Remembering Muhammad Asad: The Modernist Reformer of the 20th Century

Abstract

This paper focuses on one of the most famous modern Muslim scholars: Muhammad Asad. He was born as a Jew by the name of Leopold Weiss in the year 1900. In his life’s works, Asad drew his methodology from the medieval Spanish scholar Ibn Hazm whom he called Imāmul A’zam (the greatest Imam). His translation and exegesis of the Qur’an in English—The Message of the Qur’an—drew its inspiration from Muhammad Abduh’s tafsir Al-Manar, where he attempted to fuse ‘aql (reason) and naql (texts). Muhammad Asad struggled for the renaissance of Islam and the rejuvenation of Islamic spirit. Through his extensive journey throughout the Muslim world, he made acquaintances with renowned Muslim scholars including Shaykh Mustafa al-Marāghi, who would later become the Mufti of al-Azhar, Omar al-Mukhtar, the symbol of resistance in the Muslim world, and Muhammad Iqbal, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. This paper will briefly look into his Qur’ānic exegesis The Message of the Qur’ān. His thoughts and ideas might have evolved later in his life since he lived a full 92 years, but his ideas as seen in The Message was ahead of his time and showed how he appreciated the ideas of Islamic reform that was promoted by Muhammad Abduh and Jamaluddin al-Afghāni before him. Indeed, the first and most important idea of Muhammad Asad’s vision was his conviction that Islam is based on reason and, consequently, argumentation is necessary to becoming and being a Muslim.