“You are a Muslim – only you do not know it”

"Islam did not seem to be so much a religion in the popular sense of the word as, rather, a way of life; not so much a system of theology as a programme of personal and social behaviour based on the consciousness of God. Nowhere in the Koran could I find any reference to a need for ‘salvation’. No original, inherited sin stood between the individual and his destiny – for, nothing shall be attributed to man but what he himself has striven for [Qur’an]. No asceticism was required to open a hidden gate to purity: for purity was man’s birthright, and sin meant no more than a lapse from the innate, positive qualities with which God was said to have endowed every human being. There was no trace of any dualism in the consideration of man’s nature: body and soul seemed to be taken as one integral whole."

After traveling much of Central Asia, he was now in Afghanistan. He was once traveling from Kabul to Herat on horseback through the snow-covered valleys of Hindu-Kush when his horse lost an iron shoe. So he had to stop the trip for a few days and go to a village to have the shoe repaired. A hakim (district governor) in Afghanistan came to know about a "foreigner" visiting his area. He invited Weiss to spend an evening and a night with him. Weiss, who spoke Persian fluently by that time, accepted the invitation. After the dinner, a villager entertained them with a song and his three-stringed lute. The room was carpeted and warm and it was snowing outside, which could be glimpsed through the window. The song was about David’s fight with Goliath ...

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 exam 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 at 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 Ataturk, that petty masquerader who denies all value to Islam, has become to you Muslims a symbol of ‘Muslim re­vival’?”

“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 squalour — although your Prophet taught that No one may call himself a Faithful who eats his fill while his neighbour remains hungry? ... 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"?

The hakim was startled. But at the end, he said,

“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 ...”

But my host shook his head. “No, it is as I have said: you are a Muslim, only you don’t know it yourself ...”