The Night of Muhammad

THE NIGHT OF MUHAMMAD is a collection of original short fiction and nonfiction that explores the relationships among shame, self-destruction, and self-acceptance. Set in the contemporary United States, these stories all deal with gay male characters who struggle with internal and external conflicts between the traditional Islamic moral code and those he discovers in gay society: in one story, a fundamentalist child grows up to become a teen who believes that the lust he feels is monstrous; in another, a debauched young man wanders drunkenly through a neighborhood of misfits; in yet another, a promiscuous drug addict, hoping for religious endorsement, falls in love with a disinclined Muslim fundamentalist. This work portrays characters seeking to transcend shame and failing, and facetiously concludes that homosexuality is amongst the most vile of human conditions.