To allow Weiss to gain closer assignments in the Arabic world he developed an ever-deepening engagement with Islam, which led to his religious conversion in 1926 in Berlin and adopting an Arabic name, Muhammad Asad.
Magazine Saudi Aramco World in a 2002 essay described his journey to conversion in these words: "Two roads diverged in Berlin in the 1920's: a well-worn one to the West, the other, rarely traveled, to the East.