Cultural Writing. Biography and memoir. In his quest for an indigenous "American Islam," Michael Muhammad Knight embarked on a series of interstate odysseys. Traveling 20,000 miles by Greyhound in sixty days, he squatted in run-down mosques, was detained at the U.S.-Canadian border with a trunkload of Shi'a literature, crashed Islamic Society of North America conventions, and hunted down the truth of the Nation of Islam mystery-man, W.D. Fard. In the course of his adventures Knight sorted out his own relationship to Islam on his journey from punk provocateur to a recognized voice in the community, and watched first-hand the collapse of a liberal Islamic dream, the Progressive Muslim Union. Taking a unique perspective on Islam's intersection with race, gender, and Americanization, BLUE-EYED DEVIL offers a brutally honest but ultimately compassionate look at the marginal underground of Islamic America.

Michael Muhammad Knight (born 1977) is an American novelist, writer, and journalist. His writings are popular among American Muslim youth. Within the American Muslim community, he has created a reputation as an ostentatious cultural provocateur. Of Irish descent and raised in the Roman Catholic religion, 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. At 17 he traveled to Islamabad, Pakistan, to study Islam at Faisal Mosque. He came close to making the decision to abandon this course of study to participate in the guerilla war against Russian rule in Chechnya.