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Leopold Weiss, Statesman and Journalist, Austria (part 2 of 2)
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Description: A correspondent for the Franfurter Zeitung, one of the most prestigious newspapers for Germany and Europe, becomes a Muslim and later translates the meanings of the Quran. Part 2.
By Ebrahim A. Bawany
Published on 16 Jan 2006 - Last modified on 01 Apr 2008
Viewed: 11007 (daily average: 4) - Rating: 4.4 out of 5 - Rated by: 9
Printed: 794 - Emailed: 6 - Commented on: 0
Category: Articles
> Stories of New Muslims
> Personalities
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In 1922 I left my native country, Austria, to travel through Africa and Asia as a Special Correspondent to some of the leading
Continental newspapers, and spent from that year onward nearly the whole of my
time in the Islamic East. My interest in the nations with which I came into
contact was in the beginning that of an outsider only. I saw before me a social
order and an outlook on life fundamentally different from the European; and
from the very firs,t there grew in me a sympathy for the more tranquil -- I
should rather say: more mechanized mode of living in Europe. This sympathy
gradually led me to an investigation of the reasons for such a difference, and
I became interested in the religious teachings of the Muslims. At the time in
question, that interest was not strong enough to draw me into the fold of
Islam, but it opened to me a new vista of a progressive human society, of real
brotherly feeling. The reality, however, of present day Muslim life appeared to
be very far from the ideal possibilities given in the religious teachings of
Islam. Whatever in Islam had been progress and movement, had turned among the
Muslims into indolence and stagnation; whatever there had been of generosity
and readiness for self-sacrifice, had become, among the present-day Muslims,
perverted into narrow-mindedness and love of an easy life.
Prompted by this discovery and puzzled by the
obvious in congruency between Once and Now, I tried to approach the problem
before me from a more intimate point of view: that is, I tried to imagine
myself as being within the circle of Islam. It was a purely intellectual
experiment; and it revealed to me, within a very short time, the right
solution. I realized that the one and only reason for the social and cultural
decay of the Muslims consisted in the fact that they had gradually ceased to
follow the teachings of Islam in spirit. Islam was still there; but it was a
body without soul. The very element which once had stood for the strength of
the Muslim world was now responsible for its weakness: Islamic society had been
built, from the very outset, on religious foundations alone, and the weakening
of the foundations has necessarily weakened the cultural structure -- and
possibly might cause its ultimate disappearance.
The more I understood how concrete and how
immensely practical the teachings of Islam are, the more eager became my
questioning as to why the Muslims had abandoned their full application to real
life. I discussed this problem with many thinking Muslims in almost all the
countries between the Libyan Desert and the Pamirs, between the Bosphorus and
the Arabian Sea. It almost became an obsession which ultimately overshadowed
all my other intellectual interests in the world of Islam. The questioning
steadily grew in emphasis -- until I, a non-Muslim, talked to Muslims as if I
were to defend Islam from their negligence and indolence. The progress was
imperceptible to me, until one day -- it was in autumn 1925, in the mountains
of Afghanistan -- a young provincial Governor said to me: “But you are a
Muslim, only you don’t know it yourself.” I was struck by these words and
remained silent. But when I came back to Europe once again, in 1926, I saw that
the only logical consequence of my attitude was to embrace Islam.
So much about the circumstances of my becoming a
Muslim. Since then I was asked, time and again: “Why did you embrace Islam ? What
was it that attracted you particularly ?” -- and I must confess: I don’t know
of any satisfactory answer. It was not any particular teaching that attracted
me, but the whole wonderful, inexplicably coherent structure of moral teaching
and practical life program. I could not say, even now, which aspect of it
appeals to me more than any other. Islam appears to me like a perfect work of
architecture. All its parts are harmoniously conceived to complement and
support each other: nothing is superfluous and nothing lacking, with the result
of an absolute balance and solid composure. Probably this feeling that
everything in the teachings and postulates of Islam is “in its proper place,”
has created the strongest impression on me. There might have been, along with
it, other impressions also which today it is difficult for me to analyze. After
all, it was a matter of love; and love is composed of many things; of our
desires and our loneliness, of our high aims and our shortcomings, of our
strength and our weakness. So it was in my case. Islam came over me like a
robber who enters a house by night; but, unlike a robber, it entered to remain
for good.
Ever since then I endeavored to learn as much as
I could about Islam. I studied the Quran and the Traditions of the Prophet (may
the mercy and blessings of God be upon him); I studied the language of Islam
and its history, and a good deal of what has been written about it and against
it. I spent over five years in the Hijaz and Najd, mostly in al-Madinah, so
that I might experience something of the original surroundings in which this
religion was preached by the Arabian Prophet. As the Hijaz is the meeting
centre of Muslims from many countries, I was able to compare most of the
different religious and social views prevalent in the Islamic world in our
days. Those studies and comparisons created in me the firm conviction that
Islam, as a spiritual and social phenomenon, is still, in spite of all the
drawbacks caused by the deficiencies of the Muslims, by far the greatest
driving force mankind has ever experienced; and all my interest became, since
then, centered around the problem of its regeneration.
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