THE ROAD TO MAKKAH pdf download

THE ROAD TO MAKKAH by Muhammad Asad

THE ROAD TO MAKKAH

He says,

I had never thought of writing it, for it had not occurred to me that my life might be of particular interest to anyone except myself.

But when, after an absence of twenty-five years from the West, I came to Paris and then to New York in the beginning of 1952,1 was forced to alter this view.

 Serving as Pakistan’s Minister Plenipotentiary to the United Nations, I was naturally in the public eye and encountered a great deal of curiosity among my European and American friends and acquaintances.

 At first, they assumed that mine was the case of a European ‘expert’ employed by an Eastern government for a specific purpose, and that I had conveniently adapted myself to the ways of the nation which I was serving;

but when my activities at the United Nations made it obvious that I identified myself not merely ‘functionally’ but also emotionally and intellectually with the political and cultural aims of the Muslim world in general, they became somewhat perplexed.

More and more people began to question me about my past experiences.

They came to know that very early in my life I had started my career as a foreign correspondent for Continental newspapers and, after several years of ex¬ tensive travels throughout the Middle East, had become a Muslim in 1926;

that after my conversion to Islam I lived for nearly six years in Arabia and enjoyed the friendship of King I bn Saud; that after leaving Arabia I went to India and there met the great