Since then I was asked, time and again: "Why did you embrace Islam ? What was it that attracted you particularly ?" -- and I must confess: I don't know of any satisfactory answer. It was not any particular teaching that attracted me, but the whole wonderful, inexplicably coherent structure of moral teaching and practical life programme. I could not say, even now, which aspect of it appeals to me more than any other. 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 lacking, with the result of an absolute balance and solid composure. Probably this feeling that everything in the teachings and postulates of Islam is "in its proper place," has created the strongest impression on me. There might have been, along with it, other impressions also which today it is difficult for me to analyse. After all, it was a matter of love; and love is composed of many things; of our desires and our loneliness, of our high aims and our shortcomings, of our strength and our weakness. So it was in my case. Islam came over me like a robber who enters a house by night; but, unlike a robber, it entered to remain for good.
Ever since then I endeavoured to learn as much as I could about Islam. I studied the Qur'an and the Traditions of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him); I studied the language of Islam and its history, and a good deal of what has been written about it and against it. I spent over five years in the Hijaz and Najd, mostly in al-Madinah, so that I might experience something of the original surroundings in which this religion was preached by the Arabian Prophet SAW.
As the Hijaz is the meeting centre of Muslims from many countries, I was able to compare most of the different religious and social views prevalent in the Islamic world in our days. Those studies and comparisons created in me the firm conviction that Islam, as a spiritual and social phenomenon, is still in spite of all the drawbacks caused by the deficiencies of the Muslims, by far the greatest driving force mankind has ever experienced; and all my interest became, since then, centred around the problem of its regeneration.
- Muhammad Asad (previously Leopold Weiss).
34 ways - Duas Seeing the Prophet (PBUH) in dreams: 1.One of the most tried and tested means of gaining the vision of the Noble Prophet (alayhi salat wa salam) during sleep, and even during wakefulness, is intense love for him, and occupying one’s thoughts with him night and day, along with faithful conforming with his noble sunnah, and frequent prayers of benediction (salawat) upon him in a continuous fashion, and complete uprightness on his way (istiqama) and great yearning towards seeing him (asws), and supplications for him, and carrying the cares of the Beloved (alayhi salat wa salam), namely, calling to Allah in secret and in public; and continual application of all of the foregoing, and the absence of despair and hopelessness in the mercy of Allah, the Generous Bestower, for He deals in a steady manner but does not neglect anything, nor does He ruin the hopes of anyone who supplicates Him and hopes in Him, and it might be that He has hidden the treasures within the “late” respon...
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