My Road to Mecca
Muhammad
Asad (Austria)
Statesman, Journalist, and Author
About the
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. -MSA-USC]
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.