Muhammad's second chapter, "Punk Rock and Bedouin Piss," is a perfect bit of religious memoir, introducing readers both to Muhammad and Knight through a hadith in which the prophet shows mercy to a Bedouin who pees in the mosque. Knight is nearly as good when he writes specifically as a believer. Knight may not be confident he's gotten it right, but his chapter about trying is honest, rigorous, and empathic - the most we can ask from a teacher, or a writer. As a result, teaching A'isha's life becomes a massive challenge. Knight refuses to allow that line of argument in his classroom, but he's a committed feminist and wants to talk about sexual consent. Islamophobes often take advantage of this story to "demonstrate" some essential wrongness in Islam. In "The A'isha Question," he wrestles with how best to teach the story of Muhammad's marriage to A'isha, which took place when she was six and was consummated when she was nine. Muhammad's best chapters are the ones in which Knight not only writes as a professor, but writes about being one. It's easy to imagine a classroom of rapt students writing it down. "When it comes to Muhammad," he writes, "we might lose hope of answering our question 'Who was the person?' but still ask, 'What was the event?'" The shift is a classic pedagogical tool, and an effective one. He's superb at providing frameworks to fit new ideas in, and at helping readers reassess old ones. He is scholarly but never dry, learned but never a show-off. When Knight is in professor mode, Muhammad is perfect. ![]() (Hadith are the narrative record of the sayings and doings of Muhammad and his companions.) Islamic literary history and pedagogy are filled with arba'in - why not write his own, offering forty introductions to the prophet? ![]() He turned to the tradition of the arba'in, or forty-hadith collection. One introduction to Muhammad wasn't close to enough for Knight as a professor, or as a believer. Should he introduce his students to Muhammad the military hero? The holy man? Muhammad as oral tradition? While planning a college seminar designed to introduce primarily non-Muslim students to Muhammad, Knight grew frustrated by how many versions of the prophet he had to leave out. Still, it's worth noting that Muhammad began in a Religious Studies department. Muhammad is as intellectually diverse as a book can get. He listens to canonical voices and marginalized ones, studies traditions from across Islam, cites both Deleuze and Star Wars. In Muhammad, Knight draws from his massive variety of experiences. He's now a scholar and professor, and has written nonfiction about the Five-Percent Nation, Salafism, and meeting Muhammad's daughter while tripping on ayahuasca. His literary debut, a self-published punk novel called The Taqwacores, has become a cult classic. A convert to Islam, he has long written from - and for - the social and scholarly margins. ![]() How, Knight asks in each chapter, should I write an introduction? Or how do I decide where to start? How do I decide who to be? One is explicit: How should we think about the prophet Muhammad? The other is implicit, but barely. Michael Muhammad Knight's Muhammad: Forty Introductions asks two questions at the same time - or asks the same two questions 40 times.
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