Kirjahaku

"More than a survey of the prophet's life and times, this book is an introduction to the stunning diversity of Islam and the ways in which Muslims think, dream, and make Muhammad into their very own prophet." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) He ranks among the most venerated historical figures in the world, as well as among the most contested. Muhammad: Forty Introductions offers a distinct and nuanced take on the life and teachings of the prophet Muhammad, using a traditional genre of Islamic literature called the forty hadiths collection. Hadiths are the reported sayings and actions of Muhammad that have been collected by the tens of thousands throughout Islamic history. There is a tradition in which Muslim scholars take from this vast textual ocean to compile their own smaller collections of forty hadiths, an act of curation that allows them to present their particular understanding of Muhammad's legacy and the essential points of Islam. Here, Michael Muhammad Knight offers forty narrations that provide windows into the diverse ways in which Muslims envision Muhammad. He also examines his own relationship to Muslim traditions while exploring such topics as law, mysticism, sectarianism, gender, and sexuality. By revealing the Prophet to be an ongoing construction, he carefully unravels notions about Islam's center and margins.

The Salafi movement invests supreme Islamic authority in the precedents of the Salaf, the first three generations of Muslims, who represent a "Golden Age" from which all subsequent eras can only decline. In Why I Am a Salafi, Michael Muhammad Knight confronts the problem of origins, questioning the possibility of accessing pure Islam through its canonical texts. Why I Am a Salafi is also a confrontation of Knight's own origins as a Muslim. Reconsidering Salafism, Knight explores the historical processes that informed Islam as he once knew it, having converted to a Salafi vision of Islam in 1994. In the decades since, he has drifted away from Salafism in favor of an alternative Islam that celebrates the freaks, misfits, and heretical innovators. What happens to Islam when everything's up for grabs, and can an anything-goes Islam allow space for reputedly intolerant Salafism? In Why I Am a Salafi, Knight explores not only Salafism's valorization of the origins, but takes the Salafi project further than its advocates are willing to go, and reflects upon the consequences of surrendering the origins forever.

Sensationalized and reviled as the Hell's Angels of black America, the Five Percenters (also known as the Nation of Gods and Earths) began as a cluster of outcasts from the Nation of Islam's Harlem mosque in the 1960s. Led by a man named "Allah," Five Percenters taught the city's black youth that they were gods. From their marginalized beginnings, the Five Percenters' history has been charged with drama, spanning the war between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, the Attic a prison revolt, Brooklyn turf gangs and 1980s crack empires, and now count high profile hip-hop stars among their adherents. With unrivalled insider access to the movement's elders, oral tradition and community literature, Knight reveals the hidden reality behind the myths, rumours and hearsay, and explores the origins and development of this misunderstood community.