Mawlana Hazir Imam speech, Lisbon, Portugal (31 March 2019)
“The musicians we recognise this weekend represent highly diverse forms of the Muslim musical heritage. Now I know that in some parts of the world, the words “Muslim” and “music” are not often linked together in the public mind. But they should be. The cultural heritage of Islam has long embraced musical language as an elemental expression of human spirituality. Listening to music, practicing music, sharing music, performing music - have long been an intimate part of life for Muslim communities across the world, as has been the chanting of devotional and historical or epic texts.
I learned at a young age about how my own ancestors, the Fatimids, cultivated music in the city of Cairo a thousand years ago. And I also learned about how the Iberian region where we are now meeting, the territory known as al-Andalus, produced new forms of music and poetry in the late medieval period.”