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Mohummed Assad A Jewish converter to Islam
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A Jewish converter to Islam By Dr: Abd Al-Mou'ety AL-Dalaty Translated by : Mr Magdy Abd Al-Shafy With stars veiled with clouds ; The night enwraps caravans way ; In the barren desert ,Lost are they ; Yet , when night died away ; A traveler descries his footsteps with no eyes to see ; ( Amr Al-Amery Collection of poetry " Leiopeid Fas , an Austrian Jew , who studied philosophy and ethics in Venice university and became a journalist and mastered this job . He became a reporter in the eastern area of the Arab and Islamic world .He made his stay in Jerusalem . Later , he visited Cairo and met Moustfa Al-Maragy and exchanged with him opinions regarding "religions " . He ended his long search and thinking in the light of Islam with the fact that the soul and the body are two interrelated things that is essential to the human life ,that God has created and planned . He , thinking that learning the Arabic language is necessary to understand Islam , began to learn Arabic in Al-Azhar colonnade –as it was the habit at that time -though he was at that time still a Jew His story with religion of Islam He was man who was concerned with the search for the reality and he sometimes felt grieved and perplexed as there was a wide gap between the backwardness of the Moslem life and the illuminating and fruitful facts in their religion . Being interested in Islam , he was once debating with someone and was advocating Islam castigating the Moslems for their languidness and desisting from participating in the march of civilization , to his surprise ,someone surprised him saying " You are Moslem but you are not mindful of that " He laughed saying " I am not a Moslem but I realized the perfection and balance in Islam and I , as a result , got angry when I saw its adherents neglect it .!!" Through this simple incident , we should learn not to overlook the goodness and the energy inside any human being as we are too weak to know the man that the Divine Dispensation might chose . Whoever among us has not undergone a deflection or a turning point made by a word ,a meeting or a situation ?!!! Whoever among us found himself resisting the wisdom of the generous ؟!! Converting into Islam – to Mohummed Assad – was a cure for despair , loss and discomfiture and a clear evidence to the cogency of Islam that polarizes the truth –seekers … Dr Abd Al-Wahab Azzam says commenting on that "What he did was the responsive reaction of a good character to the good morals and the understanding and the admiration of a mindful heart of the true sound nature of the human being and the realization of illuminated mind to truth , goodness and ethics .[2] After converting into Islam , Mouhummed Assad did pilgrimage and participated with Omer Al-Mokhatar , the Libyan warrior , in his holy war against the imperialistic Italians at that time . He then made his way to Pakistan where he met the poet of Islam Mohummed Iquibal . In Pakistan he worked as a dean of the Islamic Studies Institute and authored many books that rose him high among the most brilliant Islamic thinkers in modern time . Prime among his various renowned books , his masterpiece " Islam at the cross roads" . He also authored the book " The way to Mecca" . He also translated the meaning of the Holy Quran and the famous book of Saheh Al-Bokhary – a famous reference of prophet Mohummed sayings and instructions – into English In fact , he was a unique traveler in the world of thought and spirit in addition to the material world . Mohummed Assad says : He says " Islam reached my heart in a form of successive glimpses of light that settled in my heart for ever and what really attracted me to Islam is the great perfect harmonious structure that is beyond any description . Islam could be allegorically described as a perfectly built structure , in which every part was formulated to integrate the other ……Islam , though all the obstacles made by the backwardness of the Moslems , is still a mental juggernaut ever known . So my wishes clustered together to surface it a gain [3] Islam makes its adherents look at all the sides of life in a balanced way , it gives the same interest to both the Worldly life and the Hereafter life ; it gives the same interest to the material and the spiritual life ; it also gives the same interest to the individual and the society he lives in , it takes us by hand to the way in which we can make the best use of the energy latent in ourselves . Islam is not a way among the many ways that presumably lead us but it is the sole perfect way that is matchless . The man who received these instructions to guide people can not be among the many guides but truly he is the sole guide . " If we reject that man whom God vouchsafed humanity with and sent him a mercy to all nations of the world ,irrespective of the time and the place , this means nothing but we reject God's mercy ![4] Islam is not a mere philosophy -as most thinker consider other religions -but it a complete integrated way and technique to this life . Contrary to all the other religions , Islam stand alone to stress the fact that the complete perfection could be attained in this life and it does not entail the mortification of the flesh as away of attaining this perfection . Contrary to the other religion , Islam alone gives man the freedom to enjoy his life to the utmost in the time when one adheres to his spiritual life . Islam doesn't set the contempt of this life as a condition for salvation in the hereafter …In Islam you not only have the right to benefit by your life to the utmost degree but also it is your duty to do so … Every Moslem has to extract his best potential powers so as to benefit by this life, that God has bestowed on him and to support the other in their spiritual ,social and material efforts . When Islam says that man can reach the state of perfection in this life , it stipulates the benefit by all the phases of life in his lifetime [5] In his pilgrimage Mohummed Assad describes his psychological state during the pilgrimage rituals saying " here we are moving filled with happiness and in complete surrender to a limitless beatitude and in my ears the wind echoes saying " you will no longer be at loss and stranger , surely you will not …on my right hand I have brothers and on my left hand there are brothers whom I don't know and yet they are not strangers to me . I feel in this trail, that emits voices of doxology of God as if we are one body moving to one end, in our hearts we have the same glimpse of faith that illuminated the hearts of the companions of the prophets . My brother knows well that they fall short to be like their forefathers but they are still keeping the promise and that they will fulfill it.[6] No longer does a word echoes in my mind but the words " Here I am God , at your service " and the echo and growling of blood in my ears –these words in Arabic have many meanings , among its meaning " here I am God in complete submission to Your Will – Here I am God a humble servant or worshipper seeking your pleasure …so many meanings of this phrase !!! Then we reached " Kabba " and I moved to circumambulate the Kabba along with a bulk of the pilgrims and I felt that I was a part of a flood moving a round –I became a part of a mass in a motion in an orbit . Time –seemed to me – as if it came to halt and the time slowed down …this place was axis of the world [7] To go out from our declining circumstances , Mohummed Assad focusing on the best way to deal with this problem , says we have to feel ashamed and feel this shame all the time and feel its bitterness and we have to get rid of the spirit of the unjustifiable excuse which is connotation to mental defeatism in ourselves and instead of subduing Islam to the western criterion , we should make Islam the criterion on which we assess the world . The second step – He continues to say – we should adhere to the Sunna of the prophet and while doing this we should understand it by heart and soul .[8] Translated by Mr : Magdy Abd Al-Shafy · * * The Book of " I won Mohummed and didn't lose Jesus Arabic references (2) (مجلة العربي) العدد 497 – مقال د. علي القريشي . |
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