Michael Muhammad Knight Quotes

They need a deen that's not your uncle's deen.

Mixture produced the Islam that would need constant protection from mixture.

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

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.

The jamaat was an almost silly mish-mash of people: Rude Dawud's pork-pie hat poking up here, a jalab-and-turban there, Jehangir's big Mohawk rising from a sea of kufis, Amazing Ayyub still with no shirt, girls scattered throughout – some in hejab, some not and Rabeya in punk-patched burqa doing her thing. But in its randomness it was gorgeous, reflecting an Islam I felt could not happen anywhere else ... If Islam was to be saved, it would be saved by the crazy ones: Jehangir and Rabeya and Fasiq and Dawud and Ayyub and even Umar.

In Pakistan both branches [of the Ahmadis] fell to persecutions, sanction by the state in 1984 with General Zia Ul-Haq's Ordinance XX, which forbade Ahmadis of either branch from calling themselves Muslims, their religion Islam, or their temples mosques. Under penalty of law, they could not perform the call to pryaer, pray in the manner of Muslims, quote the Qur'an or hadith, greet each other with "as-salamu alaikum," or receite the shahadah ... In the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, it was illegal for some people to say, "There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his Messenger.

Religion is like an art gallery. One painting will speak to you more than another, and there's no need to explain or defend your taste.

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?

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?

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

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