Blue-Eyed Devil: A Road Odyssey Through Islamic America

by Michael Muhammad Knight

Michael Muhammad Knight embarks on a quest for an indigenous American Islam in a series of interstate odysseys. Traveling 20,000 miles by Greyhound in sixty days, he squats in run-down mosques, pursues Muslim romance, is detained at the U.S.-Canadian border with a trunkload of Shia literature, crashes Islamic Society of North America conventions, stink-palms Cat Stevens, and limps across Chicago to find the grave of Noble Drew Ali, filling dozens of notebooks along the way. The result is this semi-autobiographical book, with multiple histories of Fard and the landscape of American Islam woven into Knight’s own story.

In the course of his adventures, Knight sorts out his own relationship to Islam as he journeys from punk provocateur to a recognized voice in the community, and watches first-hand the collapse of a liberal Islamic dream. The book’s extensive cast of characters includes anarchist Sufi heretics, vegan kungfu punks, tattoo-sleeved converts in hard-core bands, spiritual drug dealers, Islamic feminists, slick media entrepreneurs, sages of the street, the grandsons of Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, and a group called Muslims for Bush.

Genres: Islam, Nonfiction, Religion, History, Memoir, Biography Memoir, Travel

240 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2007

About the author

Michael Muhammad Knight (born 1977) is an American novelist, essayist, and journalist. His writings are popular among American Muslim youth. The San Francisco Chronicle described him as "one of the most necessary and, paradoxically enough, hopeful writers of Barack Obama's America," while The Guardian has described him as "the Hunter S. Thompson of Islamic literature," and his non-fiction work exemplifies the principles of gonzo journalism. Publishers Weekly describes him as "Islam's gonzo experimentalist." Within the American Muslim community, he has earned a reputation as an ostentatious cultural provocateur.

He obtained a master's degree from Harvard University in 2011 and is a Ph.D. student in islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Young white American convert to Islam with a punk sensibility travels all over the US visiting Islamic landmarks, puzzling over the identity of WD Fard, and meeting girls. He mostly rides Greyhound and often sleeps outside or in lobbies. At one point he compares himself to a wandering holy man who carries no money. The landmarks he visits are often related to Nation of Islam, and although there are plenty of traditional Muslims in his circle, his heart seems to be with NOI through Malcolm X.

I wanted to like this book, but I just didn’t. There was a lot to be interested in in it, but the meandering way it is put together made it seem like a young guy’s travel diary got published without editing out the self-indulgence. It went on too long, and the meet ups in various towns with girls who were lying to their parents were annoying.

Sorry, I don’t recommend.

[patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A retired professor friend lent me this one - definitely an alternative book on Islam in America. This was a really fun read, I am planning on picking up more of Michael Knight's work in the near future.

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

OK, Taquacores is kind of really bad and I regret telling my friend to read it. This, though? This is awesome. Funny, honest, tragic, risky, well-written, thoughtful, funny as fuck.

[Michael Nguyen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping this book would be interesting but its largely a meandering road trip book. Too many scenes of his escapades with women, and too much writing on the Nation of Islam and its obscure mythology of Fard. Its interesting when he writes about Peter Lamborn Wilson (the sufi anarchist), Shia Islam, and punk Islam. I also found it interesting when he wrote about Irshad Manji and Hamza Yusuf who I enjoy listening to. Knight's reception of them however is critical, and he's quite critical of a lot of the people in the progressive Islam scene for various different reasons. Despite the minute amount of interesting sections, the book is slow paced and tiring to get through with all the NOI lore and sexual escapades.

[Kia]

He writes so fantastically that I didnt believe anything in this. But Google confirmed everything I fact checked I will never doubt his scholarship again. The history of Islam in the US is just that bizarre

I will have to ask my parents if they remember a crazy stinky white man in alternative tentacles merch at the 2000s isna cons

Some very compelling arguments re:WD Fard’s true identify for all the NOI heads out there

[Madeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

this makes me want to learn more

[Monster Okay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Come for the WD Fard investigation, stay for the wrestling with faith in post 9/11 america. Fuck Greyhound.

[Vika Gardner · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is not for everyone. It is Michael Muhammad Knight's narrative of his travels around the US (on a Greyhound pass), visiting a variety of Muslim communities (and his friends) around the country.

Knight doesn't pull any punches; he's a little at odds with Islam and one might readily understand this book as a conversation he's having with himself that he has allowed you to overhear. His interest in a variety of small American Muslim communities, like the 5 Percenters, the Moorish Science Temple, and the Nation of Islam are quite interesting and refreshing. Knight, himself white, has a genuine concern about race and how representations of "black" American Islamic groups have been stereotyped, and he therefore listens with an open mind to what those he views as teachers might say.

He does not have a particularly kind view of the American Muslim "establishment", including many scholars. His distaste for John Esposito is quite clear; Amina Wadud (among other prominent American Muslim scholars)is, on the other hand, someone whose ideas he thoroughly supports.

One cannot read Knight expecting conventional piety; sex, drugs, and music are parts of his life that he doesn't want to renounce. He sometimes calls himself a Shi'a, but it's not clear what he thinks might include. (To me it sounds like he's just a normal non-polemical Sunni who doesn't denounce 'Ali and company.) But his travels will likely resonate with others in their early 20s who are struggling to work out who they are, and what this country (the US) means. I was struck by how similar (although of a completely different class) his ideas were to those of an American artist of Korean descent whose work came to Allegheny College in January 2010. Both were looking for themselves in what they perceived to be American icons/monuments; both seemed to feel that while they found something, it didn't quite fit the interior version of self they were seeking. It is in this thoughtful sense that Knight's work will resonate with many.

So if you can put up with cursing and sex, take a trip with Knight through American Islamic communities and see for yourself what Islam in American -- in some of its diversity -- is all about.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

He has little discipline as a writer, but Knight goes anywhere with a latter-day Beat irreverence and a punk irreverence (combined, oddly, with some real reverence for things like Five Percenter doctrine that I find, well, nutty). There's a great 100-page section from about pages 50-140 where he goes looking for the identity of Wallace Fard, the founder of the Nation of Islam, and turns up enough secret histories to fill several Charles Portis novels. (I have a line like that in my Chron review, but I think this is a better version of it.) Then he wanders around some more. So not entirely satisfying as a piece of writing (it's listed as a novel with all the standard disclaimers, even though many of the figures within are well-known people in American Islam, maybe because one of them later sued him for depicting her as shallow and self-obsessed, and because taqwacore band The Kominas wrote a song alleging she gave handjobs, which they had to remove from the web), but in parts, one of his most compelling explorations of how to be punk, Muslim, American, a wrestling fan, an apostate, and ten other things, all at the same time.

[Matthew Moes · Rating 4 out of 5]

What happens to a dream deferred? I think maybe Michael Knight's "Road Odyssey through Islamic America" offers a glimpse... at least one vision. This book is obnoxious, offensive and worse, and yet, in spite of it all some readers will still identify while others will just be stupefied. Despite his irreverent attitude toward everything and everyone that most American Muslims hold sacred, this book might be one of the most important things I have read about so-called American Islam. If nothing else, it fully captures the anguish of a failed saint (a connection I am making to Cioran), a convert caught somewhere in between ... with the pendulum still swinging. And then again, it is exactly because of his emphasis on the unorthodox and his cringing disdain for the ISNA Muslims, and yet all the while still seeking acceptance, that we see here what I think is the purpose - to say that Islam is wider and far too universal to be limited to the mainstream definitions.

Well written and reflective, Knight uses a search for the truth about W.D. Fard as a backdrop for his journey across America, while also visiting a host of people and places seeking "that American-Islam thing". Certainly not for everyone, but I could not put it down.

[Tyler Anderson · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm not certain what I'm finding more intolerable about this book, the incessant "term-dropping" or the constant references to the author's supposedly oh-so-punk-rock attitude and disrespect for everyone and everything. Reminds me why leeching Crust and Hippies are simply not welcome anywhere in my personal world.

Additionally, I find that his quest for an American Islam is backlit by his own indeed narrow American view of Islam to begin with. The Islam he chose as a young convert was only one cast, one tone. He chose Wahhabi soldiers, rather than Turkish merchants or Moroccan shepherds. Well, okay; but wonderment that the Islamic world doesn't have to be, indeed, populated by Wahhabi zealots seems late and pale.

I may not finish this book. After only one day of reading, I already find myself skipping far forward, dreading wasting too much time with it.

[Ellis Amdur · Rating 4 out of 5]

M.M.K. is a punk Sufi Muslim, at least at last reading, traveling through America by Greyhound Bus, searching down the history and grave of W.D. Fard, the mysterious founder of the Nation of Islam, "building" with the 5% group, distressing the progressives and raging at the rigid conservatives, all the while putting the moves on young ladies in Hijab. A former backyard "pro-wrestler," son of a schizophrenic rapist Nazi, he found Islam as a teen providing something sure and solid, but soon rejected the rigidities of doctrinal fundamentalism as maddening as his crazy father. You will learn about cults you never even heard of, and learn secret histories interspersed among post-adolesecent sulks and soul-searching.  Islam in American is not anything like you imagined.  And if this is what HAPPENS to Islam when it hits American, no wonder the fundamentalists are scared.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this one after his Journey to the End of Islam, and am glad I did so - the other seemed much more "approachable" to me, with this one filling in gaps in the story of Master Fard and the Five Percenters (an obsession of Knight's). These books can be difficult to follow at times, as he uses many Islamic terms (a glossary in the back of this book helps a bit), but he's obvious a bright guy with a lot to say; moreover, his sense of humor does come through amid all the religious talk.

[Ronald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thoroughly captivating, informative, radical read by Michael Knight! As he found his Islamic America by visiting all those areas where the American Muslim movement had major impact. Chicago, Detroit, parts of Cal. and Wash., all contained spots of import to those early leaders in the spread of Islam in the USA! Being a neophyte in the genre', I was fascinated by this wonderful book!

[Yasmin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book took me off-course of my intention of reading all of Knight's books. He devoted a lot of time to the mystery of W.D. Fard to the exclusion of other strains of American Islam, and there were things that he didn't explain that I wish he had. I finished it, some parts were better than others, and I will read other books by him, but maybe not all of them.

[Zack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Catch my review here: http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-83...

and my INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR here: http://www.dscriber.com/home/200-talk...

[Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

While shockingly irreverent at times, Knight explores and reports on little-known aspects of Muslim life and history in America. His fresh and raw voice carries you through each station of his cross-country journey.

[Shazia · Rating 3 out of 5]

So much interesting stuff if you can get over initial disgust of author.

[Hena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Want to know who W.D. Fard was? Who the 'Progressive Muslims' are, or were? Then you might want to check this out.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting, though when he discusses personal details, I'm left hoping for it to get even more personal (as if that were possible).

[Terri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Veramente un bell'intreccio. Fa venire voglia di scrivre, fotocopiare il libro e promuovberlo per il mondo camminando con una borsa sulle spalle.

[Bob Doto · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book chronicling MMK's sufi/Islamic hajj/yantra to uncover the myriad faces of indigenous American Islamic culture. Crass, rough, poignant, punk, personal, inspirational.

[Janie · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is some crazy stuff

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit inside baseball of the author's own obsessions a bit more than I was hoping. Still like his other work at lot though.