Blue-Eyed Devil: A Road Odyssey Through Islamic America

In his quest for an indigenous “American Islam,” Michael Muhammad Knight embarked on a series of interstate odysseys. Traveling 20,000 miles by Greyhound in sixty days, he squatted in run-down mosques, pursued Muslim romance, was detained at the U.S.-Canadian border with a trunkload of Shi’a literature, crashed Islamic Society of North America conventions, stink-palmed Cat Stevens, limped across Chicago to find the grave of Noble Drew Ali, and hunted down the truth of the Nation of Islam mystery-man, W.D. Fard – filling dozens of notebooks along the way. In the course of his adventures Knight sorted out his own relationship to Islam on his journey from punk provocateur to a recognized voice in the community, and watched first-hand the collapse of a liberal Islamic dream, the Progressive Muslim Union. Taking a unique perspective on Islam’s intersection with race, gender, andAmericanization, Blue-Eyed Devil offers a brutally honest but ultimately compassionate look at the long, strange history of American Islam.