[Dr. Umar, born as the only son of the late Baron Christian Ehrenfels, the founder of the modern structural(Gestalt) Psychology in Austria, Rolf Freiherr von Ehrenfels felt already as a child a deep attraction towards the East in general and towards the world of Islam in particular. His sister, the Austrian poetess Imma von Bodmershof, described this phase in her Contribution to Islamic Literature, Lahore(1953). As a young man Ehrenfels travelled in the Balkan countries and Turkey, where he used to join prayers in Mosques, (though a Christian) and was hospitably accepted by Turkish, Albanian, Greek and Yugoslav Muslim. His interest in Islam increased by and by and Ehrenfels accepted Islam in 1927 and took on Umar as his Muslim name. He visited Indo-Pakistan Sub-continent in 1932 and took particular interest in the cultural-historical problems connected with the status and position of women. After his return to Austria, Baron Umar specialised in the study of anthropological problems of Matrilineal Civilization in India. The Oxford University Presss published his first anthropological book (Usmania Univercisty Series, Hyderabad Deccan, December, 1941) on this subject.

When Austria was overrun by the Nazis 1938, Baron Umar again went to India and worked in Hyderabad.~1(see comment below).

The essential features of Islam which impressed me most and attracted me to this great religion are as follows.


(1) The Islamic teaching of successive revelation implies in my opinion the following: The source from which all the great world religions sprang is one. The founders of these great paths, prepared for peace-seeking mankind, gave witness to one and the same basic Divine teaching.

(2) Islam, is essence, means peace in submission to the Eternal Law.

(3) Islam is, historically speaking, the last founded among the great world religions on this planet.

(4) Prophet Muhammed is the messenger of Islam and is thus the last in the sequence of great religious world Prophets.

(5) The acceptance of Islam and the path of the Muslims by member of an older religion thus means as little rejection of his former religion, as for instance the acceptance of Buddha's teachings meant the rejection of Hinduism to the Indian co-nationals of Buddha. It was only later that schools of thought within Hinduism rejected the Buddhist way as heretical. These differences of religions are man-made. The basic unity. To witness it, means acceptance of a spiritual act which is common to all men and women.

(6) The spirit of human brotherhood under the all encompassing divine fatherhood is much stressed in Islam and not hampered by concept of racialism or sectarianism, be it of linguistic, historic, traditionalistic, or even dogmatic nature.

(7) This concept of divine fatherly love, however, includes also the motherly aspect of Divine love, as the two principal epithets of God indicate: Ar-Rahman--Ar-Rahim, both being derived from the Arabic root Rahm. The symbolic meaning of this root equals Geothe's Das Ewing-Weibliche zieht uns hinan, whilst its primary meaning is womb.

In this spirit the Prophet gave these unforgettable words to his followers:
"Paradise lies at the feet of the Mother."

Dr. Umar Rolf Caron Ehrenfels
Professor of Anthropology
Austria

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