A Muslim just follows Allah. Sunni-Shah? That's Fargo, the groups—Allah discourages this in the Quran, you know, never ever form the groups.

— Michael Muhammad Knight

During his hajj, Malcolm [Malcolm X] fell into a new Islam with the same blind faith that he had given to Elijah. Since he lived just a year after his hajj, Mecca became the neatly presented and cinema-friendly conclusion to his lifelong thread of transformations: but he finally found the Truth and then Allah took him home. But if he lived longer, I think he would have called out the Arabs.

— Michael Muhammad Knight

If Allah wants to send me a message, he'll do so on the faces of my brothers and sisters.

— Michael Muhammad Knight

If a woman enjoyed sex, or expressed her sexuality outwardly she was automatically a slut with no respect for herself. Sex was a favor you allowed your husband, so angels wouldn't curse you until morning.

— Michael Muhammad Knight

If Islam was to be saved, it would be saved by the crazy ones.

— Michael Muhammad Knight

If you ask Muslim women why they cover up, ninety-nine percent of them will say it's to avoid arousing men. Fuck that, where's your self-accountability?

— Michael Muhammad Knight

I'm a spiritual person, she said. "I believe in Allah, you know, though I don't always call It 'Allah' and I pray the way I want to pray. Sometimes I just look out at the stars and this love-fear thing comes over me, you know? And sometimes I might sit in a Christian church listening to them talk about ISA with a book of Hafiz in my hands instead of the hymnal. And you know what, Yusef? Sometimes, every once in a while, I get out my old rug and I pray like Muhammad prayed. I never learned the shit in Arabic and my knees are uncovered, but if Allah has a problem with that then what kind of Allah do we believe in?

— Michael Muhammad Knight

I passed by General Via's tomb and knew that I never would have become Muslim if I was raised in this country [Pakistan]. As a rebellious American adolescent, I had chosen Islam because it was the religion of Malcolm X, a language of resistance against unjust power. But in Pakistan, Islam was the unjust power, or at least part of what kept the machine running. Pakistan's Islam was guilty of everything for which I had rebelled against Reagan-Falwaell Christianity of America.

— Michael Muhammad Knight

I remembered the ceilings of Shah Jamal, the dirty, shirtless renounces with ratty beards and dreads and bare chests covered in necklaces of prayer beads, throwing around their arms in Charlie Manson dances and whipping out their old ID cards to say look, I used to be someone, and now I'm no one, I'm so lost in Allah that I've thrown away the whole world. Would that qualify them as Sufi's? I didn't know how to measure it. Whether the ceilings were Sufi saints or just drugged-out bums didn't really matter. The lesson I took from them was that you're never disqualified from loving Allah, never. And I could see again that what I went through was nothing new, not even anything special in the history of Islam, not a clashing of East and West; it was always there. And that made me feel more Muslim than ever, because fuck it all, CNN, this is Islam too.

— Michael Muhammad Knight

Islam’s all about knowledge, right? Muslims know everything. We seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave. We seek knowledge even if it is in China, Yusef, EVEN IN CHINA! And we’ve reduced our religion to fuckin’ academics. The guy who knows Islam best is the one who really hits the books hard, learns his shit. Muslims brag about having no priests, but we’re getting molested by scholars. Yusef Ali, books are not Allah. Even a book by or from Allah is not Allah.

— Michael Muhammad Knight