Insha Marri's Blog

Road to Mecca by Mohammad Asad is a wonderful book of its kind because it has some unique features that give it many advantages over other books. It is more looks like an autobiography with a touch of spiritual mass that carrying a style of analytical narration of the political scenario of Middle East region of years around 1950 by the view point of the author.

Muhammad Asad was born as Leopold Weiss in 1900 CE in the city of Lvov (then a part of Austro-Hungary but now Ukraine). He moved to Berlin in the year of 1920, after from getting a journalist degree, he traveled to British mandate Palestine. It was there that he first came into contact with Arabs and Muslims. He embraced Islam there and changed his name and then began a long journey into Muslim lands and minds that eventually gave him a chance to look and analysis of the whole Arabian Peninsula and Middle East region with a different perspective. He performed Hajj and traveled all over the Arabia on a camel and the book “Road to Mecca” is mostly narrating the Author’s journey of same years.

The book first published in August 1954 and soon become a focus of critical acclaim by many politicians and intellectuals. This was the third book of Muhammad Asad that gets published. The same title also gets published in 1954 in London too and later on reprinted by the Islamic Book Trust, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia, in 1996. This edition comprises 375 pages and is divided into twelve chapters:
Thirst
Beginning of the Road
Winds
Voices
Spirit and Flesh
Dreams
Midway
Jinns
Persian letter
Dajjal
Jihad
End of the Road.

This book does not look like an autobiography in nature but for many critical analysts, it does have many parts that concerned with the life of the author directly and they count it an autobiography of Mohammad Asad.

As mentioned above that Mohammad Asad was born to a Jewish Family but later on converted to Islam after closely analyses the teachings of Islam and its comparison with the teachings of Judaism. This book contains many explanations from the author about his reverting to Islam. He writes: “”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; and the result is a structure of absolute balance and solid composure.”
“It was not Muslims that had made Islam great; it was Islam that had made the Muslims great”. You may be familiar with this quote for long time but you would be surprised to know that these words are the words of Mohammad Asad, who disagrees with the stereotype western perception in this book that Islam actually is no more the a movement of Arab nationalism.

There is no doubt that “Road to Mecca” is considered today more political than a spiritual book by its readers but the title is clearly indicating that it does have the essence of spiritual message too.

It is a very old book, first published more than 50 years ago but I think it is worth for reading.