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Michael Muhammad Knight - William S. Burroughs vs. The Quran

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When Michael Muhammad Knight sets out to write the definitive biography of his Anarcho-Sufi hero and mentor, writer Peter Lamborn Wilson (aka Hakim Bey), he makes a startling discovery that changes everything. At the same time that he grows disillusioned with his idol, Knight finds that his own books have led to American Muslim youths making a countercultural idol of him, placing him on the same pedestal that he had given Wilson.
In an attempt to forge his own path, Knight pledges himself to an Iranian Sufi order that Wilson had almost joined, attempts to write the Great American Queer Islamo-Futurist Novel, and even creates his own mosque in the wilderness of West Virginia. He also employs the cut-up writing method of Beys friend, the late William S. Burroughs, to the Quran, subjecting Islams holiest scripture to literary experimentation.
William S. Burroughs vs. the Quran is the struggle of a hero-worshiper without heroes and the meeting of religious and artistic paths, the quest of a writer as spiritual seeker.

Michael Muhammad Knight: author's other books


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Table of Contents
Guide
Table of Contents Other books by Michael Muhammad Knight The Taqwacores - photo 1
Table of Contents Other books by Michael Muhammad Knight The Taqwacores - photo 2
Table of Contents

Other books by Michael Muhammad Knight

The Taqwacores
Blue-Eyed Devil
The Five Percenters
Osama Van Halen
Impossible Man
Journey to the End of Islam
Why I Am a Five Percenter
for sons It is an established fact that one of the men of the Path has said - photo 3
for sons
It is an established fact that one of the men of the Path has said: Whoever wishes to see three hundred men in one man has only to look at me, for I have followed three hundred teachers and from each of them I have derived a quality.
Ibn Arabi

So, is Mike Knight a follower of Louis Farrakhan?
Jello Biafra
Book 1
VISIONS OF THE ANTI-CALIPH
Anything can be an allegory for the path, even bestiality. Rumi, the greatest poet-saint of the Islamic tradition, the Sufi whose work gets called the Quran in Persian, wrote about a slave girl who fucked a donkey. She placed a gourd on the donkeys penis to keep it from going in all the way. The slave girls mistress, however, tried to take on the same donkey without using the gourd, and the donkey went balls-deep and killed her. Everyone loves Rumi today, but those parts of the Mathnawi get skipped. V:13331429, if you want to look it up.
You could interpret the verses as a warning against unrestrained sexual indulgence, but with these Sufi poets theres always a deeper meaning, and Rumi was on some real science. The donkey cock doesnt always have to be a donkey cock.
Sometimes at a reading, Ill pull out Rumis donkey verses scribbled on a folded-up sheet of notebook paper.
And now, I say, a poem.
Out of joy the womans vagina became a nightingale restless and enflamed with lust for the donkey.... That woman closed the door and dragged in the donkey; happily, of necessity she tasted the punishment.... The donkey had become well-trained; it pressed into the mistress up to the testicles, the mistress died immediately. Her liver was torn from the injury of the donkeys penis, the intestines were torn one from the other.
Assuming the words are mine, everyone gets awful looks on their faces and theyre easy enough to decode. Muslims who dont like me have all the proof they need: to write such a poem while claiming the blessed name Muhammad, theyre sure, constitutes an act of violence against Islam. Muslims who do like me are disappointed, and women on both sides (and non-Muslims) wonder what other porkshits in my head if Ive got creep style like this. Across the board, the audience has tagged me as an immature scumbag trying to get a reaction.
Then I tell them who wrote it, the great master Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, yes, that Rumi, and they dont know what to do. They cant match it to the Rumi who wrote, I am the servant of the Quran as long as I have life; I am the dust on the path of Muhammad, the Chosen One, nor can it work with Rumi as non-Muslims read him, the New Age Rumi who plays with energy crystals and dream catchers and chills with Buddha. It certainly doesnt match anyones idea of Islam, or what Islam can be, how Muslims can look and sound.
Theres always at least one Muslim kid who comes up after my reading and thanks me for the Rumi, really thanks me like I had gone to the bottom of the ocean and rescued this treasure just for her. Not that these kids want to have sex with donkeys or even write about sex with donkeys. In fact, thats the whole point: these poor confused ones with their little transgressions and doubts and strange ideas think that theyre such failures as Muslims and it breaks their hearts, but then immortal Rumi shows up with farm porn and puts things in perspective. Rumis donkey show detonates the chart against which theyve measured themselves. Sometimes its the only thing that I can offer, but I do think it helps.
The old writer and the young writer, together in a car at night, the old writer going on about his travels. Its not like the 1960s, he mourns for the young writers sake, no more of his golden day when you could just stumble across the PakistanIran border with long matted hair and strung out on opium, declaring your intention to study Sufism.
The young writer glances over to catch a quick look before they pass the lights and it becomes dark again. The old writers white beard reaches out in geometric sturdiness, but frays at the end as rebellious hairs escape its authority. The young writer cant remember how he imagined the old writer before meeting him. He expected the long white beard, and probably the red Tunisian skullcap too. Maybe not the knee-high rubber galoshes or the droopy eyes.
Tell me about Libya, I ask, my eyes on the road.
What do you want to know about Libya?
You went to a conference there in the nineties. You were presenting a paper on what you called the presence of neo-Sufism in Qadhafis Green Book.
Howd you hear about that? asks the old writer.
Someone put your paper online. As soon as I let out the words, I know that its bad news for him. Peter sighs.
I wish I could just take a hammer and smash the Internet, he says. But he does tell me about Libya, and then our conversation goes back to the 60s. The emerging postcolonial world was crowded with American hippies blowing their trust funds on mystical quests, and of course he was one of them, but it couldnt be like that today.
Were heading out of the city, following I-87 into New Yorks vast wilderness called upstate. It feels like Ive rescued him. The old writer insists that his reading was a failure; sandbagged by obscure references and overdeveloped vocabulary, his poems couldnt fly. I try to reassure him: at least the room of white male anarchists and Islamophiles, the usual Peter Lamborn Wilson audience, took interest in his political thought. Whats your take on 9/11? one had asked. While making it clear that he did not approve of mass murder, Peter called the attack a brilliant piece of artwork. Another wanted to know what Peter thought of Islam as an alternative to capitalism. Peter snapped back, What, you think Muslims dont like money?
Just the two of us in my car, Peter laughs at that dumb white-man dualism of Spiritual East vs. Material West, though were both white men who have been guilty of it at some time. Its a dangerous trip for the seeker, he warns; but he also advises me not to throw out the Oriental baby with the Orientalist bathwater.
I have to remind myself that Im not just another Peter Lamborn Wilson groupie. If I ever was, Id like to think that my position has changed. Im the one who helps him with his coat and drives him home, the one who gets to see his life outside the city. They all imagine him in a castle fortress like Alamut, but Ive seen his home on the edge of a college town, just before the point at which Main Street becomes a dark country road.
He lives in a weathered house, maintained with family money that keeps him independently poor. We arrive shortly after midnight, just as hes starting to tell me about Libya. The front yard is dead, buried under a permanent blanket of matted leaves. He opens the door and I take in the smells of stale marijuana smoke, stale body odor, stale masturbation, and stale books, crowded shelves of musty manuscripts with yellowing pages. The first thing I see is the flag on his wall, the pre-revolutionary American dont tread on me with the coiling snake. The flag overlooks a religious syncretists trophy room: paintings of blue-skinned Hindu gods, statues of dog-headed Egyptian gods, Javanese shadow puppets, a leather-bound Quran, and a faded photograph of a black man in a turban and sash, his right hand on his heart. Standing up straight, his elbow perpendicular to his torso, his body forms the shape of a seven, but youd only notice it if you already knew what hes doing and what it means. Im one of the people who know.
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