Muhammad Asad
Bedouin from Lemberg. Muhammad Asad (born Leopold Weiss in July 1900 in what was then Lemberg in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now Lviv in Ukraine; died 1992) was a Jew who converted to Islam.
Asad was a descendant of a long line of rabbis. However, his father was a barrister. He received a thorough religious education. He was proficient in Hebrew from an early age and was also familiar with Aramaic. He studied the Old Testament, as well as the text and commentaries of the Talmud, the Mishna and Gemara. Furthermore, he delved into the intricacies of Biblical exegesis, the Targum.
Asad worked as a correspondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung. It was during his assignments as foreign correspondent that he gained insights into Islam. He wrote many insightful articles on Shiism and Iran. After the Nazis came to power, his parents died in the Holocaust.
He converted to Islam in 1926. He spoke of Islam thus:
“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; and the result is a structure of absolute balance and solid composure.”
He travelled extensively throughout the Muslim world and witnessed firsthand many of the liberation movements that had started to form in the early part of the twentieth century, with the aim of freeing Muslim lands from colonial rule. He travelled to India where he met and worked alongside Muhammad Iqbal, the poet-philosopher, who proposed the idea of an independent Muslim state in India, which later became Pakistan. Asad was appointed the first Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations. Towards the end of his life, he moved to Spain and lived there with his wife, Paola Hameeda Asad, until his death.
Asad wrote several books, including Road to Mecca, an account of his travels through Muslim lands and his conversion to Islam, as well as his thoughts on the growing Zionist movement. He also wrote The Message of The Qur’an, a translation and brief commentary on the Muslim holy book based on his own knowledge of classical Arabic and on the authoritative classical commentaries. It has been acclaimed as one of the best, if not the best, translations of the Quran into English, although it has been criticised by some traditionalists for its Mutazilite leanings. He also wrote a translation and commentary on the Sahih Bukhari, the most authoritative collection of Hadith. In addition, he wrote This Law of Ours where he sums up his views on Islamic law and rejects decisively the notion of taqlid, or strict judicial precedent which has been accepted as doctrine by most Muslim sects except the Salafis. He also makes a plea for rationalism and plurality in Islamic law, which he sees as the true legacy of the salaf or earliest generations of Muslims. In his book Islam at the Crossroads, he outlines his view that the Muslim world must make a choice between living by its own values and morality or accepting those of the West, in which case, they would always lag behind the West, which had had more time to adjust to those values and mores, and would end up compromising their own religion and culture.
He is father of Talal Asad, anthropologist specializing in religious studies and postcolonialism.
Tags: correspondent, Frankfurter Zeitung, Holocaust, Iran, Islam, Muslim, Rabbi, Shiism