Why I Am a Salafi

Anyone who was not familiar with Michael Muhammad Knight’s oeuvreand picked up his Why I Am a Salafi based upon the title, thinking it wouldbe a straightforward explanation and defense of Salafism, would be quicklydisabused of that impression. Knight begins this memoir/theological exploration/postmodern deconstruction with an extended anecdote abouthis experience of praying at a Los Angeles mosque while coming downfrom a drug-induced hallucination brought on by his intentional consumptionof Amazonian ayahuasca tea, and the book gets stranger from there.This transgressive episode of praying while high becomes a touchstone forKnight in his rethinking of his own Muslimness, the origins of the Islamictradition, and his life-journey through a variety of controversial and eccentriccommunities on the fringes of the American Muslim community.In Knight’s previous body of work—from his 2004 novel The Taqwacores(Soft Skull Press) about punk-rocking, countercultural American Muslimsto his insider-white-man narrative of an esoteric offshoot movement of theNation of Islam in Why I Am a Five Percenter (Penguin, 2011)—he has longcast himself as an experimental Muslim writer challenging established traditionsand organized religion of all kinds. Like some of his other books,Why I Am a Salafi is difficult to categorize. Framed around Knight’s odysseywithin American Islam and the diffuse trends that contributed to thedevelopment of his distinct perspective, it is part religious autobiography,part analysis of the nebulous concept of Salafism, and part therapy session.Indeed, drawing upon his well-established tendency toward bucking trendsand upsetting orthodoxies, Knight quips that in the progressive Muslimcircles he tends to run in, labeling himself a Salafi could itself be a form ofrebellion. “Depending on whom you want to irritate, Salafis could look likethe new punk rock” (29) ...