Michael Muhammad Knight

Michael Muhammad Knight (born 1977) is an American novelist, essayist, and journalist. His writings are popular among American Muslim youth. The San Francisco Chronicle described him as "one of the most necessary and, paradoxically enough, hopeful writers of Barack Obama's America," while The Guardian has described him as "the Hunter S. Thompson of Islamic literature," and his non-fiction work exemplifies the principles of gonzo journalism.Publishers Weekly describes him as "Islam's gonzo experimentalist." Within the American Muslim community, he has earned a reputation as an ostentatious cultural .

He obtained a Master of Theological Studies degree from Harvard University in 2011 and received his Ph.D. in Islamic studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2016.

Knight's father, Wesley Unger, was the thirteenth of twenty children born to a Pentecostal preacher in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia. A participant in outlaw motorcycle club culture, Unger was mentally ill and abusive, causing Knight's mother to escape with him when Knight was two years old. Knight grew up in Geneva, New York, raised by his mother in a Roman Catholic family of Irish descent. Knight's first exposure to Islam came when he was 13 when he discovered Malcolm X through the lyrics of the hip-hop band, Public Enemy. After reading Alex Haley's Autobiography of Malcolm X at 15, Knight's study of Islam intensified and he converted to Islam. It was also at 15 that Knight met his father for the first time since he was two years old; when Knight informed Unger that he was Muslim, Unger told Knight that he was a white supremacist. At 17 Knight traveled to Islamabad, Pakistan, to study Islam at Faisal Mosque. He came close to making the decision to abandon this course of study to join the war against Russian rule in Chechnya.

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