Dream

"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 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 mainspring of man’s practical behaviour and the sole basis of all social institutions … The message of Islam envisaged and brought to life a civilization in which there was no room for nationalism, no ‘vested interest’, 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 ... 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’."

Asad had now left Europe for the third time. But now he was a Muslim, and this time was leaving not just a geographical Europe but also its intellectual and cultural heritage in which he grew up as an European. He was never to return to reclaim his European identity.

Could he ever, when he grew up in his father's house in Vienna, anticipate that one day he was to leave his Western heritage for good?

The answer is obviously no. But sometimes glimmers of truth and future events are shown in dreams that materialize afterwards – sometimes years later. Long before he ever thought of becoming a journalist and visiting Muslims lands, Weiss saw a dream -

I must have been nineteen years old or so at the time, and lived in my father’s house in Vienna. I was deeply interested in the science of man’s inner life, and was in the practice of keeping by my bedside paper and pencil in order to jot down my dreams at the moment of awakening. By doing so, I found, I was able to remember those dreams indefinitely, even if I did not keep them constantly in mind. In that particular dream, I found myself in Berlin, traveling in that underground railway they have there — with the train going sometimes through a tunnel below ground and sometimes bridges high above the streets. The compartment was filled with great throng of people — so many that there was no room to sit down and all stood tightly packed without being able to move; and there was only a dim light from a single electric bulb. After a while the train came out of the tunnel; it did not come on to one of those high bridges, but emerged instead on to a wide, desolate plain of clay, and the wheels of the train got stuck in the clay and the train stopped, unable to move forward or backward.

All the travelers, and I among them, left the carriages and started looking about. The plain around us was endless and empty and barren — there was no bush on it, no house, not even a stone — and a great perplexity fell over the people’s hearts: Now that we have been stranded here, how shall we find our way back to where other humans live? A grey twilight lay over the immense plain, as at the time of early dawn.

But somehow I did not quite share the perplexity of the others. I made my way out of the throng and beheld, at a distance of perhaps ten paces, a dromedary crouched on the ground. It was fully saddled — in exactly the way I later saw camels saddled … and in the saddle sat a man dressed in a white-and-brown-striped abaya with short sleeves. His kufiyya was drawn over his face so that I could not discern his features. In my heart I knew at once that the dromedary was waiting for me and that the motionless rider was to be my guide; and so, without a word, I swung myself on to the camel’s back behind saddle in the way a radif, a pillion rider, rides in Arab lands. In the next instant, the dromedary rose and started forward in a long-drawn, easy gait, and I felt a nameless happiness rise within me. In that fast, smooth gait we traveled for what at first seemed to be hours, and then days, and then months, until I lost count of time; and with every step of the dromedary my happin­ess rose higher, until I felt as if I were swimming through air. In the end, the horizon to our right began to redden under the rays of the sun that was about to rise. But on the horizon far ahead of us I saw another light: it came from behind a huge, open gateway resting on two pillars — a blinding-white light, not like the light of the rising sun to our right — a cool light that steadily grew in brightness as we approached and made the hap­piness within me grow beyond anything that words could describe. And as we came nearer and nearer to the gateway and its light, I heard a voice from somewhere announce, “This is the westernmost city!” — and I awoke.

“Glory be unto God! And did not this dream tell thee that thou wert destined for Islam?”

I shook my head: “No, O Long-of-Age, how could I have known it? I had never thought of Islam and had never even known a Muslim … It was seven years later, long after I had forgotten that dream, that I embraced Islam. I recalled it only recently when I found it among my papers, exactly as I had jotted it down that night upon awaking.”

“But it was truly thy fortune which God showed thee in that dream, O my son! Dost thou not recognize it clearly? The coming of the crowd of people, and thou with them, into a pathless waste, and their perplexity: is not that the condition of those whom the opening sura of the Koran describes as “those who have gone astray”? And the dromedary which, with its rider, was waiting for thee: was not this the “right guidance” of which Koran speaks so often? And the rider who did not speak to thee and whose face thou couldst not see: who else could he have been but the Holy Prophet, upon whom be God’s blessing and peace? He loved to wear a cloak with short sleeves ... and do not many of our books tell us whenever he appears in dreams to non-Muslims or to those who are not yet Muslims, his face is always covered? And that white, cool light on the horizon ahead: what else could it have been but a promise of the light of faith which lights without burning? Thou didst not reach it in dream because, as thou hast told us, it was only years later that thou camest to know Islam for the truth itself ...”

“Thou mayest be right, O Long-of-Age ... But what about that “westernmost city” to which the gateway on the horizon was to lead me? — for, after all, my acceptance of Islam did not lead me to the West: it led me, rather, away from the West.”

Ibn Saud was silent and thoughtful for a moment; then he raised his head and, with that sweet smile which I had come to love, said: “Could it not have meant, O Muhammad, that thy reaching Islam would be the “westernmost” point in thy life— and that after that, the life of the West would cease to be thine ...?”

Asad’s father, with whom he always remained in contact through letters, stopped communicating with him after he accepted Islam. Neither could his sister accept his becoming a Muslim. It was many years later that his father accepted him as a Muslim and their communication resumed. Unfortunately, Weiss never saw them again. The Nazis expelled his father and his sister from Germany and they both died in Nazi concentration camp in 1942.