Muslims around the globe

Nowadays, many people believe that Islam is this foreign religion mostly practiced by some people in the middle east. Unfortunately, this viewpoint overlooks the fact that the history of Islam and Muslims is largely intertwined with much of the local culture and history of many countries spanning east, west, north and south. For instance, Indonesia which is not even in the middle east is the country with the largest Muslim population in the world as of today. Your own country's history may have been partly influenced by a Muslim historical character whom you never heard of. One YouTube channel dedicated to short stories about significant historical Muslim figures is Omar of the Orient. Omar is a half Egyptian history educator who has covered some of the most fascinating stories on his channel. This page is dedicated to some of his videos where I categorise them by country. If you see your country's name below, chances are there is an interesting story about a Muslim person from your own country's history which you never heard about. I will try to keep the list up to date every once in a while.

When watching these videos, it is important to remember that these are human stories first and foremost. So many of them are stories of conflict, politics, desperation and heroism at the face of danger. Many of these characters may not have been religious and they may have been acting purely out of self interest rather than religion, but that doesn't make their stories any less interesting, if anything, it probably makes them more relatable. Often historical stories glorify some characters and vilify others neglecting that everyone is human who had their shortcomings and mistakes and that no one is "perfect" by any reasonable definition of the word. Enjoy the watch.

Mohamed Tarek