Michael Muhammad Knight

Knight's fascination with Fard led him to research the Five-Percent Nation or "Nation of Gods and Earths", a movement that broke from the Nation of Islam in 1964.

After spending time with the movement's white elder, Azreal, Knight was given the name Azreal Wisdom; in the Five Percenters' system of Supreme Mathematics, it means Azreal Two.

Knight wrote the first ethnography of the movement, The Five Percenters: Islam, Hip-hop and the Gods of New York (Oneworld Publications).

An excerpt from the book appears in the 90-page booklet included with The 5% Album by Lord Jamar of Brand Nubian, which also features members of Wu-Tang Clan such as the RZA and GZA.

Michael Muhammad Knight (born 1977) is a white American novelist, essayist, journalist, and convert to Islam.

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.

In Winter 2002 he wrote The Taqwacores, which told the story of a fictitious group of Muslim punk-rockers living in Buffalo, New York.

Characters included a straight edge Sunni, a drunken mohawk-wearing Sufi punk, a burqa-wearing riot grrrl and a Shi'i skinhead.

Knight originally self-published the novel as a spiral-bound photocopy and gave it away for free.

The book was later picked up for distribution by Alternative Tentacles, the punk record label founded by Jello Biafra.

An encounter with Peter Lamborn Wilson led to The Taqwacores being published by Autonomedia in 2004.

The Taqwacores was intended as Knight's farewell to Islam, but encouragement from readers caused Knight to reconsider his relationship to the faith.

The novel has since inspired the start of an actual taqwacore scene, including bands such as the Kominas, Vote Hezbollah, and Secret Trial Five.

Carl W. Ernst, specialist in Islamic studies at UNC, called The Taqwacores a "Catcher in the Rye for young Muslims."

The novel has been taught in courses at SUNY Potsdam, Kenyon College, Vassar College, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, Trinity College, Sarah Lawrence College, Canisius College, New College of Florida, Indiana University, Michigan State University, and the Ohio State University.

The Taqwacores' burqa-wearing riot grrrl, Rabeya, and her dialogue from the novel has been adapted in the Rapture Project, an ongoing puppet show regarding religion in American culture and politics.

Rabeya, who in one passage of The Taqwacores gives a Friday sermon and leads the mixed-gender group in prayer, also influenced author Asra Nomani to organize a mixed-gender Jumu'ah held March 18, 2005, in New York and led by Quran scholar Dr. Amina Wadud in support of women as imams.

Knight worked security for that Jumu'ah.

Knight's travel writing for Muslim WakeUp!

led him to write Blue-Eyed Devil: an American Muslim Road Odyssey, in which he traveled over 20,000 miles by Greyhound bus in 60 days, searching for a true American Islam.

Andrei Codrescu hailed the work as "today's On the Road ... pertinent and suspenseful, a mystery rendered in brilliant detail and gorgeous depth ... a masterpiece."

In the book Knight attempts to uncover the true identity of W. D. Fard, the mysterious founder of the Nation of Islam, who was believed by that movement to be Allah in person.

Blue-Eyed Devil also contains narratives of Knight's encounters with various figures of North American Islam, such as Irshad Manji, Asra Nomani, and the Hasan family, founders of Muslims for Bush.

Knight describes his experience as a member of the original board of directors of the Progressive Muslim Union (PMU) and his disillusionment with the Progressive Islam movement.

In Blue-Eyed Devil, he claims that PMU considered an alliance with Manji, which he witnessed while having dinner with Manji and PMU founder Ahmed Nassef.

Knight left PMU in 2005.

While maintaining a blog at ProgressiveIslam.Org, he continued to reject the term "Progressive Muslim."

On August 2, 2009, he married Sadaf Khatri in San Jose, California.

After disillusionment with orthodox Islam, Knight wrote two books, Where Mullahs Fear to Tread and The Furious Cock, which he printed as photocopied zines.

He obtained a Master of Theological Studies degree from Harvard University in 2011 and received his Ph.D. in Islamic studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2016.

Knight is currently assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Central Florida.

Knight grew up in Geneva, New York, raised by his mother in a Catholic family of Irish descent.

Knight's first exposure to Islam came when he was 13 when he discovered Malcolm X through the lyrics of the hip-hop band, Public Enemy.

After reading Alex Haley's The Autobiography of Malcolm X at 15, Knight's study of Islam intensified and he converted to Islam.

It was also at 15 that Knight met his father, Wesley Unger, for the first time since he was two years old; when Knight informed Unger that he was Muslim, Unger told Knight that he was a white supremacist.

At 17, Knight traveled to Islamabad, Pakistan, to study Islam at Faisal Mosque.

He came close to making the decision to abandon this course of study to join the war against Russian rule in Chechnya.