A Muslim Convert Once Before

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ The following is an adaptation of an extract from Shaykh Muhammad Asad Leopold Weiss’s ( r.a. ) “Road to Mecca,” and is about his conversation with Dr. Chaim Azriel Weizmann.   Shaykh Muhammad Asad ( r.a. ) was born Leopold Weiss, and he was also a Jew.   So, this is a conversation between two ethnic Jews, one a Muslim convert and the other, a Zionist leader.   Shaykh Muhammad Asad ( r.a. ) began, “Well – how can you ever hope to make Palestine your homeland in the face of the vehement opposition of the Arabs who, after all, are in the majority of the country?”   The Zionist leader shrugged his shoulders, and answered drily, “We expect they will not be in a majority after a few years.”   “Perhaps so.   You have been dealing with this problem for years, and must know the situation better than I do.   But quite apart from the political difficulties which Arab opposition may or may not put in your way – does n...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ   Shaykh Muhammad Asad Leopold Weiss ( r.a. ) wrote , in “The Road to Mecca”, about his conversation with Imam Muhammad Muswthafa al-Maraghi ( r.a. ) of Al-Azhar:   “Do you see those scholars over there?” he asked me.   “They are like those sacred cows in India which, I am told eat up all the printed paper they can find in the streets ...”   He continued, “Yes, they gobble up all the printed pages from books that have been written centuries ago, but they do not digest them.   They no longer think for themselves; they read and repeat, read and repeat, and the students who listen to them learn only to read and repeat, generation after generation.”   “But, Shaykh Muswthafa,” he interposed, “Al-Azhar is, after all, the central seat of Islamic learning, and the oldest university in the world!   One encounters its name on nearly every page of Muslim cultural history.   What about all the great thinkers, the t...