Remembering Muhammad Asad, the West’s Gift to Islam

By Ahmad Farouk Musa, Abdar Rahman Koya

On December 13, 2009, renowned Swiss-born Muslim intellectual, Tariq Ramadan,

will be in Kuala Lumpur to deliver a lecture in tribute to the late Muhammad Asad,
whose translation and commentary of the Qur’an, The Message of the Qur’an, departs
from the usual methodology of Qur’anic exegesis to become one of only few highly
scholarly works on the Qur’an in the English language. While Asad’s works,
including his countless writings on Islam and Muslims, have huge ramifications to the
debates surrounding contemporary Islam, including those presently taking centre
stage in Malaysia such as the Islamic state issue and the problem of ‘blind following’
in matters of religion, it is important that we are introduced to Asad, his adventurous
life and his thoughts in order to understand this intellectual giant who has been
considered as Europe’s gift to Islamic scholarship.
Muhammad Asad was arguably one of the 20th century’s greatest Muslim thinkers
from the West. Only recently, a public place called the Muhammad Asad Square was
launched in his honour by the mayor of Vienna, his place of birth, making it probably
the first traffic area to be named after a Muslim in Western Europe. Last year, a
documentary film based on his widely acclaimed autobiography, The Road to Mecca,
was produced by the Austrian director George Misch, placing his travels and thoughts
in the context of contemporary debates surrounding Islam. It subsequently won many
awards at international film fests this year, including for best cinematography.
Writer, adventurer, thinker, diplomat, commentator of the Qur’an; these words may
best describe Muhammad Asad, Those who have followed his career through his
books and writings, however, know that no one has contributed more in our times to
the understanding of Islam and awakening of Muslims, or worked harder to build a
bridge between the East and the West, than Asad.
But who was Muhammad Asad, the Jewish convert to Islam, whose transformation
into one of the most influential modern thinkers of Islam was not before embarking
on an adventurous journey throughout the Middle East at a time when the West’s
cultural, political and military grip on the Muslim world was at its peak?
Asad was born Leopold Weiss on July 2, 1900 in Galicia, now in Poland, part of the
then Austrian empire. In 1926, he converted to Islam. The story of the years before
his conversion, immortalised in The Road To Mecca, Asad’s autobiography which
was described by the New York Post as a “very rare and powerful book” and by the
Times Literary Supplement as “a narrative of great power and beauty”, reflects the
spiritual odyssey of a man in search of a home, a man struck by wanderlust, unable to
quell his restless spirit until embracing Islam.
In 1922 he became a Near East correspondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung, then one of
the most outstanding newspapers in Europe. His career in journalism took him to
Palestine, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Persia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, and gave
him a unique perspective on world affairs, particularly issues relating to Jews and
Arabs. Crossing the Mediterranean, Leopold’s first stop was at Cairo where he tried to
learn Arabic and spend some time with Shaikh Mustafa Maraghi, a student of the
Egyptian reformer, Muhammad Abduh. Mustafa Maraghi, a keen and critical thinker
himself subsequently became the Shaikh of the University of Al-Azhar.
It was through his friendship with al Maraghi when he realized that Al-Azhar has
lapsed into the sterility, from which the whole Muslim world is suffering, and its old
impetus is all but extinguished. Those ancient Islamic thinkers would never have
dreamed that after so many centuries their thoughts, instead of being continued and
developed, would only be repeated over and over again, as if they were ultimate and
infallible truths.

Just as some saints and scholars would be surprised to see their graves made into
temples, many will also be shocked to see how their words were regarded as infallible
truth. It is a trade of man to blindly hang on to the beliefs of the forefathers.

It is this blind acceptance of scholars’ opinions as if they were complete truths, which
forms the crux of Asad’s concern in his thoughts and writings. Asad was convinced
that the alien-layer that has covered Islam must be swept away before the scholars
will wake up from their endless reading and repeating. He cautions against following
blindly the thoughts of medieval Muslim scholars, without taking into account their
historical and political context in which their interpretation of Islam took shape.

Asad believes that history can only give advice, show the underlying factors when a
society was successful, but cannot decide the ruling of today’s states and societies.
Every generation faces different circumstances, and thus many laws and ways for
society cannot be fixed for all time. This is why also the Qur’an only fixes time-less
laws, ethics, rights and restrictions that are universal in its application. It is a
constitution containing the basis for mankind’s dealing with life. Everything outside
of the Qur’an is time bound and subject to reinterpretation by every generation to fit it
to their circumstances.
Asad traveled to Amman, to Damascus, Tripoli and Aleppo, to Baghdad and to the
Kurdish mountains, to that strangest of all lands, Iran, and to the wild mountains and
steppes of Afghanistan. Traveling extensively throughout the Muslim world, his
interest in Islam deepened. To understand how Muslims could regenerate themselves,
Asad took a characteristic approach: he immersed himself in understanding the source
of Islam, the Qur'an. Embarking on an intensive study of classical Arabic, he began at
the same time living among the bedouin of Central and Eastern Arabia whose speech
and linguistic associations had essentially remained unchanged since the time of
Prophet Muhammad when the Qur'an was being revealed. The results of this
experience help him with his labour of love, The Message, a translation and
commentary of the Qur’an.
Asad is wont to drive home in many of his writings that the decline of the Muslim
civilization was due to the manner in how Muslims practice their faith. As soon as
their faith became habit and ceased to be a programme of life, to be consciously
pursued, the creative impulse that underlay their civilization waned and gradually
gave way to indolence, sterility and cultural decay.
From that point on, Muslim renaissance became Asad's goal in life. He traveled far
and wide, conferred with kings, leaders and the common man "between the Libyan
Desert and the Pamirs, between the Bosporus and the Arabian Sea," and began putting
his ideas on paper. Islam at the Crossroads, published as early as 1934, still stuns the
contemporary reader with its analysis of Muslim decline and its bold prescription for
instilling self-assurance to an Islamic world suffering the onslaught of Western
technology.
When World War II broke out, Asad was in India where he befriended Muhammad
Iqbal, the spiritual father of the idea of a separate Pakistan. Iqbal persuaded Asad to
abandon plans to travel to eastern Turkestan, China and Indonesia and "to help
elucidate the intellectual premises of the future Islamic state”.
Asad was interned in India at the end of the war. When Pakistan was born in 1947,
Asad was appointed its undersecretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs and became
its permanent representative to the United Nations in 1952. Here he met his wife, Pola
Hamida, and later began writing The Road to Mecca (1954), covering the first half of
his life.
A few years later, he wrote The Principles of State and Government in Islam, where
Asad lays down in unambiguous terms the foundation of an Islamic state based on the
Qur’an and Sunnah (traditions of the Prophet). Briefly, the two defining limits are that
in an Islamic state true sovereignty lies with God and that believers must conduct all
businesses pertaining to the state and community through mutual consultation. Within
this framework, Asad showed that an Islamic state had the flexibility to contain
features of parliamentary democracy and the rule of law, including the modern
institutions of presidency and the Supreme Court.
But it was The Message of the Qur’an, published in 1980, which puts him among the
greatest thinkers and interpreters of the Qur’an in modern times. He dedicates it to
“People Who Think”. “Think – and your reason will guide you to faith”, says Asad,
instead of assuring us, as some other religions do, “Gain faith – and through your faith
you will arrive at a comprehension of the truth”.

Dr Ahmad Farouk Musa is director of Islamic Renaissance Front (IRF), an NGO for
empowerment of Muslim youth through knowledge. Abdar Rahman Koya is editor of
Islamic Book Trust (IBT), Petaling Jaya. 
IRF and IBT will be organizing a movie
screening of “A Road To Mecca” on 12 December and a public lecture on
Muhammad Asad by well-known Muslim intellectual Prof Tariq Ramadan, on 13
December, 2009