By Febriyanti Lestari

Muhammad Asad’s The Road to Mecca is a confessional autobiography which is written in a perfect balance of emotional and intellectual accounts. He sounds remarkably honest in reflecting his spiritual journey and search for truth but at the same time reasonable and rational when commenting on the events or people that he observed. Though this book is predominantly a recollection of his private spiritual odyssey that leads him to conversion to Islam, he could skillfully connect a series of his personal life events with a larger historical context of both Europe and the Middle East, and a bit of Persia. The readers of this travelogue might be tempted to treat this work as a historical document which recorded some major events in the world history because Asad himself was a journalist. However, they should be cautious with the literary supplement of this adventurous writing, such as in his portrayal of the Arabian landscape and the Bedouin Arabs which evoke the classical Arabic literary tradition. Also, this 375-page nonlinear narrative is constantly going back and forth in retelling the story of Asad’s adventurous life in various places. This classic indeed has a lot of materials to discuss; one of which is Asad’s spiritual journey to Islam. 

I would argue that the roots of Asad’s personal conversion lie primarily on two factors: (1) his disappointment with the European civilization at the early of the 20^th century, and (2) his admiration of the Muslim Arab culture. Born Leopold Weiss in 1900, Asad spent all his childhood and teenage years in Austria during the critical period of European and world history. He was discontented with the “spiritual vacuum” (p. 57) that swiped across Europe at the opening decades of the 20^th century. For the average European, seemingly there was “only one positive faith: the worship of material progress, the belief that there could be no other goal in life than to make that very life continuously easier” (p. 70). Modernity had replaced church or synagogue with cinemas, factories, etc. While these institutions were good for the economy and entertainment, they failed to fulfill human’s basic spiritual need, except for a mere temporal satisfaction. He did not deny that material improvement was necessary, but he began to be convinced that materialism could never achieve its end. He argued that “the intellect cannot reach spiritual knowledge by itself because it is too much absorbed in the achievement of material goals. It is faith and faith alone, that can release us from such an absorption” (p. 74). At this point, he realized he could no longer share the diverse social, economic, and political hopes of his society. Europe offered no alternative for his spiritual yearning.

The second factor that led to his conversion to Islam is his admiration to Muslim Arab culture. After mingling with the Muslim Arabs, he began to be convinced of the danger of Western ethnocentrism, producing a distorted image of Islam and the Muslims. He admitted that he first began his journey in the summer of 1922 with the “hazy, European bias against things Islamic” (p. 75). However, he was struck by a different reality. Along with his project in the Middle East, his admiration towards the Muslims especially through his acquaintance with the Bedouin Arabs was growing. He found in the Muslim culture something that had been missing in the modern Europe. He found the alternative to fill the spiritual vacuum that was absent in Europe.

Based on his narration, I think there are two things which were missing in Europe that Islam fulfilled—and they are also inherent in Arab culture. First, he found in Islam “an organic coherence of the mind and the senses” (p. 100) which Europeans have lost. Part of his critique on European civilization on the early decades of the 20^th century was their absolute focus on reasons and materialism alone while abandoning religious institutions. It is true that religious institution was prone to corruption and misuse, but they forgot that religion offered a refuge for spirituality that is essential to maintain the harmony of human’s body and soul. Islam synchronizes the worldly business with spirituality. He learned that Islam did not oppose material prosperity. In Islam, “material prosperity is desirable but not an end in itself” (p. 128). Also, in terms of daily practicing, he was amazed with Islamic way of praying. Muslims did not pray in stillness, but he saw “a man at peace with himself” (p. 88) when he was doing the prayer. Again, he learned how Islam integrates body and soul to create a balance. Second, based on his encounter with the Muslims, he was amazed with Muslim’s hospitality. He saw in Islam a society without wall, and Christian European lacked social system that Islam had. He recalled a scene when one time a Bedouin broke his cake into two and offered him half (p. 83). Asad seemed to indicate that a corroding lack of integration was one of the sources of Western suffering. Also, unlike Judaism whose rituals and concern was only with one nation: the Hebrews, Islam is open to everyone.

Between 1922 and 1926, Asad began as a sympathetic outsider to Islam. However, from 1927 on, he officially embraced Islam and remained comfortable with this new faith. As a Muslim, he shared “the aims and hopes of Islamic community” (p. 104). For Muslims, Asad is a champion, a reformist defining Islam in a modern world. From a mere journalist, he became an important Muslim scholar. In this autobiography, he wrote that he felt that his coming to the land of Arabia is like “a home coming” (p. 49). He feels at home in this region. His stay in Arabia constitutes “Years of submergence in a world far removed from the thoughts and aims of Western existence” (p. 47). In addition, his connection to Islam was in some way mystical—commonly determined by huda or hidayah from God. He wrote that he was being drawn to Mecca by a strange, personal expectancy which was like a kind of promise (p. 135). At the end of his life, he died as a Muslim, and that is considered blessings in Islam.

As already stated, Asad’s early knowledge of Islam was shaped by the Western Orientalist negative view of Islam. However, he was faced with a totally different reality as soon as he landed on Jerusalem and then to other parts of the Arabia. He found in Islam something essential that Europeans had been missing. He wrote that his own observations of Islam had later on convinced him that “the mind of the average Westerner held an utterly distorted image of Islam” and he found in Quran, “a rational acceptance of all God-created nature: a harmonious side-by-side of intellect and sensual urge, spiritual need and social demand” (p. 190). He found nothing sacramental left in Europe. What one can do was to orient a new faith of the heart, which should be more than an “intellectual realization” (p. 72). His yearning for faith and spiritual depth was the driving force of his journey to the Middle East. He found in Islam the peace he was looking for. (FL)

 

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