My Dear, Loyal Brothers,
As a result of the Old Said's tendency to dwell on worldly matters, and affected by an incident in the east, the scribe who assists me describing excitedly, at the beginning of Ramadan, the signs of the festival at its end, and so that he should not waste the valuable time of Ramadan listening to trivia on the radio, I several times received an inner warning to explain briefly the harms of a lengthy, confused truth which is included in the Fourth Topic of The Fruits of Belief. So I am explaining it with the intention of moderating the Risale‑i Nur students' curiosity. But because it is very extensive and I have little time and I am in a wretched situation, you may have difficulty understanding it, so I am relying on your perspicacity,
In the Fourth Topic of The Fruits, it is said:
The reason I evince no interest in world politics is that although one has few and insignificant obligations in that extensive sphere, it preoccupies the curious because of its attractions and makes them forget their true, onerous obligations, or at least makes them perform them deficiently. In any event, it engenders in them feelings of partisanship so that they condone the wrongdoing of tyrants and so participate in it.
Now I say this: You unfortunates who are gratified by the curiosity and drunken heedlessness caused by preoccupation with the events of the outside world! If you say that the curiosity and fellow‑feeling that are intrinsic to human nature drive you to be interested in those conflicts and events to the detriment of your essential, obligatory duties, and that it is natural and an inner need, then I say the following:
Know certainly that some people do not notice or are not curious about the miraculous creation of the human being, yet if they see someone with two heads or three legs they gaze at him, transfixed by curiosity; and if you disregard mankind's far‑reaching, temporary, transitory, destructive events this century, and take a look at just the bee nation and grape species in the springtime, out of the hundred thousand nations and species on the face of the earth, which like the human species manifest innumerable wondrous happenings, you will see events that give rise to spiritual, non-material, pleasures and are a hundred times more curiosity-arousing than those events among mankind. To disregard those true pleasures and to become attached with such abounding curiosity and gratification to mankind's harmful, evil, temporary affairs might be possible if one were going to remain permanently in this world and everyone was going to reap some harm or benefit from those events and the people who were the apparent cause of them were the true agents and cause. But they are ephemeral, like atmospheric conditions. The actual effects of those who apparently cause them are negligible. They cannot send those harms or benefits from the east or the Pacific Ocean. So it is indescribably crazy to disregard the dominicality and wisdom of the Most Pure and Holy One who is nearer to you than yourself and has disposal over your heart and who creates and controls your body, and to await harm or benefit from the very ends of the earth.
Moreover, curiosity and interest of this kind are extremely harmful with regard to belief and reality. For politics is the most extensive sphere and it causes heedlessness; it plunges people into this world and makes them forget the true human obligations and the next world. Particularly events like this that take the form of universal struggles, they suffocate the heart, too. One has to have belief as brilliant as the sun to be able to see the traces and works of divine determining and dominical power in everything, in every situation and every action, so that the heart should not be plunged into the darkness of tyranny and belief be extinguished, nor the reason deviate into nature and chance.
In fact, the people of reality try to forget the spheres of multiplicity in their search for truth and knowledge of God, lest their hearts are dissipated, and curiosity, enthusiasm, and pleasure, which should be directed towards necessary valuable things, are wasted on unnecessary transient things. It is due to this important reason that apart from some of the Prophet's (UWBP) Companions who served the principles of religion and had belief like the sun and the mujāhids and righteous people of early Islam who resembled them, for the most part politicians are not completely God‑fearing and religious. People who are completely God-fearing and religious do not become involved in politics. That is to say, for people who make politics their primary aim, religion remains in second place and is as though subsidiary. The truly religious, however, consider humankind's worship of God and servitude to Him to be the highest aim of the cosmos, and regard politics not with passionate interest but in second or third place and if possible try to make it the tool of religion and the truth. Otherwise, politics resembles making everlasting diamonds the tool of common, frangible pieces of glass.
In Short: Just as drunkenness temporarily causes one to forget the pains and needs arising from true duties and yields inauspicious, fleeting pleasures; so too, following transitory struggles and conflicts inquisitively is a sort of drunkenness which produces an unpropitious pleasure since it temporarily makes one forget the needs arising from true duties and the pains arising from not performing them. It also causes one to fall into a perilous despair, which is opposed to the divine command of the verse Despair not of the mercy of God, and so to deserve a slap. Similarly, one may be the object of the severe divine threat contained in the verse, And incline not to those who do wrong, or the Fire will touch you! , and receive its slap. For you will in effect be participating in the tyranny of oppressors, and so rightfully suffer punishment in this world and the next.
Nevertheless, I felt a meaningful disquiet in my heart and was then consoled.
It occurred to my heart that in consequence of these widespread struggles, a danger more harmful than that resulting from the First World War would be born and an antichrist‑like savagery would emerge in Europe, which is the source and prop of civilization. The consolation for this anxiety was that with the full awakening of the Islamic world, and the New World and Christianity following the authentic principles of their religion and their uniting with Islam, and with the Gospels uniting with and following the Qur'an, together and with heavenly assistance they might withstand those two awesome future currents and overcome them, God willing.
I send my greetings to each and every one of my brothers, and congratulate you on the Night of Power, which is to come or has passed.