Der Weg nach Mekka

A Road to Mecca - The Journey of Muhammad Asad

A 2008, 92/58 min, HDV, 35mm
Mischief Films

In the early 1920s Leopold Weiss, a Jew born in Lemberg, travelled to the Middle East. The desert fascinated him, and Islam became his new spiritual home. He left his Jewish roots behind, converted to Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Asad. He became one of the most important Muslims of the 20th century, first as an advisor at the royal court of Saudi Arabia, and later translating the Koran into English. Asad was also a co-founder of Pakistan and its ambassador to the UN. The director follows his fading footsteps, leading from the Arabian desert to Ground Zero. He finds a man who was not looking for adventures but rather wanted to act as a mediator between East and West. “A Road To Mecca” takes this opportunity to deal with a heated debate which is currently becoming more and more important.

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Synopsis

A ROAD TO MECCA The Journey Of Muhammad Asad follows the path taken by Leopold Weiss, alias Muhammad Asad, from the outskirts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to Israel, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and New York. The places he lived and visited are examined, and at the same time a complex portrait of Islam unfolds.

Along the way Asad’s thoughts are juxtaposed with current problems between East and West. The film crew visits his friends and family, experts and scientists, admirers of his work and numerous chance acquaintances who know little, a great deal, or who will learn about this now-forgotten reformer.

The fact that an Austrian is the key to a better understanding of these worlds is somewhat of a surprise. Muhammad Asad was a visionary whose thoughts and ideas nearly made him a Martin Luther for Islam. A forgotten writer, philosopher, dreamer, and also one of Pakistan’s founding fathers and ambassadors to the UN. His writings about the world view, law and philosophy of Islam, and his translation of the Quran, which scientists and academics even today consider his translation one of the very best, exercised enormous influence on modern theological thought in this religion. He saw himself as a kind of mediator, though his religious convictions and political sympathies were clearly divided, and their problematic nature is repeatedly depicted in the film. As a result of his work Asad became one of the most significant cultural intermediaries between the East and West, which makes it surprising that solely a small number of people are now familiar with the name Muhammad Asad.

In its structural principle of capturing statements and counterstatements, A ROAD TO MECCA The Journey Of Muhammad Asad studiously avoids facile answers, and it insistently points out contradictions. The areas where contact takes place and conflict has developed in the present day are depicted and examined from a different perspective. Biographical details, quotes from his writings, private photographs and film material are interwoven to reveal a variety of lives in a touching way: simple Saudi Bedouins, Palestinian refugees, Ariel Sharon’s advisors, Pakistani Asadians (as his followers are called) and the individuals Asad met on his journey.

With his ideas always present in the background, the film shoots down some deeply rooted prejudices, at the same time illustrating the great distance separating fundamentalist ideas that support terrorism and a profoundly humane Islam. A Palestinian protagonist sums it up: “Asad taught Islam’s true ideas, that it forbids terrorism. Islam is peace. Islam is brotherhood.” Though at the beginning A ROAD TO MECCA The Journey Of Muhammad Asad is set mostly in the Arab world, by the time scenes of a 9/11 memorial ceremony in New York are shown it becomes clear that fanaticism represents a global problem.

In the end the story the film tells is also one of tragic failure. Archival footage of Leopold Weiss, alias Muhammad Asad, shows a frail, wise old man who still had a sharp mind. While he may have been naïve in his youth, this was more than compensated by his critical view of humanity in later years. “I fell in love with Islam,” he said matter-of-factly shortly before his death in 1992, “but I overestimated the Muslims.”

Georg Misch has successfully portrayed both the positive and negative sides of the two worlds with sensitivity and objectivity. Nothing is left out, not even the fact that, as Asad’s life came to an end, he was deeply disappointed by the state of the Islamic world, its intellectual isolation and the intolerance of extremists.

A ROAD TO MECCA - The Journey Of Muhammad Asad reveals the timeless nature and continuing relevance of the life and work of this outstanding Austrian.

Muhammad Asad

“Simple“ is the last adjective that should be applied to the story of Muhammad Asad. It began in 1900 with the birth of Leopold Weiss in Lvov (then part of the Habsburg empire, now Ukraine). He had a very religious upbringing, the family moved to Vienna in 1914 and aged 20, he went on to Berlin to pursue his dream of becoming a journalist. In 1922, he travelled to Palestine and was repelled by the Zionists actions there. He got into a heated argument with Chaim Weizman, the leader of the Zionist movement but was fascinated by his first contacts with Arabs and Muslims. What started out as a naïve orientalist fascination went much further: For him, the complexity and spirituality of Islam was a counterbalance to the Western materialism of the 1920’s that he despised so much. He travelled extensively in the Middle East and the contact with Bedouins was especially influential on him.

In 1926 he converted to Islam and took the name Muhammad Asad. He did the pilgrimage to Mecca and immersed himself in the study of the Koran. Muslim renaissance became Asad’s goal, he travelled far and wide, conferred with kings, leaders as well as common people and became a close friend of King Ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia.

In 1932, on a journey through BritishIndia, Asad became a close friend of philospher and poet Muhammed Iqbal, who asked him to join his efforts to create the first Muslim state in 1947 Pakistan. They collaborated on Asad´s book “Islam at the crossroads” which was published in 1934. For the duration of the second world war, he was interned in a camp for enemy aliens while his parents perished in the concentration camps back in Europe.

Throughout his life, Asad campaigned for a better understanding between the Muslim world and the West and published a multitude of highly significant books, hundreds of articles and essays. His magnus opus, however was his commentated translation of the Koran into English, published after 17 years of work in 1980 and dedicated to „people who think.“

He died in 1992 in Andalusia, Spain. 10 years after his death, he remains a virtually unknown person for the general public.

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