Afghanistan, The Winter of 1926
I WAS ON MY WAY from Herat to Kabul and was riding, accompanied by
Ibrahim and an Afghan trooper, through the snow buried mountain valleys and
passes of the Hindu-Kush, in central Afghanistan. It was cold and the snow
was glistening and on all sides stood steep mountains in black and white.
I was sad and, at the same time, strangely happy that day. I was sad
because the people with whom I had been living during the past few months
seemed to be separated by opaque veils from the light and the strength and
the growth which their faith could have given them; and I was happy because
the light and the strength and the growth of that faith stood as near before
my eyes as the black and white mountains- almost to be touched with the
hand. My horse began to limp and something clinked at its hoof: an iron shoe
had become loose and was hanging only by two nails. 'Is there a village nearby where we could find a smith?' I asked our
Afghan companion. 'The village of Deh-Zangi is less than a league away. There is a
blacksmith there and the hakim of the Hazarajat has his castle
there.' And so to Deh-Zangi we rode over glistening snow, slowly, so as not to
tire my horse. The hakim, or district governor, was a young man of short stature
and gay countenance - a friendly man who was glad to have a foreign guest in
the loneliness of his modest castle. Though a close relative of King
Amanullah, he was one of the most unassuming men I had met or was ever to
meet in Afghanistan. He forced me to stay with him for two days. In the evening of the second day we sat down as usual to an opulent
dinner, and afterward a man from the village entertained us with ballads
sung to the accompaniment of a three-stringed lute. He sang in Pashtu- a
language which I did not understand - but some of the Persian words he used
sprang up vividly against the background of the warm, carpeted room and the
cold gleam of snow that came through the windows. He sang, I remember, of
David's fight with Goliath - of the fight of faith against brute power - and
although I could not quite follow the words of the song, its theme was clear
to me as it began in humility, then rose in a violent ascent of passion to a
final, triumphant outcry. When it ended, the hakim remarked: 'David was small, but his faith
was great...' I could not prevent myself from adding: 'And you are many, but your faith
is small.' My host looked at me with astonishment, and, embarrassed by what I had
almost involuntarily said, I rapidly began to explain myself. My explanation
took the shape of a torrent of questions: 'How has it come about that you Muslims have lost your self-confidence -
that self-confidence which once enabled you to spread your faith, in less
than a hundred years, from Arabia westward as far as the Atlantic and
eastward deep into China - and now surrender yourselves so easily, so
weakly, to the thoughts and customs of the West? Why can't you, whose
forefathers illumined the world with science and art a time when Europe lay
in deep barbarism and ignorance, summon forth the courage to go back to your
own progressive, radiant faith? How is it that Attaturk, that petty
masquerader who denies all value to Islam, has become to you Muslims a
symbol of "Muslim revival"?' My host remained speechless. It had started to snow outside. Again I felt
that wave of mingled sadness and happiness that I had felt on approaching
Deh-Zangi. I sensed the glory that had been and the shame that was
enveloping these late sons of a great civilization. 'Tell me - how has it come about that the faith of your Prophet and all
its clearness and simplicity has been buried beneath a rubble of sterile
speculation and the hair-splitting of your scholastics? How has it happened
that your princes and great land-owners revel in wealth and luxury while so
many of their Muslim brethren subsist in unspeakable poverty and squalor -
although your Prophet taught that No one may call himself a Faithful who
eats his fill while his neighbor remains hungry? Can you make me
understand why you have brushed woman into the background of your lives -
although the women around the Prophet and his Companions took part in so
grand a manner in the life of their men? How has it come about that so many
of you Muslims are ignorant and so few can even read and write - although
your Prophet declared that Striving after knowledge is a most sacred duty
for every Muslim man and woman and that The superiority of the
learned man over the mere pious is like the superiority of the moon when it
is full over all other stars?' Still my host stared at me without speaking, and I began to think that my
outburst had deeply offended him. The man with the lute, not understanding
Persian well enough to follow me, looked on in wonderment at the sight of
the stranger who spoke with so much passion to the hakim. In the end
the latter pulled his wide yellow sheepskin cloak closer about himself, as
if feeling cold; then he whispered: 'But - you are a Muslim...' I laughed, and replied: 'No, I am not a Muslim, but I have come to see so
much beauty in Islam that it makes me sometimes angry to watch you people
waste it ... Forgive me if I have spoken harshly. I did not speak as an
enemy.' But my host shook his head. 'No, it is as I have said: you are a Muslim,
only you don't know it yourself...Why don't you say, now and here, "There is
no God but God and Muhammad is His Prophet" and become a Muslim in fact, as
you already are in your heart? Say it brother, say it now, and I will go
with you tomorrow to Kabul and take you to the amir, and he will
receive you with open arms as one of us. He will give you houses and gardens
and cattle, and we all will love you. Say it, my brother...' "If I ever do say it, it will be because my mind has been set at rest and
not for the sake of the amir's houses and gardens.' 'But,' he insisted, 'you already know far more about Islam than most of
us; what is it that you have not yet understood?' 'It is not a question of understanding. It is rather a question of being
convinced: convinced that the Koran is really the word of God and not merely
the brilliant creation of a great human mind...' But the words of my Afghan friend never really left me in the months that
followed. From Kabul I rode for weeks through southern Afghanistan - through the
ancient city of Ghazni, from which nearly a thousand years ago the great
Mahmud set out on his conquest of India; through exotic Kandahar, where you
could see the fiercest warrior-tribesmen in all the world; across the
deserts of Afghanistan's southwestern corner; and back to Herat, where my
Afghan trek had started. It was in 1926, toward the winter, that I left Herat on the first stage
of my long homeward journey, which was to take me by train from the Afghan
border to Marv in Russian Turkestan, to Samarkand, Bokhara and Tashkent, and
thence across the Turkoman steppes to the Urals and Moscow. My first (and most lasting) impression of Soviet Russia - at the railway
station of Marv - was a huge, beautifully executed poster which depicted a
young proletarian in blue overalls booting a ridiculous, white-bearded
gentleman, clad in flowing robes, out of a cloud-filled sky. The Russian
legend beneath the poster read: 'Thus have the workers of the Soviet Union
kicked God out of his heaven! Issued by the Bezbozhniki (Godless)
Association of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.' Such officially sanctioned antireligious propaganda obtruded itself
everywhere one went: in public buildings, in the streets and preferably, in
the vicinity of houses of worship. In Turkestan these were, naturally, for
the most part mosques. While prayer congregations were not explicitly
forbidden, the authorities did everything to deter people from attending
them. I was often told, especially in Bokhara and Tashkent, that police
spies would take down the name of every person who entered a mosque; copies
of the Koran were being impounded and destroyed; and a favourite pastime of
the young bezbozhniki was to throw heads of pigs into mosques; a
truly charming custom. It was with a feeling of relief that I crossed the Polish frontier after
weeks of journeying through Asiatic and European Russia. I went straight to
Frankfurt and made my appearance in the now familiar precincts of my
newspaper. It did not take me long to find out that during my absence my
name had become famous and that I was now considered one of the most
outstanding foreign correspondents of Central Europe. Some of my articles -
especially those dealing with the intricate religious psychology of the
Iranians - had come to the attention of prominent orientalist scholars and
received a more than passing recognition. On the strength of this
achievement, I was invited to deliver a series of lectures at the Academy of
Geopolitics in Berlin - where I was told that has never happened before that
a man of my age (I was not yet twenty-six) had been accorded such a
distinction. Other articles of more general interest had been reproduced,
with the permission of the Frankfurter Zeitung, by many other
newspapers; one article, I learned, had been reprinted nearly thirty times.
All in all, my Iranian wanderings had been extremely fruitful... . . . . . . . . . IT WAS AT THIS TIME that I married Elsa. The two years I had been away
from Europe had not weakened our love but rather strengthened it, and it was
with a happiness I had never felt before that I brushed aside her
apprehensions about the great difference in our ages. 'But how can you marry me?' she argued. 'You are not yet twenty-six, and
I am over forty. Think of it: when you will be thirty, I will be forty-five;
and when you will be forty, I will be an old woman...' I laughed: 'What does it matter? I cannot imagine a future without
you.' And finally she gave in. I did not exaggerate when I said that I could not imagine a future
without Elsa. Her beauty and her instinctive grace made her so utterly
attractive to me that I could not even look at any other woman; and her
sensitive understanding of what I wanted of life illumined my own hopes and
desires and made them more concrete, more graspable than my own thinking
could ever have done. On one occasion - it must have been about a week after we had been
married - she remarked: 'How strange that you, of all people, should
depreciate mysticism in religion...You are a mystic yourself - a sensuous
kind of mystic, reaching out with your fingertips toward the life around
you, seeing an intricate, mystical pattern in everyday things - in many
things that to other people appear so commonplace...But the moment you turn
to religion, you are all brain. With most people it would be the other way
around...' But Elsa was not really puzzled. She knew what I was searching for when I
spoke to her of Islam; and although she may not have felt the same urgency
as I did, her love made her share my quest. Often we would read the Koran together and discuss its ideas; and Elsa,
like myself, became more and more impressed by the inner cohesion between
its moral teaching and its practical guidance. According to the Koran, God
did not call for blind subservience on the part of man but rather appealed
to his intellect; He did not stand apart from man's destiny but was
nearer to you than the vein in your neck; He did not draw any
dividing line between faith and social behavior; and, what was perhaps most
important, He did not start from the axiom that all life was burdened with a
conflict between matter and spirit and that the way toward the Light
demanded a freeing of the soul from the shackles of the flesh. Every form of
life-denial and self-mortification had been condemned by the Prophet in
sayings like Behold, asceticism is not for us, and there is no
world-renunciation in Islam. The human will to live was not only
recognized as a positive, fruitful instinct but was endowed with the
sanctity of an ethical postulate as well. Man was taught, in effect: You not
only may utilize your life to the full, but you are obliged to do
so. An integrated image of Islam was now emerging with a finality, a
decisiveness that sometimes astounded me. It was taking shape by a process
that could almost be described as a kind of mental osmosis - that is,
without any conscious effort on my part to piece together and 'systematize'
the many fragments of knowledge that had come my way during the past four
years. I saw before me something like a perfect work of architecture, with
all its elements harmoniously conceived to complement and support each
other, with nothing superfluous and nothing lacking - a balance and
composure which gave one the feeling that everything in the outlook and
postulates of Islam was 'in its proper place'. Thirteen centuries ago a man had stood up and said: 'I am only a mortal
man; but He who has created the universe has bidden me to bear His message
to you. In order that you might live in harmony with the plan of His
creation, He has commanded me to remind you of His existence, omnipotence
and omniscience, and to place before you a programmed of behavior. If you
accept this reminder and this programmed, follow me.' This was the essence
of Muhammad's prophetic mission. The social scheme he propounded was of that simplicity which goes
together only with real grandeur. It started from the premise that men are
biological beings with biological needs and are so conditioned by their
Creator that they must live in groups in order to satisfy the full
range of their physical, moral and intellectual requirements: in short, they
are dependent on one another. The continuity of an individual's rise
in spiritual stature (the fundamental objective of every religion) depends
on whether he is helped, encouraged and protected by the people around him.
This human interdependence was the reason why in Islam religion could not be
separated from economics and politics. To arrange practical human relations
in such a way that every individual might find as few obstacles and as much
encouragement as possible in the development of his personality: this, and
nothing else, appeared to be the Islamic concept of the true function of
society. And so it was only natural that the system which the Prophet
Muhammad enunciated in the twenty-three years of his ministry related not
only to matters spiritual but provided a framework for all individual and
social activity as well. It held out the concept not only of individual
righteousness but also for the equitable society which such righteousness
should bring about. It provided the outline of a political community - the
outline only, because the details of man's political needs are time-bound
and therefore variable - as well as a scheme of individual rights and social
duties in which the fact of historical evolution was duly anticipated. The
Islamic code embraced life in all its aspects, moral and physical,
individual and communal; problems of the flesh and of the mind, of sex and
economics, side by side with problems of theology and worship, their
legitimate place in the Prophet's teachings, and nothing that pertained to
life seemed too trivial to be drawn into the orbit of religious thought -
not even such 'mundane' issues as commerce, inheritance, property rights of
ownership of land. All the clauses of Islamic Law were devised for the equal benefit of all
members of the community, without distinction of birth, race, sex or
previous social allegiance. No special benefits were reserved for the
community's founder of his descendants. High and low were, in a social
sense, nonexistent terms; and nonexistent was the concept of class. All
rights, duties and opportunities applied equally to all who professed faith
in Islam. No priest was required to mediate between man and God, for He
knows what lies open in their hands before them and what they conceal behind
their backs. No loyalty was recognized beyond the loyalty to god and His
Prophet, to one's parents, and to the community that had as its goal the
establishment of God's kingdom on earth; and this precluded that kind of
loyalty which says, 'right or wrong, my country' or 'my nation'. To
elucidate this principle, the Prophet very pointedly said on more than one
occasion: He is not of us who proclaims the cause of tribal partisanship;
and he is not of us who fights in the cause of tribal partisanship; and he
is not of us who dies for the sake of tribal partisanship. Before Islam, all political organizations - even those on a theocratic or
semi-theocratic basis - had been limited by the narrow concepts of tribe and
tribal homogeneity. Thus, the god-kings of ancient Egypt had no thought
beyond the horizon of the Nile valley and its inhabitants, and in the early
theocratic state of the Hebrews, when God was supposed to rule, it was
necessarily the God of the children of Israel. In the structure of Koranic
thought, on the other hand, considerations of descent of tribal adherence
had no place. Islam postulated a self-contained political community which
cut across the conventional divisions of tribe and race. In this respect,
Islam and Christianity might be said to have had the same aim: both
advocated an international community of people united by their adherence to
a common ideal; but whereas Christianity had contended itself with a mere
moral advocacy of this principle and, by advising its followers to give
Caesar his due, had restricted its universal appeal to the spiritual sphere,
Islam unfolded before the world the vision of a political organization in
which God-consciousness would be the sole basis of all social institutions.
Thus - fulfilling what Christianity had left unfulfilled - Islam inaugurated
a new chapter in the development of man: the first instance of an open,
ideological society in contrast with the closed, racially or geographically
limited, societies of the past. The message of Islam envisaged and brought to life a civilization in
which there was no room for nationalism, no 'vested interests', no class
divisions, no Church, no priesthood, no hereditary nobility; in fact, no
hereditary functions at all. The aim was to establish a theocracy with
regard to God and a democracy between man and man. The most important
feature of that new civilization - a feature which set it entirely apart
from all other movements in human history - was the fact that it had been
conceived in terms of, and arose from, a voluntary agreement of the people
concerned. Here, social progress was not, as in all other communities and
civilizations known to history, a result of pressure and counterpressure of
conflicting interests, but part and parcel of an original 'constitution'. In
other words, a genuine social contract lay at the root of things: not as a
figure of speech formulated by later generations of power-holders in defence
of their privileges, but as the real, historic source of Islamic
civilization. The Koran said: Behold, God has bought of the Faithful
their persons and their possessions, offering them Paradise in
return...Rejoice, then, in the bargain you have made, for this is the
triumph supreme. I knew that this 'triumph supreme' - the one instance of a real social
contract recorded by history - was realized only during a very short period;
or, rather, only during a very short period was a large-scale attempt made
to realize it. Less than a century after the Prophet's death, the political
form of pristine Islam began to be corrupted and, in the following
centuries, the original programme was gradually pushed into the background.
Clannish wranglings for power took the place of a free agreement of free men
and women; hereditary kingship, as inimical to the political concept of
Islam as polytheism is to its theological concept, soon came into being -
and with it, dynastic struggles and intrigues, tribal preferences and
oppressions, and the usual degradation of religion to the status of a
handmaiden of political power: in short, the entire host of 'vested
interests' so well known to history. For a time, the great thinkers of Islam
tried to keep its true ideology aloft and pure; but those who came after
them were of lesser stature and lapsed after two or three centuries into a
morass of intellectual convention, ceased to think for themselves and became
content to repeat the dead phrases of earlier generations - forgetting that
every human opinion is time-bound and fallible and therefore in need of
eternal renewal. The original impetus of Islam, so tremendous in its
beginnings, sufficed for a while to carry the Muslim commonwealth to great
cultural heights - to that splendid vision of scientific, literary and
artistic achievement which historians describe as the golden Age of Islam;
but within a few more centuries this impetus also died down for want of
spiritual nourishment, and Muslim civilization became more and more stagnant
and devoid of creative power. . . . . . . . . I HAD NO ILLUSIONS as to the present state of affairs in the Muslim
world. The four years I had spent in those countries had shown me that while
Islam was still alive, perceptible in the world-view of its adherents and in
their silent admission of its ethical premises, they themselves were like
people paralyzed, unable to translate their beliefs into fruitful action.
But what concerned me more than the failure of present-day Muslims to
implement the scheme of Islam were the potentialities of that scheme itself.
It was sufficient for me to know that for a short time, quite at the
beginning of Islamic history, a successful attempt had been made to
translate that scheme into practice; and what had seemed possible at one
time might perhaps become really possible at another. What did it matter, I
told myself, that the Muslims had gone astray from the original teaching and
subsided into indolence and ignorance? What did it matter that they did not
live up to the ideal placed before them by the Arabian Prophet thirteen
centuries ago - if the ideal itself still lay open to all who were willing
to listen to its message? And it might well be, I thought, that we latecomers needed that message
even more desperately than did the people of Muhammad's time. They lived in
an environment much simpler than ours, and so their problems and
difficulties had been much easier of solution. The world in which I was
living - the whole of it - was wobbling because of the absence of any
agreement as to what is good and evil spiritually and, therefore, socially
and economically as well. I did not believe that individual man was in need
of 'salvation': but I did believe that modern society was in need of
salvation. More than any previous time, I felt with mounting certainty, this
time of ours was in need of an ideological basis for a new social contract:
it needed a faith that would make us understand the hollowness of material
progress for the sake of progress alone - and nevertheless would give the
life of this world its due; that would show us how to strike a balance
between our spiritual and physical requirements: and thus save us from the
disaster into which we were rushing headlong. . . . . . . . . . IT WOULD NOT BE too much to say that at this period of my life the
problem of Islam - for it was a problem to me - occupied my mind to the
exclusion of everything else, By now my absorption had outgrown its initial
stages, when it had been no more than an intellectual interest in a strange,
if attractive, ideology and culture: it had become a passionate search for
truth. Compared with this search, even the adventurous excitement of the
last two years of travel paled into insignificance: so much so that it
became difficult for me to concentrate on writing the new book which the
editor of the Frankfurter Zeitung was entitled to expect of me. At first Dr Simon viewed indulgently my obvious reluctance to proceed
with the book. After all, I had just returned from my long journey and
deserved some sort of holiday; my recent marriage seemed also to warrant a
respite from the routine of writing. But when the holiday and the respite
began to extent beyond what Dr Simon regarded as reasonable, he suggested
that I should now come down to earth. In retrospect, it seems to me that he was very understanding; but it did
not seem so at the time. His frequent and urgent inquiries about the
progress of 'the book' had an effect contrary to what he intended: I felt
myself unduly imposed upon; and I began to detest the very thought of the
book. I was more concerned with what I had still to discover than with
describing what I had found so far. In the end, Dr Simon made the exasperated observation: ' I don't think
you will ever write this book. What you are suffering from is horror
libri.' Somewhat nettled, I replied: 'Maybe my disease is even more serious than
that. Perhaps I am suffering from horror scribendi.' 'Well, if you are suffering from that,' he retorted sharply, ' do you
think the Frankfurter Zeitung is the proper place for you?' One word led to another and our disagreement grew into a quarrel. On the
same day I resigned from the Frankfurter Zeitung and a week later
left with Elsa for Berlin. I did not, of course intend to give up journalism, for, apart from the
comfortable livelihood and the pleasure (temporarily marred by 'the book')
which writing gave me, it provided me with my only means of returning to the
Muslim world: and to the Muslim world I wanted to return at any cost. But
with the reputation I had achieved over the past four years, it was not
difficult to make new press connections. Very soon after my break with
Frankfurt, I concluded highly satisfactory agreements with three other
newspapers: the Neue Zurcher Zeitung of Zurich, the Telegraaf
of Amsterdam and the Kolnische Zeitung of Cologne. From now on my
articles on the Middle East were to be syndicated by these three newspapers,
which - though perhaps not comparable with the Frankfurter Zeitung -
were among the most important in Europe. For the time being Elsa and I settled down in Berlin, where I intended to
complete my series of lectures at the Academy of Geopolitics and also to
continue my Islamic studies. My old literary friends were glad to see me back, but somehow it was not
easy to take up the threads of our former relations at the point where they
had been left dangling when I went to the Middle East. We had grown
estranged; we no longer spoke the same intellectual language. In particular,
from none of my friends could I elicit anything like understanding for my
preoccupation with Islam. Almost to a man they shook their heads in
puzzlement when I tried to explain to them that Islam, as an intellectual
and social concept, could favourably compare with any other ideology.
Although on occasion they might concede the reasonableness of this or that
Islamic proposition, most of them were of the opinion that the old religions
were a thing of the past, and that our time demanded a new, 'humanistic'
approach. But even those who did not so sweepingly deny all validity to
institutional religion were by no means disposed to give up the popular
Western notion that Islam, being overly concerned with mundane matters,
lacked the 'mystique' which one had a right to expect from religion. It rather surprised me to discover that the very aspect of Islam which
had attracted me in the first instance - the absence of a division of
reality into physical and spiritual compartments and the stress on reason as
a way to faith - appealed so little to intellectuals who otherwise were wont
to claim for reason dominant role in life: it was in the religious sphere
alone that they instinctively receded from their habitually so 'rational'
and 'realistic' position. And in this respect I could discern no difference
whatever between those few of my friends who were religiously inclined and
the many to whom religion had ceased to be more than an outmoded
convention. In time, however, I came to understand where their difficulty lay. I
began to perceive that in the eyes of people brought up within the orbit of
Christian thought - with its stress on the 'supernatural' allegedly inherent
in every true religious experience - a predominantly rational approach
appeared to detract from a religion's spiritual value. This attitude was by
no means confined to believing Christians. Because of Europe's long, almost
exclusive association with Christianity, even the agnostic European had
subconsciously learned to look upon all religious experience through the
lens of Christian concepts, and would regard it as 'valid' only if it was
accompanied by a thrill of numinous awe before things hidden and beyond
intellectual comprehension. Islam did not fulfill this requirement: it
insisted on a co-ordination of the physical and spiritual aspects of life on
a perfectly natural plane. In fact, its world-view was so different from the
Christian, on which most of the West's ethical concepts were based, that to
accept the validity of the one inescapably led to questioning the validity
of the other. As for myself, I knew now that I was being driven to Islam; but a last
hesitancy made me postpone the final, irrevocable step. The thought of
embracing Islam was like the prospect of venturing out onto a bridge that
spanned an abyss between two different worlds: a bridge so long that one
would have to reach the point of no return before the other end became
visible. I was well aware that if I became a Muslim I would have to cut
myself off from the world in which I had grown up. No other outcome was
possible. One could not really follow the call of Muhammad and still
maintain one's inner links with a society that was ruled by diametrically
opposed concepts. But - was Islam truly a message from God or merely the
wisdom of a great, but fallible man...? . . . . . . . . ONE DAY - it was in September 1926 - Elsa and I found ourselves
travelling in the Berlin subway. It was an upper-class compartment. My eye
fell casually on a well-dressed man opposite me, apparently a well-to-do
businessman, with a beautiful briefcase on his knees and large diamond ring
on his hand. I though idly how well the portly figure of this man fitted
into the picture of prosperity which one encountered everywhere in Central
Europe in those days: a prosperity the more prominent as it had come after
years of inflation, when all economic life had been topsy-turvy and
shabbiness of appearance the rule. Most of the people were now well dressed
and well fed, and the man opposite me was therefore no exception. But when I
looked at his face, I did not seem to be looking at a happy face. He
appeared to be worried: and not merely worried but acutely unhappy, with
eyes staring vacantly ahead and the corners of his mouth drawn in as if in
pain - but not in bodily pain. Not wanting to be rude, I turned my eyes away
and saw next to him a lady of some elegance. She also had a strangely
unhappy expression on her face, as if contemplating or experiencing
something that caused her pain; nevertheless, her mouth was fixed in the
stiff semblance of a smile which, I was certain, must have been habitual.
And then I began to look around at all the other faces in the compartment -
faces belonging without exception to well-dressed, well-fed people: and in
almost everyone of them I could discern an expression of hidden suffering,
so hidden that the owner of the face seemed to be quite unaware of it. This was indeed strange. I had never before seen so many unhappy faces
around me: or was it perhaps that I had never looked for what was now so
loudly speaking in them? The impression was so strong that I mentioned it to
Elsa; and she too began to look around her with the careful eyes of a
painter accustomed to study human features. Then she turned to me,
astonished, and said: 'You are right. They all look as though they were
suffering torments of hell...I wonder, do they know themselves what is going
on in them?' I knew that they did not - for otherwise they could not go on wasting
their lives as they did, without any faith in binding truths, without any
goal beyond the desire to raise their own 'standard of living', without
hopes other than having more material amenities, more gadgets, and perhaps
more power.... When we returned home, I happened to glance at my desk on which lay open
a copy of the Koran I had been reading earlier. Mechanically, I picked the
book up to put it away, but just as I was about to close it, my eye fell on
the open page before me, and I read: You are obsessed by greed for more and more For a moment I was speechless. I think the book shook in my hands. Then I
handed it to Elsa. 'Read this. Is it not an answer to what we saw in the
subway?' It was an answer: an answer so decisive that all doubt was suddenly at an
end. I knew now, beyond any doubt, that it was a God-inspired book I was
holding in my hand: for although it had been placed before man over thirteen
centuries ago, it clearly anticipated something that could have become true
only in this complicated, mechanized, phantom-ridden age as ours. At all times people have known greed: but at no time before this had
greed outgrown a mere eagerness to acquire things and become an obsession
that blurred the sight of everything else: an irresistible craving to get,
to do, to contrive more and more - more today than yesterday, and more
tomorrow than today: a demon riding on the necks of men and whipping their
hearts forward toward goals that tauntingly glitter in the distance but
dissolve into contemptible nothingness as soon as they are reached, always
holding out the promise of new goals ahead - goals still more brilliant,
more tempting as long as they lie on the horizon, and bound to whither into
further nothingness as soon as they come within grasp: and that hunger, that
insatiable hunger for ever new goals gnawing at man's soul: Nay, if you
but knew it you would see the hell you are in... This, I saw, was not the mere human wisdom of a man of a distant past in
distant Arabia. However wise he may have been, such a man could not by
himself have foreseen the torment so peculiar to this twentieth century. Out
of the Koran spoke a voice greater than the voice of Muhammad... - * - DARKNESS HAS FALLEN over the courtyard of the Prophet's Mosque, broken
through only by the oil lamps which are suspended on long chains between the
pillars of the arcades. Shaykh Abdullah ibn Bulayhid sits with his head sunk
low over his chest and his eyes closed. One who does not know him might
think that he has fallen asleep; but I know that he has been listening to my
narrative with deep absorption, trying to fit it into the pattern of his own
wide experience of men and their hearts. After a long while he raises his
head and opens his eyes: 'And then? And what didst thou do then?' 'The obvious thing, O Shaykh. I sought out a Muslim friend of mine, an
Indian who was at that time head of the small Muslim community in Berlin,
and told him that I wanted to embrace Islam. He stretched out his right hand
toward me, and I placed mine in it and, in the presence of two witnesses,
declared: "I bear witness that there is no God but God and that Muhammad is
His Messenger."* A few weeks later my wife did the same.' 'And what did thy people say to that?' 'Well, they did not like it. When I informed my father that I had become
a Muslim, he did not even answer my letter. Some months later my sister
wrote, telling me that he considered me dead... thereupon I sent him another
letter, assuring him that my acceptance of Islam did not change anything in
my attitude toward him or my love for him; that, on the contrary, Islam
enjoined upon me to love and honour my parents above all other people...But
this letter also remained unanswered.' 'Thy father must indeed be strongly attached to his religion...' 'No, O Shaykh, he is not; and that is the strangest part of the story. He
considers me, I think, a renegade, not so much from his faith (for that has
never held him strongly) as from the community in which he grew up and the
culture to which he is attached.' 'And has thou never seen him since?' 'No. Very soon after our conversion, my wife and I left Europe; we could
not bear to remain there any longer. And I have never gone back...'**
Until you go down to your
graves.
Nay, but you will come to know!
Nay, but you will come to
know!
Nay, if you but knew it with the knowledge of certainty,
You
would indeed see the hell you are in.
In time, indeed, you shall see it
with the eye of certainty:
And on that Day you will be asked what you
have done
with the boon of life.
Road to Mecca, pp. 295-311
* This declaration of faith is the only 'ritual' necessary to become a Muslim. In Islam, the terms 'Messenger' and "Prophet' are interchangeable when applied to major Prophets bearing a new Message, like Muhammad, Jesus, Moses, Abraham.
** Our relationship was resumed in 1935, after my father had at last come to understand and appreciate the reasons for my conversion to Islam. Although we never met again in person, we remained in continuous correspondence until 1942, when he and my sister were deported from Vienna by the Nazis and subsequently died in a concentration camp.
