Who is Imran Khan’s favorite neo-Muslim scholar Allama Asad?

The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, wrote in his autobiography ‘Me Aur Mera Pakistan’ that apart from Charles Eaton, the neo-Muslim who influenced me the most was Allama Muhammad Asad (Leopold Voice). Many people are asking who is Allama Asad and what did he say that impressed Imran Khan. In this article we will try to answer these questions.

Allama Asad was from Austria and was born in 1900 in a Jewish family. He was named Leopold Weiss. His father wanted him to become a scientist but he had no interest in physical sciences. He also spent some time in the Austrian army. At the end of World War I, he entered the University of Vienna and studied philosophy and art for two years.
Like many young people in Europe, he suffered from mental confusion and troubled imagination. One result of this was that doubts began to arise in their minds about the correctness of their traditional religion. Eventually they turned away from Judaism.
He left the university against his father’s wishes and moved to Berlin, the capital of Germany, in 1920. There he found a good job as a journalist, but he soon quit and in 1922 moved to Jerusalem to live with his uncle, who was working there as a psychiatrist.

During his stay in Palestine, he started sending reports about the situation there to Western newspapers. As a result, a prestigious German newspaper appointed him as its correspondent in the Middle East. After that, he signed correspondence agreements with two newspapers in Switzerland.
Two and a half years later, he again moved to Berlin. After a short stay there, he again left for the Middle East. He arrived in Cairo in 1924. He traveled to Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Hijaz, Iraq, Kurdistan, Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asian cities of Samarkand and Bukhara in connection with his journalistic duties for two years. He returned to Berlin once again in 1926 and rejoined his old newspaper. He married a woman named Elsa who was 22 years older than him.

During this time, his spiritual transformation took place and he accepted Islam in 1926 at the hands of Dr. Abdul Jabbar Khairy.

Asad has described Western civilization as antichrist and satanic civilization. He ended his relationship with this civilization in January 1927 and went to Hijaz. During Hajj in the same month, his wife died due to malaria. He stayed in Saudi Arabia for about five years. During this period, he became one of the close friends of Ibn Saud, the founder of Saudi Arabia. He married an Arab woman there, but the marriage ended within a few months. After that, he got married for the third time, with whom his only son, Talal Asad, was born.
After that, the Sanusi movement that started in the southern regions of Libya became the center of their hopes. He also met Umar al-Mukhtar, commander of Sanusi Mujahideen, in Al-Barqa after several weeks of dangerous travel. A few months after their return, the Italian army defeated the Mujahideen. Umar al-Mukhtar was arrested and executed on September 15, 1931. This news was a source of great disappointment for him.

He migrated to India from Medina in 1932. Personalities like Allama Iqbal, Maulana Sulaiman Nadvi, Syed Abul Ala Maududi and Nawab Bhopal Hamidullah Khan openly appreciated his knowledge and passion for Islam. Maududi Sahib wrote about him in a letter: ‘This is the most valuable diamond among all the spoils (booty) that Islam has received from Europe in recent times. The spirit of Islam has completely dissolved in it. And he has understood Islam better than those scholars who have been engaged in teaching for 50 years. (According to Maududi letters).
Allama Iqbal’s desire was to establish a center of knowledge where religious and worldly scholars would gather and present Islam according to the requirements of modern times and write books that would create an intellectual revolution.

One of the fulfillment of his wish was due to Chaudhry Niaz Ali’s educational project Dar-ul-Islam. Niaz Ali was a wealthy landowner. In 1935, he expressed his intention to establish an institution in a town called Jamalpur, a few miles away from Pathankot in Gurdaspur, where able and visionary scholars would teach the Qur’an to modern scholars and scholars and conduct research on Islamic topics. do

Assad hailed the project as an antidote to the pervasive poison of modern Western education. Allama Iqbal also took a keen interest in this project and said that he would make this institution such that its influence would reach Europe. According to him, the greatest need of Muslims was the creation of modern Islamic jurisprudence as the greatest need of Muslims. He wanted to take this job from this institution. He wanted Asad to head this organization but it was not possible for him and thus Maududi Sahib became the head of this organization. However, the dream of Allama Iqbal, Muhammad Asad and Syed Maududi to prepare a competent group of experts in religious and modern sciences could not materialize.

Assad lived behind the wall for almost six years during World War II. After his release, he settled in a town called Dalhousie. Dalhousie is a healthy hill station located at a distance of eighty kilometers from Pathankot. He started an English magazine called Arafat to free the minds of Muslims from blind devotions and decadent rituals.
After the establishment of Pakistan, he moved to Lahore. In Lahore, he was made the administrator of Islamic Reconstruction Department. He compiled an outline of the Islamic constitution. The central government expressed concerns to the Punjab government about the activities of Muhammad Asad and his department. He was accused of pushing the state towards reaction. As a result, they had to submit a detailed memorandum to the central government. In this memoir, he severely criticized the scholars’ understanding of Islam and their concept of the Islamic state and presented a dynamic and progressive concept of the Islamic state and Sharia. But opposition from the ruling circles did not abate and the department was abolished in early 1949.
After that, his services were handed over to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Initially, he was appointed as the moderator of the Middle East division. Later he was sent to New York. There he wanted to marry a neo-Muslim woman named Paula Hamida, but Prime Minister Khawaja Nazimuddin refused to allow the marriage. Badal therefore resigned from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1952. He also worked in Punjab University for about eight months in 1957.
Muhammad Asad planned the translation and commentary in three volumes. He had completed the work of translation and commentary by 1976. However, after the publication of the first volume in October 1964, the printing and publication of the second and third volumes continued to be delayed. In the publication and distribution of the first volume, Kontakt Alam-e-Islami played a key role in Saudi Arabia’s Ima. Kontakt Alam-e-Islami also bought and distributed its prescriptions in large numbers. Asad used rational interpretations in the translation and interpretation of some Qur’anic verses, due to which some members of the association raised objections.
So a committee was formed by the liaison to review the translation. Among its members were Syed Abul Ala Maududi and Syed Abul Hasan Ali Nadwi. The members of the committee recommended that Asad’s translation and interpretation of the Qur’an be banned from publication and distribution on the grounds that it was incompatible with traditional orthodox thought. This decision shows their heart. He wrote in a letter to Dr. Rashid Jalandhri that these so-called scholars are afraid of every breath of fresh air. He expressed regret that these people have made Islam a sham. For many years, he tried to resolve this matter through the World Islamic Association, but he did not succeed. Due to this dispute, financial problems arose for them.

Asad was an ardent supporter of Ijtihad. He does not agree with those scholars who have made a long list of conditions for ijtihad, making it practically impossible. According to him, the ancient capital of jurisprudence has become obsolete and ineffective (the creation of an Islamic state is modern). It is also worth mentioning here that in the beginning Muhammad Asad’s point of view about Jihad and fighting was very strict, but with time it softened. In his last writings, he has described Jihad (fighting) as purely a defensive measure. According to him, there is no room for aggressive and proactive war in Islam.

He seems to criticize the ideas of Sayyed Qutb and Ayatollah Khomeini regarding the use of force and revolution for the purpose of establishing an Islamic state. He says that the concept of political revolution is completely western which is being forced into the minds of Muslims. Unlike the majority of scholars, they do not consider the existence of different political parties in an Islamic state as anti-Islam. Regarding the establishment of Majlis Shura, his opinion is also different from the scholars who are in favor of its formation through nomination.
Perhaps because of such changes, Maududi Sahib started criticizing them. He wrote in one of his letters that Assad was ‘an orthodox and practicing Muslim in the early days of Islam’ but later he gradually adopted the style of the so-called enlightened Muslims, just like the reformist Jews. Recently he has divorced his Arab Muslim wife and married a modern girl and thus his defection has become tragically final.’
He stayed for some time in Geneva and then went to Morocco. In 1978, he established a publishing house in Gibraltar called Dar Al-Andalus. He moved to Portugal in 1983 and moved to Spain four years later. The last years of his life were spent in Malaga, Spain. He died there on February 20, 1992. He was buried in the Muslim cemetery of Granada. His funeral arrangements were made by the Saudi government.

He was a wonderful free man!