Blue-Eyed Devil: A Road Odyssey Through Islamic America

Book Summary

In his quest for an indigenous American Islam, Michael Muhammad Knight embarks on a series of interstate odysseys. Traveling 20,000 miles by Greyhound in sixty days, he squats in run-down mosques, pursues Muslim romance, is detained at the U.S.-Canadian border with a trunkload of Shia literature, crashes Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) conventions, stink-palms Cat Stevens, limps across Chicago to find the grave of Noble Drew Ali, and hunts down the truth of the Nation of Islam mystery-man, W.D. Fard filling dozens of notebooks along the way. The result is this semi-autobiographical book, with multiple histories of Fard and the landscape of American Islam woven into Knights own story. In the course of his adventures Knight sorts out his own relationship to Islam as he journeys from punk provocateur to a recognized voice in the community, and watches first-hand the collapse of a liberal Islamic dream. The books extensive cast of characters includes anarcho-Sufi heretics, vegan kung-fu punks, tattoo-sleeved converts in hardcore bands, spiritual drug dealers, Islamic feminists, slick media entrepreneurs, sages of the street, the grandsons of Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, and a group called Muslims for Bush. With its journalistic approach to Islams intersection with race, gender, and Americanization, "Blue-Eyed Devil" offers a brutally honest but ultimately compassionate look at the marginal underground of Islamic America.

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