The Road to Mecca

An exclusive post by Kazim Aizaz Alam

 

(Allama) Muhammad Asad aka Leopold Weiss — b. 1900 d. 1994 — is a well-known name at least in the Muslim world. I have recently read his wonderful book ‘The Road to Mecca’. Let me write here briefly what I think of the book and its writer, who is undoubtedly one of the most distinguished Muslim scholars of the last century.

 

About the writer:

Muhammad Asad was born into a Jewish family that lived in Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was a lawyer and grandfather was a rabbi. At age 22 he travelled across the Arab world first time as a Middle East correspondent for European newspapers. He converted to Islam in 1926. In later years he travelled extensively in the entire Muslim world. Though his mother tongue was German, he wrote ‘The Road to Mecca’ in English. Besides German and English, he knew French, Arabic, Persian and Urdu as well. He translated and explained the Quran as well as Sahih al-Bukhari from Arabic into English.

Muhammad Asad was vey close to the House of Saud. Ibn Saud considered him as a member of the royal family and King Faisal was his personal friend. He was also friends with Allama Iqbal. He obtained Pakistani citizenship in 1947 at the partition of India. He joined Pakistan’s Foreign Office and also represented the country as its Minister Plenipotentiary to the UN. He was not only a strong defender of Islam but also of the Arabs as a people and their culture.

 

About the book:

The book is, in the writer’s own words, “simply the story of a European’s discovery of Islam and of his integration within the Muslim community”. ‘The Road to Mecca’ was written in the early 1950s. It basically revolves around a 23-day journey from the interior of Arabia to Mecca that the writer undertook in 1932 which, as he says, “for it was during those twenty-three days that the pattern of my life became fully apparent to myself”.

But one should not expect that Muhammad Asad would write about strange miracles that suddenly revealed to him the goodness of his new religion. Though the book is apparently about a 23-day desert journey with a male companion on a dromedary, actually the writer recounts in different chapters his whole life up till 1932. It was first published by Simon and Schuster Inc New York in 1954. The book is dedicated to King Faisal of Saudi Arabia. It has 380 pages.

 

What I liked most:

Above all, one liked its language — which is beyond compare – especially the dialogues and conversation which are in ‘thou-thee-ye’ form. I confess that I always thought of the Arabs primarily, and before anything else, as people ‘unconcerned’ about their monarchies and lack of political freedom. Notwithstanding their fatalism and undue respect for the royalty, the book convinces the reader that the Arabs have their own distinct kind of democracy which exists within themselves, that they are extremely pleasant hosts who welcome ‘outsiders’ with open arms, that a general sense of equality prevails in society – to what extent, is open to debate, though. The writer doesn’t seem obsessed by the I-me-and-myself style of writing and refrains from criticising the ‘west’ for the commonplace reasons we are tired of listening.

The best chapter was the one about the Sanusi movement and the legendary warrior Umar al-Mukhtar. (I am sure if Umar al-Mukhtar were alive and fighting against imperialism in Iraq or Afghanistan today, the press would be calling him a terrorist, extremist, Taliban commander or, at least, right-winger.) The parts about King Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, King Faisal, Riza Khan of Iran and ad-Dawish were most interesting to read.

Also, it was good that the writer didn’t overstuff the book with initialisations like PBUH, SAW, RA and AS. I think that it shows he was above false pretentions. Since he is a Muslim scholar of great repute, no one in our part of the world has yet taken note of his ‘disrespect’ towards holy figures.

 

What I disliked:

Muhammad Asad praises ‘every’ dictator he discusses in the book – be it King Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, for whom his love and reverence knew no bounds, or Riza Khan of Iran, whose ‘greatness’ he could not ‘fail to recognise’ and who he considered ‘as one of the most dynamic personalities I have ever met in the Muslim world, and of all the kings I have known, only Ibn Saud can compare with him’. Now this is very, very disgusting and in extremely poor taste. Where on earth a ‘scholar’ praises autocrats like Ibn Saud and Riza Khan who rose to power only after crushing a great number of their opponents to death – opponents whose struggle for power was equally devoid of principles and ideology as that of the two celebrated kings?

Being an anti-Shia, he on the one hand says that Abu Bakr, Umar and Othman were not ‘usurpers’ (as Shias are wont to say) because they were ‘elected by the people in the free exercise of the right accorded to them by Islam’, but on the other hand, he easily approves of the Saudi monarchy. As far as his assertion that the Prophet did not designate Ali as his rightful heir and successor, one can’t agree more with it. After all, this is absolutely indefensible that Ali’s caliphate immediately after the death of the Prophet should have been followed by that of Hasan and Husain, and then to Zainul Abedin till Hasan al-Askari – the eleventh imam of the Shias – because to say that the Prophet considered the caliphate a right only of his male descendants, that too forever, is hard to believe.

Apart from a comment here and there, Mohammad Asad rarely touches upon the important issue of women’s status in a Muslim society. All he says is that Muslim women live secluded life not because Islam demands so but because it is the Arab culture. But questions like why Muslim scholars let Islam be ‘hijacked’ by one particular culture and how the situation can now be reversed remain unanswered.

The writer also ‘wrongly’ portrays Ibn Saud as someone who fought against imperialism. By citing his battles with ad-Dawish, the writer gives the impression as if the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was created against the wishes of the then imperialist superpower, Great Britain. The British might have supported ad-Dawish at some point in time when he was fighting Ibn Saud – but what about Ibn Saud making an alliance with the British during World War I against the Turks?

Personal Allama Iqbal, Islam, Leopold Weiss, Mecca, Muhammad Asad, Muslim