Why I Am a Salafi by Michael Muhammad Knight

Author:Michael Muhammad Knight
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781619026315
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2018-04-27T00:00:00+00:00

7

I WAS A TEENAGE ISLAMIST

Does the order of books determine the order of things? What kind of history of oneself and one’s times is coded in the collecting of books?— Homi K. Bhabha1

IN 1966, MARSHALL McLUHAN had predicted that xerography would destroy authorship and readership as we knew them, enabling anyone to “take a book apart, insert parts of other books and other materials of his own interest, and make his own book in a relatively fast time.”2 This is what we do with our books, with or without the physical acts of cutting or reproducing words. We take our books apart and reassemble them into new things.

It’s not enough to say that in 1994, I converted to Islam, because I no longer believe that “Islam” exists as a category that can meaningfully explain what happened to me. Instead, I’ll put it this way: I gradually absorbed some books into myself, and from this assortment of claims, I pulled something together and called it “Islam.” I won my religion in a scratch-off lottery; my books lined up a certain way, producing a particular construction of Islam in their relations to each other. Change the ingredients of my pile—take one book out, put another in—and Islam might not have taken the form in which I came to know it.

My self-awareness as a Muslim began with those books. What does it mean, then, to be a Salaf? Perhaps doing like Yoda says, unlearning what you have learned, even if what you have learned would itself be called “Salaf” in some circles. Recognize the arbitrary and random nature of your own accumulated “Islam” and go about unpacking your library. Once you see what you’ve been reacting to, maybe you can start over.

Here are twelve books that I read early in the journey, examined in the order that I originally read them, that contributed to this thing that I would name Islam. They were not the only books that I read during that time, but they were the ones that I remember providing the most awesome crises and exhilarations of a young mind being ripped up and reassembled. The older you get, the harder it gets for books to do that kind of thing. I am now twenty years older, have read many, many more books, acquired some critical reading skills that no one cared to give me in high school, and can now put up my guard against authors in ways that were impossible for me at fifteen. The younger me had no idea what he was getting into, and I feel for the kid. To retrace my steps as a Muslim, I reread these books. In a few cases, I still have the same copies that I had read as a teenager, and the creases and smells and dated aesthetics almost put me back into an old head.

MALCOLM X (AS TOLD TO ALEX HALEY), THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MALCOLM X

In the 1940s, a prisoner named Malcolm Little embraced Islam under the teachings of Elijah Muhammad and was renamed Malcolm X.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.