Michael Muhammad Knight
From Silvers
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Michael Muhammad Knight is a fiction and non-fiction writer. Knight self-published his first novel Taqwacores at Kinko's and gave it away out of the back of his car around Binghamton campus. Word about the novel spread and Jello Biafra's label Alternative Tentacles picked it up for distrubution. The novel is now published by the subversive press Autonomedia. Knight's second book, entitled Blue-Eyed Devil, will be released by Autonomedia in the Spring of 2006. Blue-Eyed Devil is a non-fiction exploration of American Muslim identity written over one summer wandering the states in Greyhound Buses and his now collapsed Buick Skylark. Knight's essays, short fiction, and accounts of his anti-establishment pranks--stink-palming Imam Siraj Wahhaj and Yusef Islam as well as challenging Ibrahim Hooper to a wrestling match--have been published in numerous web-zines, most notably "Muslim Wake Up!."
Read Michael Muhammad Knight's weblog
"Bleeding for the Imam: Heartbreak and Catharsis in Muharram"
“I shall cry blood for you instead of tears.” --Imam Mahdi
First off, the whole thing has left me too tired for Shi’a/Sunni hadith-tossing contests over whether self-injurious behavior has any place in Islam. Besides, that’s a religious question and this wasn’t completely about religion. Part of me just wanted to soak in some deliberate heartbreak, manifested through a man that happened to be Prophet Muhammad’s grandson. And part of me wanted to bleed again, because it had been a long time and I almost missed it
