Author Meets Critics: Michael Muhammad Knight's Sufi Deleuze: Secretions of Islamic Atheism (Fordham, 2023)

There is always an atheism to be extracted from a religion,” Deleuze and Guattari write in their final collaboration, What is Philosophy?. Their claim that Christianity “secretes” atheism “more than any other religion,” however, reflects the limits of their archive. Their primary reference point for “religion” remains Western Christianity; likewise, “religion” conversations within Deleuze studies have been dominated by Christian and Christocentric lenses. Theological projects seeking to engage Deleuze remain embedded within Christian theologies and intellectual histories; whether they embrace, resist, or negotiate with Deleuze’s atheism, the atheism in question remains one extracted from Christian theology, a Christian atheism. Michael Muhammad Knight’s Sufi Deleuze argues that Deleuzian studies of theology have excluded non-Christian traditions and offers an intervention, engaging Deleuzian questions and themes from within Islamic tradition. By examining what Knight calls “secretions of Islamic atheism,” he argues that Islamic tradition offers its own resources for navigating the theological tensions between transcendence and immanence that have defined Deleuze’s contributions to theology, and draws from these resources to imagine a Sufism of pure immanence. This panel brings together readers who will discuss Knight’s intervention into critical theory, Sufi Studies, Hadith Studies, Qur’anic Studies, and Islamic Studies more broadly.