Michael Muhammad Knight’s Muhammad: Forty Introductions asks two questions at the same time \u2014 or asks the same two questions 40 times.<\/p>\n
One is explicit: How should we think about the prophet Muhammad? The other is implicit, but barely. How, Knight asks in each chapter, should I write an introduction? Or how do I decide where to start? How do I decide who to be?<\/p>\n
That question is key to Knight’s work. A convert to Islam, he has long written from \u2014 and for \u2014 the social and scholarly margins. His literary debut, a self-published punk novel called The Taqwacores, has become a cult classic. He’s now a scholar and professor, and has written nonfiction about the Five-Percent Nation, Salafism, and meeting Muhammad’s daughter while tripping on ayahuasca.<\/p>\n
In Muhammad, Knight draws from his massive variety of experiences. He listens to canonical voices and marginalized ones, studies traditions from across Islam, cites both Deleuze and Star Wars. Muhammad is as intellectually diverse as a book can get….<\/p>\n
Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n Michael Muhammad Knight’s new book, “Muhammad: Forty Introductions,” is designed to seduce, educate, and irritate its audience into curiosity about Islam and Muhammad \u2014 and on all three fronts it succeeds.https:\/\/t.co\/ilHoZS9dIP<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 NPR (@NPR) January 15, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n