The Road to Mecca: The Story of Muhammad Asad
Muhammad Asad
26 years old, from Austria
Previous Religion: Judaism
My Life Before Islam
Muhammad Asad was born Leopold Weiss on July 2, 1900, in Lemberg, then the capital of Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and today the Ukrainian city of Lviv. He came from a distinguished Jewish family with a long line of rabbis and scholars, and his deeply religious upbringing gave him an early familiarity with scripture and a restless appetite for questions about God and the meaning of life. As a young man he studied philosophy and art history in Vienna, but the academic world did not satisfy his spiritual longing. Drawn to the written word, he became a journalist and in 1922 was sent to the Middle East as a correspondent, an assignment that would change the course of his life.
The Moment of Guidance
Traveling through Palestine, Egypt, Transjordan, and Syria, Leopold Weiss encountered a world very different from the one he had known in Europe. He was fascinated by the dignity and simplicity of the Muslims he met, and by a faith that seemed to shape every part of their daily lives. He later recalled how his conversations with ordinary believers and scholars alike challenged the assumptions of his own upbringing. During a journey to Arabia, he had the opportunity to speak with King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud, whose character and sincerity made a deep impression on him. What had begun as journalistic curiosity slowly became a genuine conviction that Islam offered the truth he had been seeking.
Reflections
In 1926, while in Berlin, Leopold Weiss declared his faith, embraced Islam, and took the name Muhammad Asad. He later wrote that his conversion was less a dramatic revelation than the quiet end of a long search, a homecoming of the heart. From then on he dedicated his life to the religion he had chosen. He returned to the Arabian Peninsula, where he became a trusted adviser to Ibn Saud and played a part in the young kingdom's encounters with the wider world. His intellectual and diplomatic work placed him at the heart of the Muslim world.
Muhammad Asad devoted the rest of his life to explaining Islam to the West and to deepening his own understanding of it. His book "The Road to Mecca" (1954) recounts his journey to faith, while "Islam at the Crossroads" defended the religion against what he saw as careless Western criticism. His greatest achievement was "The Message of The Qur'an" (1980), a celebrated English translation and commentary of the Sacred Book that he labored over for many years. He died in 1992 in Spain and is buried in Morocco. His life remains a powerful example of a European intellectual who found both peace and purpose in Islam.