Muhammad Asad was born in Austria in 1990 to a Jewish family and named Leopold Weiss. He studied philosophy and arts at the University of Vienna, and he worked and excelled in journalism before being invited to join relatives in Jerusalem.

In Jerusalem, he discovered the truth about Zionism and strongly opposed it. He wrote articles for newspapers about the ambitions of the Jewish settlement in Palestine. He studied Islam deeply, until he announced his conversion from Judaism to Islam in 1926 while he was in Berlin.

After he converted to Islam, Muhammad Asad performed the rituals of Hajj and resided in Makkah for several years, where he began publishing books on Islam. After the establishment of the State of Pakistan, he became its delegate to the United Nations.