Muhammad Asad

Muhammad Asad (Arabic محمد أسد ) (* as Leopold Weiss on July 2, 1900 in Lviv, † 20 February 1992 in Mijas, southern Spain) was a correspondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung, diplomat and Islamic scholar.

Life

Leopold Weiss was born in 1900 as the son of a rabbinical family in Lemberg, then part of the Austro Monarchy, today in Lviv, Ukraine. He grew up in Lviv and Vienna and had a very religious upbringing. Nevertheless, he alienated himself from his increasingly religious and was very dissatisfied with the political and social conditions in the early 1920s. Together with his late wife, the artist Elsa Schiemann - a sister of educator Minna Specht - and their son Heinrich Schiemann 1922, he traveled to Palestine to visit his uncle. According to his book "The Road to Mecca, " he was very critical of Zionism and led debates with Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization. At the same time, he was fascinated by his first contacts with Arabs, Muslims and Islam. The simplicity and spirituality of this religion was a counterpoint to the detested by him materialism of the Western world for him. Trips followed in the Orient as a correspondent for the Frankfurter Zeitung, in particular the contact with Bedouin was very significant for white.

In 1926 he converted to the Muslim community in Berlin, which built the mosque Wilmersdorf, from Judaism to Islam, changed his name to Muhammad Asad and began - back together with Elsa and Heinrich Schiemann - the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca. Elsa died on the voyage. Then Henry came to study in Hamburg, and Asad immersed himself in the Koran studies. As a personal friend of King Ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia, he lived there for years.

He then went to India, where he lived in a British internment camp for the duration of World War II. His entire family was murdered in the concentration camps in Europe. In India he became a close friend of the poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal, the Asad asked to cooperate in the establishment of the first Islamic state: Pakistan. His constitutional proposal, published in March 1948 under the title "Islamic Constitution- Making ", has not been implemented. Only in the Preamble to the Constitution banned later he could recognize some of his proposals. Asad was the first Pakistani passport. 1949 Asad entered the diplomatic service of Pakistan and was subsequently deputy Pakistani ambassador to the United Nations in New York. Asad settled after 22 years of marriage divorce in 1952 from his Saudi Arabian woman Munira, married the Catholic converted to Islam Pola " Hamida " from America and resigned from his post.

He wrote books and numerous essays on the world, law and philosophy of Islam and his autobiography "The Road to Mecca ", which became a bestseller. His magnum opus is an annotated English translation of the Qur'an, for which he had originally estimated work four years, but then it took 17 years. In some professional circles it is considered currently the best translation of the Qur'an.

Asad was a frontier between the Muslim and Western world: world traveler, journalist, linguist, translator, social critic, reformer, diplomat, political scientist, theologian. What is his activities in common, was his pursuit of a mutual understanding between the Islamic world and the West and his intellectual approach to Islam. On 14 April 2008 the square in front of the main entrance of the UNO-City in Vienna was named in his honor Muhammad Asad Square. His son Talal Asad from his second marriage in Saudi Arabia is a professor of anthropology in New York.

On November 22, 2013 in Berlin memorial plaque at his former home, Berlin -Mitte, Hanover Street 1, attached.

Bibliography

Author

• The Road to Mecca. Reporter, diplomat, Islamic scholar. The adventure of a lifetime. In: Collection Luchterhand; Patmos 2009 edition with foreword by Murad Wilfried Hofmann. 1071, Luchterhand Literaturverlag; 2009 Patmos Verlag, Hamburg, Zurich; Edition 2009 Dusseldorf, 1992; 2009 ( Original title: The Road to Mecca ), ISBN 3-630-71071-9; ISBN 978-3-491-72541-6.
• Unromantic Orient. From the diary of a journey. Frankfurt Societäts- Duckerei, Department Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1924.
• The Spirit of Islam. Islamic Academy of Sciences, Cologne, 1984 ( Original title: The Spirit of Islam, translated by Hasan Ndayisenga ), ISBN 3-89108 -000- X.
• Islam at the Crossroads. Edition Bukhara, Mossingen 2007 ( Original title: Islam at the crossroads, translated by Pierre Dubois ), ISBN 978-3-00-022095-1.
• The principles of state and government in Islam. Edition Bukhara, Mossingen 2011 ( Original title: The Principles of state and government in Islam, translated by Pierre Dubois ), ISBN 978-3941910034.
• Is religion a thing of the past? . Students Voice Publications, Karachi 1960.
• This Law of Ours Asiatic Press of Dacca, 1980; extended to older writings: This Law of Ours and Other Essays Dar al -Andalus, Gibraltar 1987
• The Principles of state and government in Islam. Islamic Book Trust, Kuala Lumpur 2000, ISBN 9-839-15409-5.
• Home -coming of the Heart (1933-1992), Muhammad and Pola Hamida Asad, edited and annotated by M. Ikram Chaghatai, The Truth Society, Lahore, Pakistan 2012, ISBN 978-969-9363-02-3.

Translator and commentator

• Muḥammad ibn ʿ Ismā īl Bukhari: The early years of Islam. Being the historical chapters of the Kitâb al - ʿ Jāmi aṣ - Sahih. Compiled by Imam Abu ʿ Abd- Allaah Muhammad ibn Isma ʿ il al -Bukhari. Translated and Explained by Muhammad Asad. 1st edition Arafat Publications; 2nd edition, Dar al -Andalus, 1st edition Lahore; 2nd edition Gibraltar 1st edition 1938; 2 Aufl.1981 ( Original title: Kitâb al - ʿ Jāmi aṣ - Sahih ).
• The Message of the Qur ʾ ān. 1st edition Dar al Andalus; 2nd edition, The Book Foundation, 1st edition Gibraltar; 2nd edition 1980 Dubai, reprints in 1984, 1993, 1997; New edition 2003 ( original title: Qur ʾ ān ).
• The message of the Quran. Translation and Commentary. Translated from the English by Ahmad transmitted by Denffer and Yusuf Kuhn. Patmos Verlag, Dusseldorf 2009 ( Original title: The Message of The Qur'an ), ISBN 978-3-491-72540-9.