To the President of the Republic and Prime Minister
As a wretched elderly stranger who is eighty or so years of age and at the door of the grave, is sick with several illnesses and sees himself close to death,
I shall explain two facts to you:
Firstly: I congratulate you with my whole spirit and with complete sincerity, happiness, and joy on your most successful alliance with Pakistan and Iraq, which you have concluded for this nation. I feel in my spirit that, God willing, this alliance of yours is the certain introduction to universal peace and general prosperity among the four hundred million Muslims of the Islamic world. I was compelled to write this to you due to a powerful admonition I received while reciting the tesbihat following the prayers.
The reason for this warning of the heart and extreme concern, despite my having abandoned the world and given up politics for the last thirty to forty years, is this: the Risale‑i Nur, which for fifty years has found a direct way to save belief and is a miracle of the Qur'an in these times, is showing its effect and being accepted in Arabia and Pakistan more than anywhere, and even, according to information we have received, students of the Risale-i Nur are three times as numerous in those places than here, as has been established by courts of law. Having seen these momentous consequences while at the door of the grave, I felt compelled to make them known.
Secondly: Just as racialism gave rise to a perilous situation in the Umayyad period, and great harm was caused by it at the start of the Second Constitutional Period in the form of clubs and societies, and harm was caused to the mujāhid Turks by their blessed brother Arabs during the First World War again through the exploitation of racialism; so too it may now be utilized against Islamic brotherhood, for there are signs that covert atheists, the enemies of public peace and security, are again trying to cause harm through racialism. It is the character of racialism to be nurtured by negative action and causing harm to others, but throughout the world the Turkish nation is known to be first and foremost Muslim, and their racialism is blended with Islam and cannot be separated from it. Turk is synonymous with Muslim. And any who are not Muslim have cast off their Turkishness. Like the Turks, the Arabs and Arabness and Arab nationalism have combined with Islam, and it has to be like that. Their true nationality is Islam. That is sufficient. Racialism is altogether a grave danger.
God willing, your most valuable alliance with Iraq and Pakistan at this time will repulse this dangerous harm and will be the means of gaining for this nation and country four hundred million brother Muslims in place of four or five million racists, and the friendship of eight hundred million Christians and members of other religions, who are in extreme need of peace and general reconciliation. I am telling you of this since it is a conviction I feel in the depths of my spirit.
Thirdly: Sixty‑five years ago a governor read me a piece from a newspaper: an irreligious secretary for the colonies was speaking, He had taken the Qur'an in his hands, and had said: “As long as this remains in the hands of the Muslims we will not be able to truly dominate them and gain mastery over them. We shall have either to discredit the Qur'an or to make the Muslims lose their love of it.”
Thus, with these two ideas, a fearsome secret society bent on corruption tried to cause harm to this unhappy, self‑sacrificing, innocent, patriotic nation. So sixty-five years ago I sought help from the All-Wise Qur'an in the face of this current. With a short way to the truth and the idea of a large Islamic university, I found two means to save our lives the hereafter, and as a resulting benefit of it, to save also our lives in this world from absolute despotism and the destruction of misguidance and to increase and develop brotherhood between the Muslim peoples.
The First Means: This was the Risale‑i Nur. Certain evidence that it has served the unfolding of brotherhood based on belief through the strength of belief are the unprecedented conditions and the persecution and powerlessness, under which it was written, and the effect it has shown in most places in the Islamic world and in America and Europe, and its victories these last thirty years over revolutionaries and atheistic philosophy and such schools of thought as materialism and naturalism, and the fact that no court of law or expert has been able to refute it. God willing, sometime those like you who have found the key to Islamic brotherhood will make heard to the Islamic world this manifestation of the Qur'an's miraculousness.
Second Means: Sixty‑five years ago I wanted to go to the University of al-Azhar. I said to myself, it is the medrese of the Islamic World, and I intended to study there. But it was not to be. However, in his mercy, Almighty God imparted an idea to my spirit:
just as al‑Azhar University is a universal medrese in Africa, however much larger Asia is than Africa, a place of learning, an Islamic University, proportionately larger is needed in Asia, It would both prevent racialism corrupting the Muslim peoples; for example, the nations of Arabia, India, Iran, Caucasia, Turkestan, and Kurdistan; and through Islamic nationhood, which is real, positive, sacred, and universal, true nationhood, it would manifest the total unfolding of the fundamental principle of the Qur'an: Verily, the believers are brothers ; and it would reconcile the sciences of philosophy and those of religion, and make peace between European civilization and the truths of Islam. It would also unite the people of the secular educational establishments and those of the medreses, the religious schools, so that they should assist each other. In the same way that I have worked for a full fifty‑five years for the truths of the Risale-i Nur, so also have I worked for such a university in the centre of the eastern provinces between India, Arabia, Iran, Caucasia, and Turkestan — a university in the style of al-Azhar called the Medresetü'z-Zehra, which would be both a modern secular school and a religious school.
The first to appreciate its value was Sultan Reşad (May God grant him mercy), who donated twenty thousand gold liras, just for its construction, Then when I returned from captivity in the Great War, in Ankara one hundred and sixty‑three deputies out of the two hundred present agreed to allot one hundred and fifty thousand liras to the university at that time when funds were so scarce, and put their signatures to it. Mustafa Kemal was one of them. That is to say, through assigning to it what is almost equivalent to five million liras at the present time, the deputies demonstrated the surpassing importance of founding such a university. A number of them signed it, even, who were extremely negligent in religion and were in favour of westernizing and stripping off all traditions.
Only two of them said: “We are now in greater need of westernization and civilization than traditional learning and the sciences of religion.”
I replied to them: “Even if to suppose the impossible you were in no need of them, as is indicated by the fact that most of the prophets have appeared in Asia and the East and most of the philosophers in the West, it is the sense of religion rather than the effects of science and philosophy that will be the spring of true progress of Asia. If you do not take this natural law into consideration, and in the name of westernization abandon the tradition of Islam and even base your ideas on atheism, it is necessary and imperative for the security of the nation and the country that you give definite support to Islam and the truths of religion in the eastern provinces, which are the centre of four or five large nations. Of thousands of examples, I shall tell you the following one:
While in Van, I asked a patriotic Kurdish student of mine: “The Turks have performed great services. What do you think of them?”
He replied: “I prefer a Muslim Turk to a Kurdish brother who is depraved. I am closer to him than to my own father. For the Turks serve the cause of belief wholeheartedly.”
Some time passed and that student (May God have mercy on him) entered a secular school in Istanbul while I was being held as a prisoner‑of-war. I saw him when I returned; influenced by some racialist teachers there, in reaction he had taken another path — due to Kurdish nationalism. He said to me: “Now I prefer a depraved Kurd, or even an atheist one, to an upright Turk.”
Later I was able to save him after speaking to him on several occasions. He was persuaded that the Turks are the heroic army of the Islamic nation.
Deputies who asked the questions! There are close on five million Kurds in the east. There are nearly one hundred million Iranians and Indians. There are seventy million Arabs. There are forty million Caucasians. I wonder, which is more necessary for these brothers who are neighbours and brethren and in need of one another, the lesson from religion that my student received in the medrese in Van, or was his second state better, which casts those nations into chaos and considers no one apart from people of the same race and studies only the sciences of philosophy, which do not recognize Islamic brotherhood and ignore the Islamic sciences? I ask”
After hearing this answer of mine, the deputies who were opposed to tradition and supported the idea of westernization in every respect rose and signed the bill, I shall not say their names. May God forgive them their faults; they are dead now.
Fourthly: The President has attached great importance to the Eastern University amid other pressing political matters and has performed the great service of passing a law specifically allotting it sixty million liras, which will be a source of pride for it. And giving the start to this Islamic University out of his feelings for his former profession of teaching, he has earned the gratitude of all the teachers of the east. It will be the cause of great honour for himself. His again placing under consideration this university — a foundation stone of universal peace in the Middle East and its main citadel — is an act of service which will produce far‑reaching, beneficial results for this country, this state, this nation. The sciences of religion will be the basis in the university, for the destruction of the external forces is moral and spiritual; it is through unbelief. The atom bomb to counter such moral and spiritual destruction can only acquire force and halt it through moral and spiritual matters, in that respect.
Since in this matter the opinion and ideas should be sought of someone who has dedicated his life to it for the last fifty‑five years and has studied it minutely in all its details considering all the consequences, and since you have felt yourselves compelled to hold consultations about it in America and in Europe, I too certainly have the right to speak concerning it. We await this from you in the name of the whole patriotic nation.
Saîd Nursî