Michael Muhammad Knight is the author of 9 books- The Five Percenters, Why I am a Five Percenter and Tripping with Allah, among others. He’s books are popular among hip-hop heads and Muslim youth. He has written for media outlets such at The Washington Post and VICE, striving to bring understanding and compassion to the world through his deep understanding of differing cultures. Check out what he has to say here in this exclusive Don Diva interview and check out his books on amazon and other outlets.
How did your books about the Five Percenters come about?
I was interested in the legacy of Master Fard Muhammad, who taught the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and trying to engage that legacy from every angle. It led me to an encounter with the Five Percenters. At the time, there was no literature on this community, no sources that could help me out apart from the occasional discussion of Five Percenter references in Wu Tang or Rakim lyrics. When I presented myself to the community, at first I didn’t know what to expect, because they had such a sensationalized reputation. But going to the Five Percenters’ school in Harlem and their parliaments really gave me an awakening as to the complexity of the culture and wealth of its history. I then embarked on a massive research project, interviewing elder gods, dissecting lyrics, and collecting all of the materials that I could find. I went to different prisons in New York, interviewing incarcerated gods. I went to the rallies and parliaments, tracked down elders, and studied the lessons. Barry Gottehrer, who worked with the Five Percenters on behalf of Mayor John Lindsay in the 1960s, sent me his archive. Most importantly, the community itself opened up the gates and let me in, allowing me access to the tradition, walking me through the knowledge. All of this ultimately became my first book on the community, The Five Percenters: Islam, Hip-Hop, and the Gods of New York. The second book, Why I am a Five Percenter, is more personal and deals with my working through the Five Percent as an intellectual tradition, bringing all of my personal baggage as I navigate through the culture.
What other books do you have out?
Besides the Five Percenters, I write about elements of American Islam that aren’t usually going to get any attention, and my own experiences within that world. My recent book, Tripping with Allah: Islam, Drugs, and Writing is about my journey as a Muslim drinking ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic tea used in Amazonian shamanism. Everything that I’ve written since encountering the Five Percenters incorporates that part of my life. So even when I’m writing about the Amazon, I’m bringing my Five Percenter experience and materials into my work, because the Five Percent informs everything that I do. I could be at a Sufi shrine in Pakistan and I’m thinking about it in Five Percenter terms.
How did a white guy become a Five Percenter?
It happens, and it draws on a certain history. The leader of the Five Percenters, whose name was Allah (formerly Clarence 13X), had a white student named Azreal during his incarceration in the mid-1960s. Azreal stayed with the movement and basically became the white elder. When I started getting into the culture in the early 2000s, he was still around and took me under his wing, taking me around and introducing me to elder gods. We embarked on a road adventure from Harlem to Milwaukee, just living in my car and stopping to visit different Five Percenter communities along the way, and it was one of the most remarkable experiences of my life. During our time together, he named me Azreal Wisdom, which means “Azreal 2” in the Five Percenters’ system of Supreme Mathematics. I later performed a pilgrimage in Mecca on Azreal’s behalf, as a gesture of love and appreciation for what he had given me.
I have run into numerous “death angels” (white Five Percenters) over the years, and they hold a variety of perspectives on where they fit into the culture. Azreal was always mindful of the specific role that Allah had given him.
Give a brief description of what your books are about?
My first book on this community, The Five Percenters, is an attempt to document the history and culture from the 1960s through the golden age of hip hop and contemporary communities. Coming in as an outside researcher and doing that work transformed me. My second book, Why I am a Five Percenter, is where I really embark on having a conversation with Five Percenter thought and try to figure out my personal relationship to it. The second book is after the division between insider and outsider just disintegrated and I realized that however I choose to identify myself, wherever I go, the Five Percenter culture remains a crucial ingredient of what I am.
What is the history of the Five Percenters?
To give the short version, since I wrote a whole book to answer this question, the Five Percenters began when a former member of the Nation of Islam, Clarence 13X Smith, took the name Allah and began to teach NOI lessons to New York youth with his own methodologies for understanding those lessons. He taught young black men that they were gods and could achieve anything, that their power was limitless and that it was their duty to make change in the world. The Five Percenters grew as a youth movement throughout the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, and it was that connection to New York youth culture that fueled so much classic hip hop. The Five Percent has transformed thousands of lives, including mine.
How prevalent are they today in the streets and in the prisons?
They are still a presence. From one point of view, the Five Percenters are bigger than ever, because the culture has expanded nationally and even internationally and more people recognize their significance than in the 1960s or 80s. On the other hand, whenever I went to the parliaments in New York, older gods would complain that the crowds have withered away and the Five Percenters had nothing like the street prestige that they had in earlier eras. In terms of how prevalent the gods are today, the community gets undermined by the debates that it has with itself. There’s a fair amount of internal division and sectarianism that cuts the culture up into pieces or just pushes people out, and the community isn’t big enough to sustain that kind of thing.
The Five Percenters have a well-documented presence in prisons, and that remains today. There have been numerous legal struggles in terms of Five Percenters being unfairly designated as Security Threat Groups, and being denied the freedoms of conscience and practice that protected religious groups are allowed.
A lot of infamous drug crews like the Supreme Team were Five Percenters, whats your take on that?
It’s just like Catholic gangsters in Mexico who have their own patron saints and rituals and blend that life into their Catholicism. Or the way that the biggest drug crew in Iraq is ISIS, and the biggest drug crew in Afghanistan is the Taliban.
What about all the rappers who claim Five Percent?
It would be only a tiny exaggeration to say that the Five Percenters created hip hop. They were there from the beginning, and Five Percenter language and style and ideology had deeply permeated New York youth culture by the time that hip hop emerged. There’s a long, long list of classic MCs who claim or have claimed Five Percent at some point, but the Five Percenter influence extends even beyond them. There are so many MCs who weren’t actually Five Percenters, but just growing up in NYC in the 70s and 80s, they absorbed the culture and it comes out in their lyrics. Figures such as Nas and Jay Z, for example, clearly have the knowledge and refer to it, sometimes explicitly and sometimes more discreetly. Jay Z wearing the Universal Flag was such a big moment in terms of giving recognition to the culture. Jay and Nas may not claim to be part of the culture, but the culture is definitely part of them.
What is the movement or religion or culture of Five Percenters about?
At first glance, it’s about consciousness. As the gods say, it starts with knowledge of self. But it doesn’t stop with ideology. The way that elder gods taught it to me, the Five Percenter tradition is about the ethical responsibility that comes with the knowledge. If you know that you’re the god, then use your knowledge. Use your power. Show and prove who you are through the lives that you touch and the world that you make better.
Where can people get your book and what are your social media links?
All of my books, including my two on the Five Percenters, are available at Amazon. I can be found on Facebook by my name and on Twitter at @MM_Knight.