|
Muhammad Asad
Statesman, Journalist,
and Author
Muhammad Asad, Leopold
Weiss, was born in Livow, Austria (later Poland) in 1900, and at the age of
22 made his visit to the Middle East. He later became an outstanding
foreign correspondent for the Franfurtur Zeitung, and after his conversion
to Islam travelled and worked throughout the Muslim world, from North
Africa to as far East as Afghanistan.
After years of devoted
study he became one of the leading Muslim scholars of our age. After the
establishment of Pakistan, he was appointed the Director of the Department
of Islamic Reconstruction, West Punjab and later on became Pakistan's
Alternate Representative at the United Nations. Muhammad Asad's two
important books are: Islam at the Crossroads and Road to Mecca. He also
produced a monthly journal Arafat. At present he is working upon an English
translation of the Holy Qur'an. [Asad completed his translation and has
passed away.]
In 1922 I left my
native country, Austria, to travel through Africa and Asia as a Special
Correspondent to some of the leading Continental newspapers, and spent from
that year onward nearly the whole of my time in the Islamic East. My
interest in the nations with which I came into contact was in the beginning
that of an outsider only. I saw before me a social order and an outlook on
life fundamentally different from the European; and from the very first
there grew in me a sympathy for the more tranquil -- I should rather say:
more mechanised mode of living in Europe. This sympathy gradually led me to
an investigation of the reasons for such a difference, and I became
interested in the religious teachings of the Muslims. At the time in
question, that interest was not strong enough to draw me into the fold of
Islam, but it opened to me a new vista of a progressive human society, of
real brotherly feeling. The reality, however, of presentday Muslim life
appeared to be very far from the ideal possibilities given in the religious
teachings of Islam. Whatever, in Islam, had been progress and movement, had
turned, among the Muslims, into indolence and stagnation; whatever there
had been of generosity and readiness for self-sacrifice, had become, among
the present-day Muslims, perverted into narrow-mindedness and love of an
easy life.
Prompted by this
discovery and puzzled by the obvious incongruency between Once and Now, I
tried to approach the problem before me from a more intimate point of view:
that is, I tried to imagine myself as being within the circle of Islam. It
was a purely intellectual experiment; and it revealed to me, within a very
short time, the right solution. I realised that the one and only reason for
the social and cultural decay of the Muslims consisted in the fact that
they had gradually ceased to follow the teachings of Islam in spirit. Islam
was still there; but it was a body without soul. The very element which
once had stood for the strength of the Muslim world was now responsible for
its weakness: Islamic society had been built, from the very outset, on
religious foundations alone, and the weakening of the foundations has
necessarily weakened the cultural structure -- and possibly might cause its
ultimate disappearance.
The more I understood how concrete and how
immensely practical the teachings of Islam are, the more eager became my
questioning as to why the Muslims had abandoned their full application to
real life. I discussed this problem with many thinking Mulsims in almost
all the countries between the Libyan Desert and the Pamirs, between the
Bosphorus and the Arabian Sea. It almost became an obsession which
ultimately overshadowed all my other intellectual interests in the world of
Islam. The questioning steadily grew in emphasis -- until I, a non-Muslim,
talked to Muslims as if I were to defend Islam from their negligence and
indolence. The progress was imperceptible to me, until one day -- it was in
autumn 1925, in the mountains of Afghanistan -- a young provincial Governor
said to me: "But you are a Muslim, only you don't know it
yourself." I was struck by these words and remained silent. But when I
came back to Europe once again, in 1926, I saw that the only logical
consequence of my attitude was to embrace Islam.
So much about the circumstances of my becoming a
Muslim. Since then I was asked, time and again: "Why did you embrace
Islam ? What was it that attracted you particularly ?" -- and I must
confess: I don't know of any satisfactory answer. It was not any particular
teaching that attracted me, but the whole wonderful, inexplicably coherent
structure of moral teaching and practical life programme. I could not say,
even now, which aspect of it appeals to me more than any other. Islam
appears to me like a perfect work of architecture. All its parts are
harmoniously conceived to complement and support each other: nothing is
superfluous and nothing lacking, with the result of an absolute balance and
solid composure. Probably this feeling that everything in the teachings and
postulates of Islam is "in its proper place," has created the
strongest impression on me. There might have been, along with it, other
impressions also which today it is difficult for me to analyse. After all,
it was a matter of love; and love is composed of many things; of our desires
and our loneliness, of our high aims and our shortcomings, of our strength
and our weakness. So it was in my case. Islam came over me like a robber
who enters a house by night; but, unlike a robber, it entered to remain for
good.
Ever since then I endeavoured to learn as much
as I could about Islam. I studied the Qur'an and the Traditions of the
Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him); I studied the language of Islam
and its history, and a good deal of what has been written about it and
against it. I spent over five years in the Hijaz and Najd, mostly in
al-Madinah, so that I might experience something of the original
surroundings in which this religion was preached by the Arabian Prophet. As
the Hijaz is the meeting centre of Muslims from many countries, I was able
to compare most of the different religious and social views prevalent in
the Islamic world in our days. Those studies and comparisons created in me
the firm conviction that Islam, as a spiritual and social phenomenon, is
still in spite of all the drawbacks caused by the deficiencies of the
Muslims, by far the greatest driving force mankind has ever experienced;
and all my interest became, since then, centred around the problem of its
regeneration.
|
