{"author":"Michael Muhammad Knight","author_id":"Michael+Muhammad+Knight","total_quotes":18,"quotes":[{"text":"I'm a spiritual person, she said. 'I believe in Allah, you know, though I don't always call It 'Allah' and I pray the way I want to pray. Sometimes I just look out at the stars and this love-fear thing comes over me, you know? And sometimes I might sit in a Christian church listening to them talk about Isa with a book of Hafiz in my hands instead of the hymnal. And you know what, Yusef? Sometimes, every once in a while, I get out my old rug and I pray like Muhammad prayed. I never learned the shit in Arabic and my knees are uncovered, but if Allah has a problem with that then what kind of Allah do we believe in?","author":"Michael Muhammad Knight","tags":["allah","church","hafiz","islam","liberalism","muslim","prophet-muhammad-pbuh","spirituality"],"id":5407,"author_id":"Michael+Muhammad+Knight"},{"text":"You know,” said Jehangir, breaking the silence, “it's only Muslims who use the term 'innovation' to mean something bad.","author":"Michael Muhammad Knight","tags":["bidah","extremism","fundamentalism","islam","religion"],"id":21201,"author_id":"Michael+Muhammad+Knight"},{"text":"Islam’s all about knowledge, right? Muslims know everything. We seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave. We seek knowledge even if it be in China, Yusef, EVEN IN CHINA! And we’ve reduced our religion to fuckin’ academics. The guy who knows Islam best is the one who really hits the books hard, learns his shit. Muslims brag about having no priests but we’re getting molested by scholars. Yusef Ali, books are not Allah. Even a book by or from Allah is not Allah.","author":"Michael Muhammad Knight","tags":["allah","islam","muslim","priest","quran","scholar"],"id":61722,"author_id":"Michael+Muhammad+Knight"},{"text":"People say that America has no religion, but it's the opposite: America has every religion, all the old ones, and produces more new ones than anywhere else on earth. America;'s religious life is like the photo mosaic in which a thousand little images add up to one big picture, except there's no big picture, just a blob of unrelated and unrelatable images, texts, and poses, the freedom to take what you want from a religion and reject hte rest and be lonely, standing outsdie the warm shelters of temples with your own goon god that no one else can understand.","author":"Michael Muhammad Knight","tags":["america","religion"],"id":149145,"author_id":"Michael+Muhammad+Knight"},{"text":"A Muslim just follows Allah. Sunni-Shiah? That's farga, the groups—Allah discourages this in the Quran, you know, never ever form the groups.","author":"Michael Muhammad Knight","tags":["islam","muslim","shi-ite","shia","shiite","sunni"],"id":179488,"author_id":"Michael+Muhammad+Knight"},{"text":"Religion is like an art gallery. One painting will speak to you more than another, and there's no need to explain or defend your taste.","author":"Michael Muhammad Knight","tags":["islam","religion"],"id":206514,"author_id":"Michael+Muhammad+Knight"},{"text":"The jamaat was an almost silly mish-mash of people: Rude Dawud’s pork-pie hat poking up here, a jalab-and-turban there, Jehangir’s big Mohawk rising from a sea of kufis, Amazing Ayyub still with no shirt, girls scattered throughout – some in hejab, some not and Rabeya in punk-patched burqa doing her thing. But in its randomness it was gorgeous, reflecting an Islam I felt could not happen anywhere else ... If Islam was to be saved, it would be saved by the crazy ones: Jehangir and Rabeya and Fasiq and Dawud and Ayyub and even Umar.","author":"Michael Muhammad Knight","tags":["islam","religion","spirituality"],"id":216744,"author_id":"Michael+Muhammad+Knight"},{"text":"They need a deen that's not your uncle's deen.","author":"Michael Muhammad Knight","tags":["islam","islamic","liberalism","muslim"],"id":221700,"author_id":"Michael+Muhammad+Knight"},{"text":"If Allah wants to send me a message,he'll do so on the faces of my brothers and sisters.","author":"Michael Muhammad Knight","tags":["humanism","humanist","inspirational","islam","islamic","islamic","muslim","religious"],"id":224542,"author_id":"Michael+Muhammad+Knight"},{"text":"I passed by General Zia's tomb and knew that I never would have become Muslim if I was raised in this country [Pakistan]. As a rebellious American adolescent, I had chosen Islam because it was the religion of Malcolm X, a language of resistance against unjust power. But in Pakistan, Islam was the unjust power, or at least part of what kept the machine running. Pakistan's Islam was guilty of everything for which I had rebelled against Reagen-Falwaell Christianity of America.","author":"Michael Muhammad Knight","tags":["islam","pakistan"],"id":240877,"author_id":"Michael+Muhammad+Knight"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":18,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}