He was Jewish, he became a Muslim: Who is Muhammad Asad?

Raised in a religious Jewish family, Mohammed Asad's name before he became a Muslim was Leopold Weiss. One day, when he was with his wife Elsa on the Berlin subway, he thought that everyone was living their lives with deep and hidden pain. He shared this sadness he felt with Elsa, and the answer from Elsa was the turning point of his life; It's like they're suffering from hell.

Muhammad Asad, (2 July 1900 – 20 February 1992) was an Austro-Hungarian-born Pakistani journalist, traveler, writer, linguist, political theorist and diplomat. He was a Jew who later converted to Islam.

Are they themselves aware of this? When they returned home with this state of mind, he fell in love with the Qur'an, which was sitting on his desk to do research. Opposite the 1st-8th chapter of Surah Takasür. verses are out. He saw these verses as the exact equivalent of what he experienced in the subway. Shortly after this incident, he and Elsa converted to Islam in the presence of the head of a small Muslim community in Berlin.

He was born in 1900 in Galicia, then a province of Austria-Hungary. His name before he converted to Islam was Leopold Weiss, and he was one of three children born to a Jewish family. His grandfather was a chess master rabbi who had expertise in mathematics and physics and was very interested in astronomy.

Being brought up in such a religious Jewish family, he learned Aramaic and Hebrew well, along with a very strict religious education. In this way, he even had the opportunity to listen to the Torah in its original language.

Other members of his family, especially his grandfather, wanted Mohammed Esed to grow up as a rabbi, but he failed in any field he wanted to pursue a career. At the age of 14, he made a radical decision to run away from home to join the army in Austria, but four years later the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed.

Afterward, he went to a university in Vienna to study in the fields of art history and philosophy of education, but he decided that this field was not suitable for him. The famous philosophers of the period, such as Freud, Alfred Adler, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, never considered it enough to satisfy his intellectual world.

At the age of 20, he left Vienna and settled in Berlin. Here he worked as a telephone attendant in an intelligence service at an agency. When he interviewed Madam Gorky, who came to Berlin to secretly collect aid for the misery in Russia, he managed to be featured in the agency's bulletins and was promoted to reporter.

At the age of 22, he received the first call to Jerusalem, which is considered the first stop of his conversion story. When he received an invitation from his uncle living in Jerusalem, he made a sudden decision to go to Alexandria via the Black Sea and from there to Jerusalem by train.

There he met various Zionists and each time he expressed that he found Zionism immoral. Leopold Weiss, who had not yet taken the name Mohammed Asad, reconsidered his views on Arabs and Muslims when he arrived in Jerusalem. When he saw the extent to which Islam had penetrated the daily lives of Muslims, this situation affected him greatly.

When autumn approached, he returned to Berlin after finishing his studies in Jerusalem, where he married a lady named Elsa. He completed his return via Bursa, Istanbul, Sofia, Belgrade, and Frankfurt. He brought together his experiences during this period in his book "The Unromantic Face of the East". This was also his first book to introduce Palestine.

One day, while he was with his wife, Elsa, in the Berlin subway, they began to watch people's faces. Mohammed Assad thought that everyone was living their lives with deep and hidden pain. He shared this sadness he felt with Elsa, and the answer from Elsa was the turning point of his life;

"It's like they're suffering from hell. I wonder if they themselves are aware of this?"

When they returned home with this state of mind, he fell in love with the Qur'an, which he kept open for research on his desk. Opposite the 1st-8th chapter of Surah Takasür. verses are out. He saw these verses as the exact equivalent of what he experienced in the subway. Shortly after this incident, he and Elsa converted to Islam in the presence of the head of a small Muslim community in Berlin. He took the name "Muhammad" in homage to the Prophet and the surname "Asad" meaning lion.

After converting to Islam, he set out for Mecca with his 27-year-old Elsa and his 6-year-old son. Nine days after reaching Jeddah by sea and then Mecca by land, Elsa fell ill and later passed away. Muhammed Esed met King Abdulaziz in the same year and after a while, he settled in Medina and started to study history and tafsir.

1932 was his last year in Arabia. Asad was on his way to Pakistan, where he met Mohammed Iqbal. They mutually benefited a lot from each other, but after the start of the Second World War, he could not stay here for long.

In 1952, he went to New York to represent Pakistan at the United Nations and soon left this post to write the book "The Road to Mecca". This work was published in 1954. He then moved to Spain and died in Spain in 1992.

His tomb is located in Granada, Spain. Companies that organize tours to Andalusia should definitely add the cemetery where Mohammed Esed's tomb is located, to the places to go.