married a widow, Elsa, who was fifteen years his senior. He resigned from the Frankfurter Zeitung and moved to Berlin where he took up minor journalistic jobs. It was here that he had an epiphany that changed his life. In 1926, while on the subway with his wife, he watched someone in the compartment. He was finely dressed, portly man, obviously prosperous, something very normal in Central Europe at that time. Yet, he noticed that his face was not a happy face – not even a worried face – just an unhappy face with vacant eyes and downturned corners to his mouth. On looking around he noticed that everyone had the same look of hidden suffering on their faces. When he mentioned this to Elsa she studied them all closely and agreed: “You are right. They all look as though they are suffering torments of hell. I wonder, do they know themselves what is going on in them?” On arrival to their home, he opened the copy of the Qur’an that he was reading and his eye fell on the verse: At that moment any doubt that he still had about the Qur’an being a God-inspired book vanished. He realized that even though Allah (SWT) had narrated the Quran to the Prophet (S) over thirteen centuries before, He (SWT) had anticipated things far into the future. He immediately went to the Berlin Islamic Society, declared his adherence to Islam, and took the names Muhammad, to honor the Prophet, and Asad – meaning the “lion”. A few weeks later his wife also converted to Islam and in 1927 they moved to Mecca with her son. On his arrival, Asad made his first hajj which he describes beautifully in his book The Road to Mecca. He dedicated this book to Elsa who died soon after their move. She was buried in a simple pilgrim’s cemetery. His Years in the East Asad spent the next six years in Saudi Arabia which helped him strengthen his Muslim identity. He studied Arabic, the Qurán, hadith and Islamic history. He became well acquainted with King Abd al-Aziz Saúd and divided his time between religious study in Medina and the court of the king. Asad continued to write for various newspapers in Europe. He moved to India in 1932 and was persuaded by Muhammad Iqbal, a poet-philosopher, to remain in India. From that point on Asad became a Muslim intellectual and lectured and wrote on Islamic culture and law. He also edited a journal entitled Islamic Culture which was established by a British convert named Mohammad Marmaduke Pickthall, who is also known for his translation of the Qur’an in English. At the start of the Second World War Asad was arrested in India as an enemy national and spent six years in an internment camp in which he was the only Muslim. He spent this time pondering why Muslims had failed to reach a common concept of the law and sought to find a way to consolidate Muslim identity. Back to the West In 1947 he moved to the newly formed state of Pakistan. He initially worked in domestic politics and later in the Foreign Service; by 1952 he was based at the UN in New York. Later Assad married Polina, an American woman of Polish Catholic descent whom had converted to Islam. He resigned from this position in order to write his autobiography. In 1954, his book, The Road to Mecca, was published and was highly praised for its combination of spiritual searching as well his narration of his desert adventure. It is still much loved and read even today. The testimony of an American Jewish girl is very moving. She had wanted to borrow Asad’s book from her local library but her parents wouldn’t allow her to. She kept going back to the library in order to read it and was inspired to follow in his footsteps. She converted to Islam and took the name Maryam Jameelah. Later, she moved to Pakistan and worked tirelessly for Islam. On the completion of his book he moved to Spain. He worked on a new translation of the Qur’an, because he had always felt that Pickthall’s Arabic was too limited to make it accurate. He started in 1960 and finally completed it in 1980 and was published under the title The Message of the Qur’an. He wrote in the foreword: “…although it is impossible to ‘reproduce’ the Qur’an as such in any other language, it is none the less possible to render its message comprehensible to people who, like most Westerners, do not know Arabic … well enough to find their way through it unaided.” As the humble person that he was, he added: “And I am “You are obsessed by greed for more and more Until you go down to your graves. Nay, but you will come to know! And once again: Nay, but you will come to know! Nay, if you but knew it with the knowledge of certainty, You would indeed see the hell you are in. In time indeed, you shall see it with the eye certainty: And on that Day you will be asked what you have done with the boon of life.” (Quran 102:1-8)
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTUxNjQ1