In Journey to the End of Islam, Michael Muhammad Knight—whose work has led to him being hailed as both the Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson of American Islam—wanders through Muslim countries, navigating between conflicting visions of his religion. Visiting holy sites in Pakistan, Syria, Egypt, and Ethiopia, Knight engages both the puritanical Islam promoted by Saudi globalization and the heretical strands of popular folk Islam: shrines, magic, music, and drugs. The conflict of “global” and “local” Islam speaks to Knight’s own experience approaching the Islamic world as a uniquely American Muslim with his own sources: the modern mythologies of the Nation of Islam and Five Percenters, as well as the arguments of Progressive Muslim thinkers for feminism and reform.
Knight’s travels conclude at Islam’s spiritual center, the holy city of Mecca, where he performs the hajj required of every Muslim. During the rites of pilgrimage, he watches as all variations of Islam converge in one place, under the supervision of Saudi Arabia’s religious police. What results is a struggle to separate the spiritual from the political, Knight searching for a personal relationship to Islam in the context of how it is defined by the external world.

Michael Muhammad Knight is a novelist, essayist, and journalist. He converted to Islam at 16, after reading the Autobiography of Malcolm X, and traveled to Islamabad at age 17 to study at a madrassa. His first novel, "The Taqwacores," told the story of a fictitious scene of Islamic punk-rockers, and inspired the real-life Muslim punk movement which currently shares their name. With his deeply personal memoir "Impossible Man," and forthcoming novel "Osama Van Halen" Knight explores through his own experiences the unique realities of being an American Muslim. His books have been taught at numerous universities, and he is a frequent speaker at colleges and academic conferences. Knight is also the subject of a forthcoming documentary, directed by Omar Majeed, on the "Taqwacore" movement spawned by his first novel.

From Part Two, "Al-Hajj Azreal Wisdom: my hajj"


They put us four in a room. The two beds were claimed by Junaid, a computer programmer in his early 20s, and a brother in his fifties who hated on everything, so I called him Hater Uncle. They were both Pakistanis. The hotel staff brought two cots for myself and a Bengali uncle who snored.
“Uncle,” I said softly, but couldn’t bring myself to wake him up. We’re in Mecca, I reminded myself, don’t be a dick. I tried pulling the blanket over my head and squeezing the pillow around my ears, but he was too loud and close, our cots touching. I got up a few times and paced around. Junaid was asleep. Hater Uncle was out somewhere, maybe at the Haram because it was mid-afternoon and not long before Asr prayer.
Tried to cool out by reading some pious literature about the history of Zamzam. The well had apparently been buried for several generations of the pre-Islamic era, only to be uncovered by Abdul-Muttalib, grandfather of the Prophet and Ali. When digging up Zamzam, he also discovered two golden gazelles buried in the well by the Jurhum, an ancient tribe. The Jurhum were first drawn to the area shortly after God’s rescue of Hajar and Ishmael; while traveling in the valley, they spotted birds overhead and knew that they must have been near water. The Jurhum went to Hajar, who permitted them to stay; they gave Ishmael seven goats and he married one of their women, who bore him twelve sons.
After Ishmael’s death, he was succeeded by his half-Jurhum son, Nabat; but in later generations, the Ishmael line was supplanted by its Jurhum cousins, who soon broke their trust with Allah. The Jurhum introduced idol worship to the Haram, horded wealth and mistreated pilgrims. If people in the Jurhum era couldn’t find a place to fornicate, they just did it in the Ka’ba; among them were ‘Isaf and Na’ila, who turned to stone and became the idols that once stood on the two hills.
We had varied explanations for the demise of the Jurhum. The Muslim historian al-Tabari said that Allah removed them from the earth with a plague of ants and nosebleeds; Ibn Ishaq said that another tribe overtook them. For whatever calamity marked the sunset of his tribe, a Jurhum named Amr ibn al-Harith buried the treasures of the Ka’ba, the two gazelles.
The uncovering of Abraham’s well and its pagan treasure reminded us that Muhammad’s grandfather, descended from Ishmael and a Jurhum woman, carried that conflicting history within him. And passed it on to his seeds.

**

Lying flat on my back, staring up at the ceiling, I focused all of my psychic energy on each snore, trying hard not to snap. Then I rolled over and stared at him. He looked like a dead man with his eyes closed and mouth wide open. Why was I annoyed? A snore was breath, snores meant that my old uncle was alive. Snoring praised Allah like the chirping of birds, so I made his snores into a zikr. Every time the air went in loud, I said subhanahu Allah. I managed to fall asleep like that, until Hater Uncle came back and woke us all up for prayer.
Hater Uncle had gone shopping and told us his stories. When he asked an alley merchant if he sold sim cards, the guy answered, “I have everything” and then offered him weed.
“Weed?” scoffed Junaid, either amused or disappointed, I didn’t know him well enough to tell. “They have weed in Mecca?”
“People are people,” I said.
“That’s crazy.”
“It grows wild in Pakistan,” I told him. “I saw it along the road.”
“Really?”
“Uncle,” I said, turning to Hater Uncle. “You ever hear of bhang?”
“Sure,” Hater Uncle replied, grinning and shaking his head. “We used to put it in the tea. Just a little bit, but it was so good.”
“So you bought a sim card, uncle?”
“Yes, if you need I will go with you, I know where to go to get the deal. But do not buy from the Bengalis, they rip you off.”
“Uncle,” I said, pointing with my eyes and a sideways nod to the Bengali in the room. But he didn’t get it.
“The Bengalis are thieves,” he added. The Bengali uncle didn’t say anything.
Keeping it optimistic, I recalled my own words. People are people. Even in Mecca. If pilgrims were better than human, I wouldn’t belong here.