The Road to Mecca [Unknown Binding]

This is the story of how Muhammad Asad (1900 to 1992) - born a Jew in Austrian Galicia as Leopold Weiss - came to be converted to Islam in 1926. There is only the briefest account in the introduction of his astonishing career as a Muslim; how he helped to draft the Constitution of Pakistan and in 1952 became Pakistan's representative at the United Nations. The book, except for a brief 1973 postscript, was first published in 1954. In 1980 he was to publish a famous translation of the Qur'an into English. For a long account of his remarkable life, google "Martin Kramer" "The Road from Mecca".

The book opens in 1932, six years after his conversion, when he and an Arab friend of his were crossing the Arabian desert on dromedaries. On their way, from the Saudi-Iraq border to Mecca, he became briefly separated from his friend, lost his way and nearly died of thirst - an immensely powerful and poetic description of the desert and of this ordeal. It is a foretaste of the evocative way he writes about everything he sees and experiences.

During this journey he reminisces about his life.

His early study of Judaism had given him some feeling for a religious outlook, but its emphasis on ritual and on a God caring especially for one little tribe had left him for a while a secular person, albeit one with a vague longing for a `spiritual order' in the post-war period of `moral chaos' and materialism. Of course it was also a period of intellectual ferment and creativity; but still felt that it all took place in a spiritual vacuum.

He became a journalist; and then in 1922 he was invited for a visit by an uncle living in Palestine. His first sight - so unEuropean - of gracefully moving Arabs, camels and dunes along the banks of the Suez Canal fills him with a strange exhilaration, foreshadowing so many later experiences. In Palestine he was immediately struck by how the Arabs seemed to belong to the land more than the Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants, and he identified with the former against the Zionists. Here and throughout the book he writes about everything Arabic in rhapsodic terms, and the Arab people he extols in fulsome and romantic style: they are handsome, calm, dignified, at one with nature, at ease with themselves, with no sense of inferiority when in the presence of those in authority, hospitable and, with all their faults, noble individuals.

Only occasionally does he describe some of their faults - for example the narrowness and intolerance of the Wahhabis; but even then he admires their aim of restoring the original purity of Islam.

But this is to anticipate. (Asad records his own memories with disregard to chronology.)

Returning to Europe after eighteen months in Palestine and Syria, he found that continent barren and faith-less (Christianity's separation of Church and State leaving its secular activities nowadays without any spiritual dimension), its people mostly ugly and clumsy. (I have inserted the word `nowadays': Asad shows no awareness of how deeply Christianity had shaped every aspect of secular life for many centuries.) He was disgusted by the post-war violence in Europe (but will withhold judgment from the tribal warfare which accompanied and even followed Ibn Saud's conquest of Arabia).

Then, in 1924, his newspaper sent him back to the Middle East, and this journey took him during the next two years from Egypt to Afghanistan, at times under perilous circumstances of various kinds. In Iran he was struck by the melancholy of the people - a people who still weep at the fate of Ali and his sons thirteen centuries ago - and who, so Asad believed, cling to Shi'ism because the Arab Caliphs who conquered the proud Persians were Sunni.

Asad identifies himself with the Sunni case. He had now begun to engage seriously with the text of the Qur'an and the history of Islamic civilization. He saw that the narrow fanaticism of the Wahhabis was at odds with all that. Above all, it was the abandonment of the search for knowledge and education, enjoined by the Qur'an, which had plunged this civilization into ignorance and poverty. The Islamic world, he felt, must close the knowledge gap between the Muslims and the West, but without allowing Western materialism to corrupt it. He held forth on this subject with such passion to a Muslim in Afghanistan that the latter said, "You are a Muslim, only you don't know it yourself".

But Asad was not yet convinced that the Qur'an was "the word of God and not merely the creation of a brilliant mind". Islam appealed to this man of an essentially mystical temperament because he saw it as an eminently practical and rational guide to a rounded life. But then, soon after he had returned to Europe and perceived "the hidden suffering" on the faces of its comfortably-off citizens, he experienced an epiphany which broke down the last barrier for him, and he made his confession of faith.

He now embarked on his first hajj to Mecca; there he met King Ibn Saud with whom he established a personal friendship. In 1929 the King sent him on a perilous mission to gather information in a rebel area. Another dangerous journey he undertook, in 1931, was to Cyrenaica, in the forlorn hope of opening up a supply route from Egypt to the Sanussi rebels against the Italians. And in the following year he undertook the journey which frames this book.

Asad's interpretations of what he sees strike me as almost impossibly romantic; and in his commitment to the Orient he deeply unfair in his generalizations about the West. Indeed he says more than once that his embrace of Islam meant cutting off his links to the West: that is the language of "the clash of civilizations". But in 1932, when this book ends, Asad was still a fairly young man, and in later life he would modify the extreme position he took up in this classic.

This is truly one of my favourite books. Someone said above that you don't have to be religous or muslim to enjoy this and I agree; because the book is about journey. The sort of journey we all wish to embark on at some stage in our life. Asads pictures are evocative and exciting, his encounters thoughtful, and his insights profound. But this wasn't really travelogue as it was also the story of a man's spiritual journey; his attempts to come to terms with the world around him and his place in it. Beautifully written, ideas are layered upon layer, one tale leads into another. You'll keep coming back to this book over and over again. Well done that man. 5 stars and well deserved!

For me, reading the Road to Mecca was a life changing moment (As the cliche goes). I found in this book the story of man who attained the ultimate peace and tranquility in his being. A man who went on a jounrney and discovered something, utterly beautiful. Asad, captured a moment in the middle east which is now forever lost and also the saw the seeds of what is now a changed middle east, where oil has taken over the spirituality of a beduin and replaced the calmness of movement from a camel to roaring and globe warming expensive cars, private jets and meglomaniacal cities.

From a religious point of view, this is also a book where a Jewish journalist converts to Islam. But what this book puts across is that all the faiths, if we see them from a point of view of what they were meant to be before being politicised, are infact giving the same message of being peaceful and one with yourself and those around you. Asad, captures that moment for me and demonstrates that best of qualities that I really think we all have within us(although we repress it into nonexistence), humanism. An ability to view this world not through parallels and myriads of differences based on religion, race, region, language etc, but viewing everyone and anyone as a human being and appreciating the differences that they bring to this world. To Asad, Islam brought this humanism down to its simplest terms, being peaceful and being content with your life. This is an amazing story to read in the times of today, where on one side, suicidal muslim fundamentalist abuse the religion of Islam to further their political and bigoted idealogies and where the powerful west, for all its greed and demagogery, bullies(through war and capitalism) the world into becoming a version that fits into their narrow and evagelical view of "defined freedom".

I read this book on my journey to and back from work in a very busy city. Because of this book there were many a times when I missed my station as I found myself walking in the desert next to Asad, feeling what he felt. I also remember being extremely sad when this book came to and end, as it meant that I could not longer loose myself to Asad's world anymore.

I recommend this book as one of the greatest example of how the inhabitants of this world should look at each other and come to appreciate our differences. I also recommend this book to those who find that the modern world is an unnatural combination of automation and detachment of the soul. Infact where in the real desert Asad went and found the yearnings of his soul. In the modern world of the desert of trains and offices and city centres and subarbias, we have lost our souls.

Whatever road you take in your life to find peace and to look within your Soul, let Asad tell you his story as it would help you on the way.