For the time being this is addressed only to the leading students of the Medresetü'z‑Zehrâ.
Good News for Elderly Women and an Admonishment For Young Girls Who Do Not Want to Marry
The Hadith which says: Practise religion as elderly women do! shows that since at the end of time it will be elderly women who have powerful belief, religiously‑minded people should imitate their piety. Furthermore, compassion is one of the Risale-i Nur's four fundamental principles and women are champions of compassion, due to which even the most timorous of them is ready to sacrifice her very spirit for her child. At the present time those worthy mothers and sisters are faced with a difficult situation. I felt a presentiment in my spirit that I had to explain to those Nur students who want to remain single or who have to, a natural fact which is confidential and should not be disclosed. So I have to say this:
My sisters and daughters!
Times have changed and things are not as they used to be. For nearly half a century now in our society secular education and upbringing have replaced Islamic education. So while a man should take a wife to be his companion in the next life as well as to bring him happiness in this world and to keep him from sinning, he loves the wretched woman only in her youth, keeping her under perpetual pressure. He piles difficulties on her perhaps ten times greater than the ease of life he gives her. And if they are not compatible, called by the Shari'a “kufū'” (well‑matched), she passes her life in misery since the rulings of the Shari'a were ignored. Then if there is jealousy between them as well, the situation is even worse.
There are three factors driving people to make such a marriage:
The First: Divine wisdom bestowed a natural urge and longing to perform that natural duty, for reproduction. But where the man receives ten minutes' pleasure from satisfying that desire and if licit may suffer difficulties for an hour, the woman suffers the difficulty of carrying the child in her body for nine months and then tending it for ten years after that. This means that because that natural desire and urge of ten minutes results in such long‑lasting hardship, it ceases to hold any importance. The emotions and instinctual soul should not drive a person to marry because of it.
The Second: Since by nature women are weak, they need someone to support them. So just to secure this need, it is far easier for them to work and earn their own livelihoods like village women rather than damaging their worship and spoiling their conduct, through which are won life both in this world and the next, by hypocritically trying to win the affections of a husband who has had no Islamic upbringing and is undisciplined and accustomed to dominance. Just as the True Provider provides infants with milk, so that Generous Creator will provide their sustenance. It does not befit students of the Risale‑i Nur to seek out an immoral husband who does not perform the obligatory prayers, and hypocritically cultivate his affections and enter under his domination.
The Third: Women have an innate desire to love and pet children. And the hope of having a child who will help them in this life and be an intercessor in the next, and after they have died will assist them with his good works, strengthens that natural tendency and encourages them to marry. But nowadays, since secular education has replaced Islamic training, only one or two out of ten children are devoted to their mothers in return for their kindness and love, and help them and have merits written in the records of their mothers' good deeds through their pious prayers and own good works, and having been upright are intercessors for them in the hereafter. So since eight out of ten are not thus, the unfortunate weak women should not take upon themselves such difficult lives unless they are forced to, just because of that innate desire and natural urge. So I say to young Nur students who do not want to marry because of this fact that I have pointed out:
if they do not find young men who are completely suitable and religious and upright, they should not try to sell themselves by lowering their standards. If there are no suitable young men, they should remain single like some of the self‑sacrificing male Nur students, until a suitor of conscience appears who has received an Islamic upbringing and is suitable for them and will be a companion for all eternity. They should not put everlasting happiness into jeopardy for some fleeting worldly pleasure. Nor should they throw themselves into the evils of civilization.
Saîd Nursî