Description
Book SynopsisDescribes the Ansaru Allah Community/Nubian Islamic Hebrews (AAC/NIH), a 1970s religious movement in Brooklyn that spread, in part, through the production and dissemination of literature and lecture tapes. Tracks the development of AAC/NIH discourse to reveal surprising consistency and coherence behind the appearance of serial reinvention.
Trade Review“Metaphysical Africa: Truth and Blackness in the Ansaru Allah Community is an important, well researched documentation of one of the more controversial representations of Islam in modern American society. You may not agree with their practices or what they believed in, but Knight will convince you their influence can’t be ignored.”
—Richard Marcus Blogcritics
“Michael Muhammad Knight’s Metaphysical Africa offers fresh insight into the Ansaru Allah Community. His approach provides a theory that explains many of the apparent inconsistencies seen in York’s teachings. This is a well-researched and well-organized book for anyone interested in American religious history, particularly with a focus on Black separatism.”
—Dawn Hutchinson Nova Religio
“Metaphysical Africa is a great achievement. Students and scholars of Afrodiasporic religion, culture, and politics will find much use in the concept of ‘metaphysical Africa,’ Knight’s innovative discursive approach, and his reinterpretation of the movement’s teachings.”
—Justine M. Bakker Reading Religion
“An important book on an overlooked movement, Metaphysical Africa contributes to the broader study of “Africa” as imagined in and through African American religious practice.”
—Spencer Dew Religious Studies Review
“In Metaphysical Africa, Michael Muhammad Knight demonstrates a substantial grasp of the origins and "inner workings" of the AAC-NIH in a refreshingly fulsome fashion. With a wonderful fusion of journalistic zeal and scholarly rigor, each chapter of this book lends itself to an intriguing, insightful representation of a profoundly dynamic Black religious worldview coming into its own.”
—Juan M. Floyd-Thomas,coauthor of The Altars Where We Worship: The Religious Significance of Popular Culture
“This book is the best study yet of the Ansaru Allah Community/Nubian Islamic Hebrews’ teachings, a major leap forward in understanding the history of this much-misunderstood group. Michael Muhammad Knight departs from existing scholarly literature on the movement by showing the continuities as well as the changes in the group’s religious thought, particularly concerning the place of its Islamic identity, and analyzes the coherence of the system rather than dismissing it as a senseless hodgepodge of a mad prophet.”
—Edward E. Curtis IV,editor of The Practice of Islam in America: An Introduction
“Metaphysical Africa is significant as it provides close readings of the primary AAC/NIH materials, many of which have never been examined seriously. Michael Muhammad Knight convincingly discusses the internecine arguments over the nature of Islam, Africa, and blackness for African American religious movements.”
—Nora L. Rubel,author of Doubting the Devout: The Ultra-Orthodox in the Jewish American Imagination
