Muhammad’s Body: Baraka Networks and the Prophetic Assemblage

Novelist and professor Knight (The Five Percenters) delivers a stimulating academic analysis of writings about the way Muhammad’s body supposedly blessed others during his lifetime and after his death. Knight explores a range of overlapping and sometimes contradictory beliefs of what Muhammad’s actual physical body is and what it can do. His scholarly dissection of this corpus—including biographies of Muhammad and the records of things he said, did, or tacitly approved of—shows how some Muslims have regarded the prophet’s sweat, hair, fingernails, fluids, eating habits, and encounters with others as means of experiencing Muhammad as a physical channel of divine blessings (baraka). Meticulous and visceral in its treatment of how early Muslims believed Muhammad’s body contained the divine, Knight’s survey requires sustained attention and careful reading. It is not for those deterred by dense text nor those unfamiliar with the basics of Islamic studies. But those with some background will appreciate Knight’s incisive reading of how Islamic tradition has barred certain groups (such as women or theological opponents) from the blessings of Muhammad’s body, and he offers fresh insights into Muslim masculinity, esotericism, and power. This is an erudite, provocative tour de force. (Sept.)