APPENDICES
BIOGRAPHY OF MICHAEL MUHAMMAD KNIGHT
Michael Muhammad Knight (born 1977) is an American novelist, essayist, and journalist.
His writings are popular among American Muslim youth. Within the American Muslim community, he has earned a reputation as an ostentatious cultural provocateur. He obtained a master's degree from Harvard University in 2011 and is a Ph.D. student in Islamic studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
came close to making the decision to abandon this course of study to join the war against Russian rule in Chechnya. On August 2, 2009, he married Sadaf Khatri in San Jose, California.
NOVEL THE TAQWACORES
After disillusionment with orthodox Islam, Knight wrote two books, Where Mullahs Fear to Tread and The Furious Cock, which he printed as xeroxed zines. In winter 2002 he wrote The Taqwacores, which told the story of a fictitious group of Muslim punk-rockers living in Buffalo, New York. Characters included a Straight edge Sunni Muslim, a drunken mohawk-wearing Sufi punk, a burqa-wearing riot grrrl and a Shi'a skinhead.
Knight originally self-published the novel in a spiral-bound, xeroxed form and gave away copies for free. The book was later picked up for distribution by Alternative Tentacles, the punk record label founded by Jello Biafra. An encounter with Peter Lamborn Wilson led to The Taqwacores being published by Autonomedia in 2004.
start of an actual taqwacore scene, including bands such as the Kominas, Vote Hezbollah, and Secret Trial Five. Carl Ernst, specialist in Islamic studies at UNC, called The Taqwacores a “Catcher in the Rye for young Muslims”. The novel has been taught in courses at Kenyon College, Vassar College, University of Arkansas-Fayetteville, Trinity College, Sarah Lawrence College, Canisius College, Indiana University, and the Ohio State University.
The Taqwacores’ burqa-wearing riot girl, Rabeya, and her dialogue from the novel has been adapted in the Rapture Project, an ongoing puppet show regarding religion in American culture and politics. Rabeya, who in one passage of The Taqwacores gives a Friday sermon and leads the mixed gender group in prayer, also influenced author Asra Nomani to organize a mixed gender prayer held March 18, 2005, in New York and led by Qur'an scholar Dr. Amina Wadud in support of women as imams. Knight worked security at the Wadud prayer.
The Taqwacores opens with the poem “Muhammad was a Punk Rocker”. The Taqwacores quickly spread underground among young Muslim Punks and other misfits caught
