Second Point
Why does the New Said avoid politics with such vehemence?
The Answer: He avoids it so vehemently in order to serve belief and the Qur’an, which is of the greatest importance, the greatest necessity and is most pure and most right, and so as not to sacrifice unnecessarily and officiously for one or two doubtful years of worldly life the work of gaining more than millions of years of eternal life. For he says:
I am growing old and I do not know how much longer I shall live, so for me the most important question should be working for eternal life. The prime means of gaining eternal life and the key to everlasting happiness is belief (īmān), so I have to work for that.
But since I am obliged by the Shari‘a to serve people in respect of learning so that they may profit too, I want to perform that duty. However, such service will either concern social and worldly life, which I cannot do, and also in stormy times it is not possible to perform such service soundly. I therefore gave up that side of it and chose the side of serving belief, which is the most important, the most necessary, and the soundest. I leave that door open so that the truths of belief I have gained for myself and the spiritual remedies I have myself experienced may be acquired by others. Perhaps Allah the Most High will accept this service and make it atonement for my former sins.
Apart from Satan the Accursed, no one, be it a believer or an unbeliever, one of the veracious or an atheist, has the right to oppose this work. For unbelief resembles nothing else. In tyrannizing, vice, and grievous sins there may be an inauspicious diabolical pleasure, but in unbelief there is no sort of pleasure at all. It is pain upon pain, darkness upon darkness, torment upon torment.
Just how contrary to reason it would be for someone like me who is unattached, alone, and compelled to atone for his former sins to leave aside working for an endless eternal life and serving a sacred light like belief, and to cast himself in old age into the unnecessary, perilous games of politics – just how contrary to wisdom, just what a lunacy it would be even lunatics would understand!
But if you ask why service of the Qur’an and belief prohibit me, I would say this: the truths of belief and the Qur’an are each like diamonds. If I were polluted by politics, the ordinary people who are easily deceived, would wonder about those diamonds I was holding: “Aren’t they for political propaganda, to attract more supporters?” They might regard the diamonds as bits of common glass. Then, by being involved with politics I would be wronging the diamonds by as though reducing their value.
O you whose view is restricted to this world! Why do you struggle against me? Why do you not leave me to myself?
If You Say: The shaikhs sometimes interfere in our business, and they sometimes call you a shaikh.
I Reply: Good sirs! I am not a shaikh, I am a hoja (teacher). The evidence is this: I have been here four years and if I had taught a single person the Sufi way, you would have had the right to be suspicious. But I have told everyone who has come to me: Belief is necessary, Islam is necessary; this is not the age of Sufism.
If You Say: They call you Said‑i Kurdi; perhaps you have some nationalist ideas and that doesn’t suit our interests.
I Would Reply: Sirs! The things the Old Said and the New Said have written are clear. I cite as testimony the certain statement, Islam has abrogated the tribalism of Ignorance. For years I have considered negative nationalism and racialism to be fatal poisons, since they are a variety of European disease. And Europe has infected Islam with it thinking it would cause division, and Islam would break up and be easily swallowed. My students and those people who have had anything to do with me know that for years I have tried to treat that disease.
Since it is thus, good sirs, why you make every incident a pretext to harass me? According to what principle do you cause me distress at every worldly incident, which is like punishing and inflicting trouble on a soldier in the West because of a mistake made by a soldier in the East because they both belong to the army, or convicting a shopkeeper in Baghdad because of a crime committed by a tradesman in Istanbul due to their being in the same line of business? Who could do this in all conscience? What advantage is there that could require it?