Synopses & Reviews
Cultural Writing. Biography and memoir. In his quest for an indigenous "American Islam," Michael Muhammad Knight embarked on a series of interstate odysseys. Traveling 20,000 miles by Greyhound in sixty days, he squatted in run-down mosques, was detained at the U.S.-Canadian border with a trunkload of Shi'a literature, crashed Islamic Society of North America conventions, and hunted down the truth of the Nation of Islam mystery-man, W.D. Fard. In the course of his adventures Knight sorted out his own relationship to Islam on his journey from punk provocateur to a recognized voice in the community, and watched first-hand the collapse of a liberal Islamic dream, the Progressive Muslim Union. Taking a unique perspective on Islam's intersection with race, gender, and Americanization, BLUE-EYED DEVIL offers a brutally honest but ultimately compassionate look at the marginal underground of Islamic America.
Review
"Drawing upon his extensive network of personal and political contacts and his unique understanding of the connections between persons, organizations, and events (too often viewed in isolation), Ahmad has made a significant contribution toward deepening our understanding of a period whose complexities might otherwise be lost to future generations." [John Bracey]
Synopsis
Memoir of a heretic's journeys in the American Muslim underground.
Synopsis
Dr. Muhammad Ahmad was national field chairman of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) during the mid-60s and found of the African People's Party in the 1970s. He has worked closely with Malcolm X, Jesse Gray, Amiri Baraka, Stokely Carmichael, James and Grace Lee Boggs, James Forman, Robert and Mabel Williams, and Queen Mother Audley Moore, among others, in founding and carrying out various Black liberation projects and organizations. Who better then, to pen a major assessment of some of the most important Black radical organizations of the 60s. Here is a study of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Black Panther Party (BPP), the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW), that only he could have done.
About the Author
Michael Muhammad Knight (born 1977) is an American novelist, writer, and journalist. His writings are popular among American Muslim youth. Within the American Muslim community, he has created a reputation as an ostentatious cultural provocateur. Of Irish descent and raised in the Roman Catholic religion, 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 Autobiography of Malcolm X at 15, Knight's study of Islam intensified and he converted to Islam. At 17 he traveled to Islamabad, Pakistan, to study Islam at Faisal Mosque. He came close to making the decision to abandon this course of study to participate in the guerilla war against Russian rule in Chechnya.