KHUTAB III - 23. MUHAMMAD ASAD AND SAMYA WADI

23. MUHAMMAD ASAD AND SAMYA WADI

          It is mentioned in the Qur’ān that Allah guides whom He wishes. When the Prophet failed to convince his beloved uncle Abū T.ālib to embrace Islam so that he would be safe in the Hereafter, Allah revealed to him:

إِنَّكَ لَا تَهْدِي مَنْ أَحْبَبْتَ وَلَكِنَّ اللَّهَ يَهْدِي مَنْ

 يَشَاءُ وَهُوَ أَعْلَمُ بِالْمُهْتَدِينَ (القصص : ٥٦)

Verily, you cannot guide whom you love, but

it is really Allah Who guides whom He will. And He knows

best those Who are the guided. (Q. 28:56).

In other words, guidance is from Allah alone, our duty is to convey the message, the result is from Allah.

There are many ways to convey the message, through speech, and through examples, through actions and even through stories. A great scholar was asked one day to deliver a religious speech at a mosque. He gave the audience the biography of the Prophet.  After finishing the speech the imām of the mosque told him that he should have given fiqh, Islamic law, what is h.alāl and what is h.arām. He responded and said that the biography of the Prophet was included as one of religious teachings. This is because the Prophet put the teachings of Islam into practice. We know every story in the Qur’an gives us moral lessons.  The story of Prophet Joseph (Yūsuf a.s.) mentioned in sūrat Yūsuf (chapter 12), for example, gives us so many moral lessons: such as how to behave with our brothers who wrong us. He reminded them how they treated him very badly. Yet, he did not retaliate; he did not even blame them.  He simply said that it was Satan who misguided them to do what they did. Before preaching religion, he had become friends with his fellow mate in the prison. His father, Prophet Jacob (Ya’qūb) told his sons to search for Joseph and Benjamin without losing hope, because he said, as mentioned in the Qur’ān,

يَا بَنِيَّ اذْهَبُوا فَتَحَسَّسُوا مِنْ يُوسُفَ وَأَخِيهِ وَلَا تَيْئَسُوا مِنْ رَوْحِ اللَّهِ

إِنَّهُ لَا يَيْئَسُ مِنْ رَوْحِ اللَّهِ إِلَّا الْقَوْمُ الْكَافِرُونَ (يوسف : ٨٧)

 O my sons! Go ye and enquire about Joseph and his

brother, and never give up hope of Allah’s soothing

 mercy; truly, no one despairs of Allah’s soothing

 mercy except those who have no faith.  (Q. 12:87).

There are also many ways how Allah guides a person.  I shall give two examples here: (a) Muhamad Asad and (b) Samya Wadi, as follows:

a.     Muhammad Asad

Muhammad Asad was an Austrian Jew, formerly called Leopold Weiss, who was born in Livow, Austria (later became part of Poland) in 1900. At the age of 22 he visited the Middle East, and later became a foreign correspondence of the well-known journal, Frankfurter Zeitung, and then travelled through Africa and Asia. He studied Islam and compared it with the conditions of the Muslims, and found that the Muslims were far away from practising their religious teachings. He said: “The more I understood how concrete and how immensely practical the teachings of Islam are, the more eager became my questioning as to why the Muslims had abandoned their full application to real life.” He talked about Islam to Muslims as if he were to defend Islam from their negligence. In autumn 1925, in the mountains of Afghanistan, a young governor said to him: “But you are a Muslim, only you do not know it yourself.” When he went back to Europe he found that the only consequence of his attitude was to become a Muslim.

Since then, people asked him why he became a Muslim? He said that no particular aspect appealed to him more than any other. He said: “Islam appears to me like a perfect work of architecture. All its parts are harmoniously conceived to complement and support each other; nothing is superfluous and nothing is lacking, with the result of an absolute balance and solid composure.”

Leopold Weiss changed his name with Muhammad Asad and devoted himself to studying Islam, lecturing and writing. He studied Arabic and spent over five years in Hejaz and Najd, mostly in Medinah. He enjoyed the friendship of King Ibn Saud. He wrote Islam at the Crossroads, Road to Mecca, and the English translation of the meanings of the Qur’ān. Then he travelled to India where he met the poet and philosopher Muhammad Iqbal who persuaded him not to continue his journey to Eastern Turkistan, China and Indonesia. When Pakistan was established in 1947 he was called upon to organize and direct a Department of Islamic Reconstruction.  After two years he was transferred to Pakistan Foreign Office, and later to Pakistan’s mission to the U.N. at New York. He became Pakistan Alternative Representative at the United Nations. He resided in Libya and moved between Tripoli and his native country Austria.

b. Samya Wadi

It is mentioned in the Qur’ān that certain creatures had been in this world before man called jinn (demons).  There is a chapter in the Qur’ān called sūrat al-Jinn (chapter 72) in which Allah states that a number of jinn listened to the Qur’ān from the Prophet, believed in it and called their people to embrace Islam. It is also mentioned in the Qur’ān that a number of jinn worked for Prophet-King Solomon (Sulaymān). Some of them were soldiers. Allah said:

وَحُشِرَ لِسُلَيْمَانَ جُنُودُهُ مِنَ الْجِنِّ وَالْإِنْسِ وَالطَّيْرِ فَهُمْ يُوزَعُونَ (النمل : ١٧)

 And before Solomon were marshaled his hosts,--of jinn and men

 and birds, and they were all kept in order and ranks.  (Q.  27:17).

Others dived at sea, and brought its treasure to him. Some others were builders and even bound together in fetters.  Allah said:   

فَسَخَّرْنَا لَهُ الرِّيحَ تَجْرِي بِأَمْرِهِ رُخَاءً حَيْثُ أَصَابَ. وَالشَّيَاطِينَ كُلَّ

 بَنَّاءٍ وَغَوَّاصٍ. وَآَخَرِينَ مُقَرَّنِينَ فِي الْأَصْفَادِ (ص : ٣٦-٣٨)

 Then We subjected the wind to his power, to flow

gently to his order, whithersoever he willed,-- as also the

 devils (including) every kind of builder, and divers,--as

 also others bound together in fetters.  (Q. 38:36-38)

 We believe that behind this material world there is a spiritual world, or an unknown world, the world of the jinn. Among them some are believers, others are non-believers. For every one of us there is one who accompanies us, and if we are lucky enough we have a good Muslim jinni; if not, we have a bad non-believer jinni who likes to inspire us to do bad things. Prophet Muhammad s.a.w. himself admitted that a jinni had accompanied him, and the jinni was a Muslim. Here is another example how Allah guides people to Islam.

We know that about 90% of the population of Egypt are Muslims, and the rest are mainly Christians. They all speak and understand Arabic, the language of the Qur’ān. We also know that Allah has many ways in guiding a person to Islam. One example is the following story:

The Kuwait daily newspaper al-Qabas in its supplement published on Monday 26, March 1979, states that a woman of a Coptic Christian family suffered from cancer for five years. She lived in Manial (المَنِيَل) at the outskirt of Cairo. Her name was Mrs. Samya Wadi, age 57. She suddenly suffered strong headaches as a result of pain in her stomach. Her husband, Mr. Safwat Jiryes took her to the hospital. The doctor told her that she suffered from cancer and he could not make the operation as the cancer hid inside a tiny vein in her stomach.  She was brought home. One month later she fell into a coma for one month, and the doctors fed her through glucose injection and by giving her pure blood.  When she awoke, she found herself paralysed. Her husband called a priest who ordered him to practise certain religious rites, but they could not help her. During this period the cancer reached her liver, and the doctors said that she could live only for a few days, and she would die. A neighbouring Muslim woman who had just returned from pilgrimage advised her to recite certain verses of the Qur’ān. She did and felt better. She could sleep after months of staying awake. Her husband brought her some Qur’ānic tapes for her to listen to.

One night in November 1978 Mrs. Samya Wadi asked her husband to bring her a bottle of the best perfume he could get, eau de cologne (“water from Koeln”), and to wash her whole body with it. Then she begged him to turn off the light and leave her alone, because she wanted to enjoy complete darkness that night.  The husband thought that this might be her end, that she would die. Therefore, he prayed to God to relieve her from her pain. 

In the morning, he knocked at the door, no answer. He knocked again, and again no answer. He opened the door by force and found his wife in a very strange condition. He was shocked to see her. Her upper part was covered with a medical bandage, and her lower part was covered with a white sheet. She was unconscious. He called his children to see their mother. Neighbours also came to see her. Then he called the doctors.  They came and made some medical tests. They said that she had been under a highly delicate operation, and recommended to bring her to the hospital.  She was still unconscious.   In the hospital the doctors declared that the cancer had been completely uprooted from her stomach and her liver, the operation was very successful, and she was cured..

What did really happen to her? After her recovery a reporter of al-Qabas met her in Cairo and asked her to tell him the true story. While trying to stop her tears, she said that at night, after her husband left, she fell asleep while reciting some verses of the Qur’ān.  At about one o’clock in the morning, she felt she was completely naked, and some persons whose faces she could not see were around her bed. She was half-conscious, and yet she felt what was happening around her. She thought that she saw her belly was being opened without pain, and the hands of the

unknown visitors started to deal with her sick parts and uprooted the illness. She felt bandages and a piece of cotton was put into her mouth.  She went into a coma for three days.  Her neighbour Ummu Ah.mad told her that believing jinn made operations for people of pure hearts. The end of the story is that the whole family converted to Islam.

What kind of moral lessons we can get from this woman’s experience? It is the duty of Muslims to propagate and to inform people about Islam, but guidance belongs to Allah. Secondly, as Muslims we should never lose hope, never become pessimistic in life, as Allah can do whatever He wants. We should keep trying and working hard, and never abandon hope. (ANUMA, 7 April, 06)