12 Quotes & Sayings By Muhammad Asad

Muhammad Asad was born in 1890, in the Khurasan region of Persia. His father was a writer and journalist, and his mother was a painter. He was educated at home and then at the University of Tehran, where he became increasingly interested in literature and political history. In 1910 he left Iran for Europe and began studies in philosophy and psychology at the University of Heidelberg and Leipzig, but soon became embroiled in politics Read more

In 1913 he joined the revolutionary movement against the Shah of Persia, but after his arrest was released from prison to work as an agent for British intelligence. In 1915 he traveled to Paris, where he resumed his studies at the Sorbonne and met Mohandas Gandhi for the first time. In 1918 he returned to England to teach at a high school before going to India as a political adviser to Gandhi himself.

He was arrested again during a campaign against British colonial rule in 1921 and spent a year in a jail cell under extremely harsh conditions. After serving as an adviser to Gandhi's movement against British rule, he served as a civil servant in India from 1932 until his retirement from government service in 1945. He continued to write prolifically throughout his life about politics, history, literature, culture, psychology, religion, philosophy, nature, and other subjects.

1
The Average Occidental- be he a democrat or a Fascist, a Capitalist or a Bolshevik, a manual worker or an intellectual- knows only one positive "religion", and that is the worship of material progress, the belief that there is no other goal in life than to make that very life continually easier or, as the current expression goes, "independent of nature". The temples of this "religion" are the gigantic factories, cinemas, chemical laboratories, dancing halls, hydro- electric works; and its priests are bankers, engineers, film stars, captains of industry, record-airmen. The unavoidable result of this craving after power and pleasure is the creation of hostile groups armed to the teeth and determined to destroy each other whenever their respective interests come to clash. And on the cultural side the result is the creation of a human type whose morality is confined to the question of practical utility alone, and whose highest criterion of good and evil is material progress. . Muhammad Asad
2
For, according to the teachings of Islam, moral knowledge automatically forces moral responsibility upon man. A mere Platonic discernment between Right and Wrong, without the urge to promote Right and to destroy Wrong, is a gross immorality in itself, for morality lives and dies with the human endeavour to establish its victory upon earth. Muhammad Asad
3
The vast majority of administrators, at all times and in all societies, are prone to commit grievous errors if left entirely to their own devices. Hence, they should not be left to their own devices, and should be allowed to govern only in consultation with the accredited representatives of the whole community, which is one of the classical lessons of history that no nation may neglect except at its own peril. Muhammad Asad
4
We allow ourselves to be blown by the winds because we do know what we want: our hearts know it, even if our thoughts are sometimes slow to follow- but in the end they do catch up with our hearts and then we think we have made a decision Muhammad Asad
5
There is one thing only which a Muslim can profitably learn from the west, the exact sciences in their pure and applied form. Only natural sciences and mathematics should be taught in Muslim schools, while tuition of European philosophy, literature and history should lose the position of primacy which today it holds on the curriculum. Muhammad Asad
6
So long as Muslims continue looking towards Western civilization as the only force that could regenerate their own stagnant society, they destroy their self-confidence and, indirectly, support the Western assertion that Islam is a "spent force". Muhammad Asad
7
By imitating the manners and the mode of life of the West, the Muslims are being gradually forced to adopt the Western moral outlook: for the imitation of outward appearance leads, by degrees, to a corresponding assimilation of the world-view responsible for that appearance. Muhammad Asad
8
...to imitate Western civilization in its spirit, its mode of life and its social organization is impossible without dealing a fatal blow to the very existence of Islam as an ideological proposition. Muhammad Asad
9
...we must learn -once again- to regard Islam as the norm by which the world is to be judged. Muhammad Asad
10
History proves beyond any possibility of doubt that no religion has ever given a stimulus to scientific progress comparable to that of Islam. The encouragement which learning and scientific research received from Islamic theology resulted in the splendid cultural achievements in the days of the Umayyads and Abbasids and the Arab rule in Sicily and Spain. I do not mention this in order that we might boast of those glorious memories at a time when the Islamic world has forsaken its own traditions and reverted to spiritual blindness and intellectual poverty. We have no right, in our present misery, to boast of past glories. But we must realize that it was the negligence of the Muslims and not any deficiency in the teachings of Islam that caused our present decay. Islam has never been a barrier to progress and science. It appreciates the intellectual activities of man to such a degree as to place him above the angels. No other religion ever went so far in asserting the dominance of reason and, consequently, of learning, above all other manifestations of human life. Muhammad Asad
11
If one has not been able to experience God by himself, one should allow himself to be guided by the experiences of others who have experienced Him Muhammad Asad