that a whiskey sponsor wasn’t the best choice for an event entitled: ‘Muslim Europe’, was the sponsor! Still, we’ve only had 1400 years to think about it.
Scotland’s smallest bookshop is a project under development. We aim to locate the bookshop in an ex BT red phone box by a bridge over the waters of the Bladnoch and adjacent to the car park of The Bladnoch distillery, Scotland’s oldest lowland distillery. We’d love to hear from potential sponsors…
Note – See also:
https://www.muslimnetwork.tv/fifa-world-cups-alcohol-sponsors-faced-with-a-record-number-of-muslim-players/
