The Sixth Section, Which Is the Sixth Treatise
This was written to warn students and servants of the All‑Wise Qur’an, so that they should not be deceived.
In the Name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
And incline not towards those who do wrong, or the Fire will seize you.
If Allah so wills, this Sixth Section will confound six stratagems of satans among jinn and men, and block up six of their ways of attack.
First Stratagem
In consequence of the instruction they have received from satans among the jinn, human satans want to deceive, by exciting the desire for rank and position, the self‑sacrificing servants of the party of the Qur’an, and to make them give up their sacred service and elevated jihad of the word. It is as follows:
Present in most people is a hypocritical desire to be seen by people and hold a position in the public view, which is ambition for fame and acclaim, and self‑advertisement; it is present to a lesser or greater extent in all those who seek this world. The desire to accomplish this ambition will drive a person to sacrifice his life even. Such ambition is exceedingly dangerous for those who seek the hereafter, and even for those who seek this world it is a rough road. It is also the source of many bad morals and is man’s greatest weakness. A person only has to gratify this ambition to gain control over someone and draw him to himself; it ties the man to him, and he is overcome.
My greatest fear for my brothers is that the atheists may take advantage of this weak vein of theirs. It has caused me much thought. For they did attract in this way some unfortunates who were not truly friends, drawing them into a dangerous situation.
My brothers and friends in the service of the Qur’an! Say the following to the secret agents of the cunning ‘worldly,’ or the propagandists of the people of misguidance, or the students of Satan, for they all try to deceive you by exciting the desire for rank:
“Firstly, divine pleasure, the favours of the Merciful One, and dominical acceptance are a position so high that beside them the attention and admiration of men are worth virtually nothing. To receive divine mercy is sufficient. The regard of men is acceptable in that it is the reflection and shadow of the regard of divine mercy; otherwise it is not desirable. For it is extinguished at the door of the grave, so is worth nothing!”
If the desire for rank and position cannot be silenced and eliminated, it should be directed towards something else:
As in the following comparison, the emotion may have a licit side; if it is for reward in the hereafter, or with the intention of being prayed for, or for making one’s work effective.
For example, at a time Aya Sophia Mosque is filled with eminent and blessed people, virtuous and excellent, one or two idle youths and immoral loafers are hanging around the entrance, while next to the windows a few Europeans are watching for amusement. A man enters the mosque and joins the congregation, then recites a passage from the Qur’an beautifully in a fine voice; the gazes of thousands of the people of truth are turned on him and they gain reward for him through their regard and prayers. This does not please the idle youths and heretic loafers and the one or two Europeans.
If when the man had entered the blessed mosque and joined the huge congregation, he had shouted out lewd songs, and danced and jumped around, it would have made the idle youths laugh, have pleased the dissolute loafers since it encouraged immorality, and made the Europeans smile mockingly, since they are gratified at seeing any faults in Islam. But it would have attracted looks of disgust and contempt from the vast and blessed congregation; in its view, the man would have fallen to the very lowest of the low.
Exactly like this example, the World of Islam and Asia is a huge mosque, and the people of belief and truth within it are the respected congregation in the mosque. The idle youths are the childish sycophants. The dissolute loafers are those villains who follow Europe and have no nation or religion. While the European spectators are the journalists who spread the ideas of the Europeans. All Muslims, especially the virtuous and perfected ones, have a place in the mosque according to their degree; they are seen and attention is paid to them.
If they perform actions and works as taught by the injunctions and sacred truths the All‑Wise Qur’an in accordance with the sincerity and divine pleasure which are a fundamental of Islam, and if through the tongue of disposition they recite Qur’anic verses, they will then be included in the prayer: Allah! Grant forgiveness to all believing men and to all believing women, which is constantly uttered by everyone in the World of Islam. They will have a share of it and will become connected to all the others in brotherly fashion. However, the value of this will not be apparent to some of the people of misguidance who are like harmful beasts and to some idiots who are like bearded children.
If a man disowns all his forefathers, the source of honour, and all the past, the cause of pride, and abandons in the spirit the luminous highway of his righteous predecessors, which they considered to be their point of support, and if he follows his own whims and passions hypocritically seeking fame and following innovations, he will fall to the very lowest position in the view of all the people of truth and belief. In accordance with: Beware the insight of the believer, for he sees with the light of Allah, however common and ignorant a believer may be, even if his mind does not realize it, his heart looks coldly and in disgust on such boastful, selfish men.
And so, the man carried away by love of position and rank and obsessed by the desire for fame – the second man, descends to the very lowest of the low in the view of that numberless congregation. And he gains a temporary, inauspicious position in the view of a few insignificant, mocking, raving loafers. In accordance with the verse, Friends on that Day will be foes, one to another – except the righteous, he will find a few false friends who will be harmful in this world, torment in the Intermediate Realm, and enemies in the hereafter.
As for the first man, even if he does not expunge the desire for position from his heart, on condition he takes sincerity and divine pleasure as his guiding principles and does not make rank and position his goal, he will attain a sort of spiritual rank, and a glorious one at that, which will perfectly satisfy that desire of his. The man will lose something insignificant, very insignificant, and find in place of it many, very many, valuable and harmless things. Indeed, he will chase away a few snakes and find numerous blessed creatures; he will become close friends with them. Or he will ward off stinging wild hornets and attract blessed bees, the sherbert‑sellers of mercy. He will eat honey at their hand, and through their prayers find friends from all parts of the Islamic world through whom his spirit will receive effulgences like the water of Kawthar, and these will pass to his book of good deeds.
At one time, when through perpetrating a great wrong due to the desire for fame, a little man who was occupying a high worldly position became a laughing‑stock in the eyes of the World of Islam, I spoke to him teaching him the meaning of the above comparison; I hit him over the head with it. He was badly shaken, but because I myself had not been saved from the desire for rank and position, my warning did not arouse him.
Second Stratagem
One of the strongest and most basic emotions in man is the sense of fear. Scheming oppressors profit greatly from the vein of fear. They restrain the pusillanimous with it. The agents of the worldly and propagandists of the people of misguidance take advantage of this vein of the common people and of the religious scholars in particular. They frighten them and excite their groundless fears.
For example, in order to scare a coward who is on a roof and put him in danger, a scheming man shows him something which he supposes is harmful; he excites his fear and draws him gradually towards the edge of the roof; then he makes him fall and break his neck. In exactly the same way, they make people sacrifice most important things due to most unimportant fears. Trying to avoid a mosquito bite, they flee into the dragon’s mouth.
One time, an eminent person – May Allah have mercy on him – was frightened of climbing into a rowing‑boat. One evening, we walked together to the Bridge in Istanbul. We had to board a boat; there was no carriage and we were going to Eyüp Sultan. I insisted. He said: “I’m frightened. Perhaps it’ll sink!” I said to him: “How many boats do you reckon there are, here on the Golden Horn?” He replied: “Perhaps a thousand.” So I asked him: “How many boats sink in a year?” He said: “One or two. Perhaps none at all.” I asked him: “How many days are there in a year?” “Three hundred and sixty,” he replied. So I said to him: “The possibility of sinking, which provokes these groundless fears and makes you anxious, is one in three hundred and sixty thousand. Someone who is frightened at such a possibility is not a human being, he couldn’t even be an animal!”
Then I asked him: “How long do you reckon you will live?” He replied: “I am old; perhaps I’ll live another ten years.” So I said to him: “The appointed hour of death is secret, so we could die any day. In which case, you might die on any day of the three thousand six hundred. You see, there is a one in three thousand possibility that you might die today rather than one in three hundred thousand like the boat; so tremble and weep, and write your will!”
He came to his senses, and I got him, trembling, to board the boat. When on board, I told him: “Allah the Most High gave the sense of fear to preserve life, not to destroy it! He did not give life so that it would be burdensome, difficult, painful, and torment. If fear is caused by a possibility of one in two, three, or four, or even one in five or six, it is a precautionary fear and may be licit. But to fear a possibility of one in twenty, thirty, or forty, is groundless, and makes life torture!”
My brothers! If those who toady to the atheists attack you by frightening you into giving up your sacred jihad of the word, say to them:
“We are the party of the Qur’an. According to the verse, We have, without doubt, sent down the Message; and We will assuredly guard it, we are in the citadel of the Qur’an. The verse, For us Allah suffices, and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs is a firm bastion surrounding us. Utilizing fear at a one in thousands possibility of some minor harm coming to our fleeting transient lives here, you cannot drive us through our own wills down a way on which there is a hundred per cent possibility of its causing thousandfold harm to our eternal lives!”
And say too: “Is there anyone who has suffered harm due to Said Nursi, our friend in the service of the Qur’an and Master and foreman in running this sacred work, or from people of truth like us who are his companions on the way of truth? Is there anyone who has been caused any trouble at the hand of his close students, that we might be caused it too? So should we be anxious at the possibility of suffering it? This brother of ours has thousands of friends and brothers of the hereafter. Although for twenty to thirty years he played an influential role in the social life of this world, we have not heard that a single of his brothers suffered harm because of him, and at that time he was brandishing the club of politics. Now he holds the light of reality rather than the club. For sure, long ago they mixed him up in the Thirty‑First of March Incident and they crushed some of his friends, but it later became clear that others had instigated the affair. His friends suffered misfortune, not because of him but because of his enemies. Moreover, at that time he saved very many of his friends. So satans like you shouldn’t get it into their minds to make us throw away an eternal treasury out of fear at a danger the possibility of which is not one in a thousand but in thousands.” You should say that and hit those toadies of the people of misguidance in the mouth, and drive them away!
And tell them this: “And if the possibility of death is not one in hundreds of thousands but a hundred per cent probability, if we have a jot of sense, we will not be frightened and abandon him and flee!”
For it has been seen through repeated experiences, and it is seen, that the calamity which is visited on those who betray their elder brother or their Master in times of danger, strikes them first. And they are punished mercilessly and they are looked down upon contemptuously. Both physically dead and their spirits abased, they are in effect dead. Those who torment them feel no pity for them, for they say: “Since they betrayed their Master who was loyal and kind to them, they must be completely despicable and deserve contempt, not pity!”
Yes, the reality is this. Also, if a tyrannical, unscrupulous man throws someone to the ground and stands over him certain to crush his head with his foot, and the man on the ground kisses that savage oppressor’s foot, due to his abasement his heart will be crushed before his head, and his spirit will die before his body. He will lose his head, and his self‑respect and pride will be destroyed. By displaying weakness before the savage tyrant without conscience, he encourages him to crush him. But if the oppressed man spits in the tyrant’s face, he will save his heart and his spirit, and his body will be a wronged martyr. Yes, spit in the shameless faces of the oppressors!
One time when the British had destroyed the guns on the Bosphorus and occupied Istanbul, the head clergyman of the Anglican Church, the main religious establishment of that country, asked six questions of the Shaikh al‑Islam’s Office. I was a member of the Darü’l-Hikmeti’l-‹slamiye at the time. They asked me to answer them, saying that they wanted a six-hundred-word reply to their six questions.
But I told them: “I’ll answer them not with six hundred words, or even with six words, or even a single word, but with a mouthful of spit! For you can see that government; the moment it set foot on our Bosphorus, its clergyman arrogantly asked us six questions. Faced with this, we should spit in his face. So spit in the pitiless faces of those tyrants!” And now I say:
My brothers! At a time a tyrannical government like the British had occupied us the protection of the Qur’an was enough for me, although it was a hundred per cent certain that harm would come to me from confronting them in this way through the tongue of the press, so it is definitely a hundred times more sufficient for you in the face of the harm that may come to you at the hand of these insignificant bullies, which is only a one in a hundred possibility.
Furthermore, my brothers! Most of you have done your military service. Any who haven’t, have certainly heard this. And any who haven’t heard it, let them hear it now from me: “The people who receive most wounds are those who abandon their trenches and run away. While the people who receive fewest wounds are those who persevere in their trenches!” The allusive meaning of the verse, Say: “The death from which you flee will truly overtake you” shows that those who run away are more likely to meet death through their flight!
Third Satanic Stratagem
They hunt many people through greed.
We have proved in many treatises with certain proofs that have issued forth from the clear verses of the All‑Wise Qur’an that licit sustenance comes not in accordance with power and will, but proportionately to powerlessness and want.
There are numerous signs, indications, and evidences demonstrating this truth. For instance:
Trees, which are animate beings of a sort and in need of sustenance, remain in their places and their sustenance comes hastening to them. While since animals chase after it greedily, they are not nurtured as perfectly as trees.
Also, although fishes are the most stupid and powerless of the animals and are found in sand, their being the best nourished and generally appearing fat while intelligent and capable animals like the monkey and fox are weak and thin from their scanty sustenance, shows that need is the means of sustenance, not power.
Also, the fine sustenance of all young, whether human or animal, and milk, the delicate gift of the treasury of mercy, being bestowed on them in an unexpected way out of compassion for their weakness and impotence, and the difficult circumstances of wild animals, show that impotence and want are the means of licit sustenance rather than intelligence and power.
Also, among the nations of the world there are some that pursue sustenance more than others and are notorious for their greed. But these nations have suffered more than any from poor livelihoods, degradation and poverty. Even the rich among them live in lowly fashion. In any event, the possessions they have acquired by such illicit means as usury do not comprise licit sustenance that it might refute our discussion here.
Also, the poverty of many literary figures and scholars, and the wealth and riches of many stupid people show that the means of attracting sustenance is not intelligence and power, but impotence and want; it is submitting to Allah the Most High while relying on Him, and supplication by word, state, and deed.
The verse, For Allah is He Who gives [all] sustenance, Lord of Power, and Steadfast [for ever], proclaims this truth, and is a powerful, firm proof of this assertion of ours, which all plants and animals and young recite. Every group of creature that seeks sustenance recites this verse through the tongue of disposition.
Since sustenance is appointed and bestowed and it is Allah the Most High who gives it, and since He is both All‑Compassionate and Munificent, those who degrade themselves by making illicit gains in such a way as to cast aspersions on His mercy and insult His munificence, and give their consciences and even certain sacred matters as bribes and accept things which are unlawful and inauspicious – they should ponder over just what compounded lunacy this is.
Yes, ‘the worldly’ and especially the people of misguidance do not give away their money cheaply; they sell it at a high price. Sometimes something which may help a little towards a year of worldly life is the means of destroying infinite eternal life. And with that vile greed, the person draws divine wrath on himself and tries to attract the pleasure of the people of misguidance.
Yes, my brothers! If those who toady to ‘the worldly’ and the dissemblers among the misguided lay hold of you due to this weak vein in human nature, think of the above truth and take this poor brother of yours as an example. I assure you with all my strength that contentment and frugality ensure your life and sustenance more than does a salary. As for any unlawful money that is given you, they will want a price a thousand times higher in return. It may also hinder your service of the Qur’an, which may open for you an everlasting treasury, or it may make you slack in that service. And that would be such a loss and emptiness that even if they gave you a thousand salaries every month, they could not fill its place.
Warning: The people of misguidance are not able to defend themselves and reply to the truths of belief and the Qur’an which we take from the All‑Wise Qur’an and disseminate, therefore, through intrigue and dissembling they employ snares of deception and wile. They want to deceive my friends through the desire for position, greed, and fear, and to refute me by ascribing certain things to me. We always act positively in our sacred service, but unfortunately, sometimes the duty of removing the obstacles in the way of some good matter impels us to act negatively.
It is because of this that I am warning my brothers concerning the above‑mentioned three points, in the face of the cunning propaganda of the dissemblers. I am trying to rebuff the attacks that are levelled at them.
The most significant attack now is at my person. They say: “Said is a Kurd. Why do you show him so much respect, and follow him?”
So I am forced to mention the fourth satanic stratagem in the language of the Old Said although I do not want to, in order to silence such villains.
Fourth Satanic Stratagem
In order to deceive my brothers and excite their nationalist feelings, certain irreligious people who occupy high positions attack me with their propaganda. At the promptings of Satan and suggestions of the people of misguidance, they say: “You are Turks. Thanks be to Allah, among the Turks are religious scholars and people of perfection of every sort. Said is a Kurd. To work along with someone who does not share your nationality is unpatriotic.”
The Answer: You miserable person without religion! All praise be to Allah, I am a Muslim. At all times there are three hundred and fifty million members of my sacred nation. I seek refuge with Allah the Most High a hundred thousand times from sacrificing for the idea of racialism and negative nationalism three hundred and fifty million brothers who enjoy an eternal brotherhood and who help me with their prayers and among whom are the vast majority of Kurds. And I seek refuge with Allah the Most High from gaining in place of those innumerable blessed brothers a few who have embarked on a way that is without religion or belongs to no school of law, who bear the name of Kurd and are reckoned to belong to the Kurdish people.
O you without religion! There would have to have been some idiots like you who would abandon the everlasting brotherhood of a luminous beneficial community of three hundred and fifty million true brothers, to gain the brotherhood – which even in this world is without benefit – of a handful of Hungarian infidels or Europeanized Turks who have lost their religion.
Since, in the Third Matter of the Twenty‑Sixth Letter we have shown together with the evidences the nature of negative nationalism and its harms, we refer you to that, and here only explain a truth which was mentioned briefly at the end of the Third Matter. It is as follows:
I say to those pseudo‑patriotic irreligious deviants who hide under the veil of Turkism and in reality are enemies of the Turks: “I am closely and truly connected by means of an eternal, true brotherhood with the nation of Islam, with the believers of this country who are called Turks. On account of Islam, I have a proud and partial love for the sons of this land who for close on a thousand years victoriously carried the banner of the Qur’an to every corner of the world.
As for you, you pseudo‑patriotic imposters! You possess in a way that will make you forget the true national pride of the Turks, a metaphorical, racial, temporary, and hateful brotherhood.
I ask you: does the Turkish nation consist only of heedless and lustful youths between the ages of twenty and forty? And is what is beneficial for them and will serve them – as demanded by nationalist patriotism – an European education which will only increase their heedlessness, accustom them to immorality, and encourage them in what is forbidden? Is it to amuse them temporarily and so make them weep in old age? If nationalist patriotism consists of this, and this is progress and the happiness of life, yes, if you are a Turkist and nationalist like that, I flee from such Turkism, and you can flee from me, too!
If you have even a jot of patriotism, intelligence, and fairness, consider the following divisions of society and give me an answer. It is like this:
The sons of this land known as the Turkish nation consist of six parts. The first part are the righteous and the pious. The second are the sick and those stricken by disaster. The third are the elderly. The fourth are the children. The fifth are the poor and the weak. And the sixth are the young.
Are the first five groups not Turks? Do they have no share of nationalist patriotism? Is it nationalist patriotism to vex those five groups, spoil their pleasure in life, and destroy those things that console them in order to give drunken enjoyment to the sixth group? Or is it enmity towards the nation? According to the rule “The word is with the majority,” that which harms the majority is inimical, not friendly!
I ask you, is the greatest benefit of the believers and the pious, the first group, to be found in a European‑type civilization? Or is it to be found in thinking of eternal happiness through the truths of belief, in travelling the way of truth, for which they are most desirous, and in finding a true solace?
The way the misguided and bogus patriots like you have taken extinguishes the spiritual lights of the pious people of belief, destroys their true consolation, and shows death to be eternal nothingness and the grave to be the door to everlasting separation.
Are the benefits of the disaster‑stricken, the sick, and those who have despaired of life, who form the second group, to be found in the way of a European-type, irreligious civilization? For those unfortunates want a light, a solace. They want a reward in return for the calamities they have suffered. They want to take their revenge on those who have oppressed them. They want to repulse the terrors at the door of the grave, which they are approaching.
Through their false patriotism, people like you plunge a needle into the hearts of those unhappy victims of disaster who are much in need of compassion, soothing, and healing, and deserving of them. You hit them over the head! You mercilessly destroy all their hopes! You cast them into absolute despair! Is this nationalist patriotism? Is that how you provide benefits for the nation?
The elderly, the third group, forms a third. They are approaching the grave, drawing close to death, growing distant from the world, coming close to the hereafter. Are their benefits, lights, and consolation to be found in listening to the cruel adventures of tyrants like Hulagu and Jenghiz? Do they have a place in your modern‑type movements which make the hereafter forgotten, bind a person to the world, are without result, and have the meaning of decline while being superficially progress? Is the light of the hereafter to be found in the cinema? Is true solace to be found in the theatre?
If nationalist patriotism is in effect to slaughter them with an immaterial knife, and give them the idea that “you are being impelled towards everlasting nothingness,” and to transform the grave, which they consider to be the gate of mercy, into the dragon’s mouth, and to breathe in their ears: “You too will enter there!” – if, while these unhappy elderly people want respect from patriotism, this is what it consists of, I seek refuge with Allah the Most High a hundred thousand times from such patriotism!
The fourth group are the children. They want kindness from nationalist patriotism; they await compassion. Also, in respect of their weakness, impotence, and powerlessness, their spirits may expand through knowing a compassionate and powerful Creator; their abilities may unfold in a happy manner. If instilled with the reliance on Allah the Most High that springs from belief and with the submission of Islam that may withstand the awesome fears and worldly situations of the future, these innocents may look eagerly to life. Will this be achieved by teaching them things about the progress of civilization, with which they have little connection, and the principles of lightless materialist philosophy, which destroys their morale and extinguishes their spirits?
If man consisted only of an animal body and he had no mind in his head, perhaps these European principles which you fancifully call civilized education and national education could have afforded these innocent children some worldly benefit in the form of temporary childish amusement. Since they will be cast onto the surging tumult of life, and since they are human beings, they will certainly have far‑reaching desires in their small hearts and large goals will be born in their little heads.
Since the reality is thus, compassion requires that in the face of their infinite want and impotence an extremely powerful support and inexhaustible place of recourse are placed in their hearts, and these are belief in Allah the Most High and belief in the hereafter. This is kindness and compassion for them. It otherwise means slaughtering those wretched innocents with the drunkenness of nationalist patriotism, like a crazy mother slaughtering her child with a knife. It is a savage cruelty and wrong, like pulling out their brains and hearts and making them eat them to nourish their bodies.
The fifth group are the poor and the weak. The poor, who, because of their poverty, suffer greatly at the heavy burdens of life, and the weak, who are grieved at life’s awesome upheavals – do they receive no share from nationalist patriotism?
Is it to be found in the movements you have instituted under the name of European‑style, unveiled, Pharaoh-like civilization, which only increase their despair and suffering? The salve for the wound of indigence may be found in the sacred pharmacy of Islam, not in the idea of racialism. The weak receive no strength and resistance from the philosophy of naturalism, which is dark, lacks consciousness, and is bound to chance; they may receive them from Islamic zeal and the sacred nationhood of Islam!
The sixth group is the youth. If the youth of these young people had been perpetual, the wine you have given them to drink through negative nationalism would have had some temporary benefit and use. But when they painfully come to their senses as they advance in years, when they awaken from that sweet sleep in the morning of old age, their distress at the pleasurable drunkenness of youth will make them weep, and the passing of their pleasant dream will cause them much grief. It will make them exclaim: “Alas! Both my youth has gone and my life has departed, and I am approaching the grave bankrupt; if only I had used my head!” Is the share of nationalist patriotism for this group to enjoy themselves briefly and temporarily, and to be made to weep regretfully for a very long time?
Or is their worldly happiness and pleasure in life to be found in making their fleeting youth permanent through worship and by spending that fine, sweet bounty, not on the way of dissipation but on the straight path in the form of offering thanks so as to gain eternal youth in the Realm of Bliss? You say, if you possess even a grain of intelligence!
In Short: If the Turkish nation consisted only of young people, and if their youth was perpetual, and they had no place other than this world, your European‑style movement under the screen of Turkism might have been counted as nationalist patriotism. You might have been able to say about me as someone who attaches little importance to the life of this world, considers racialism to be “the European disease,” tries to prevent young people pursuing illicit amusements and vices, and came into the world in another country: “He is a Kurd. Don’t follow him!” Perhaps you would have been right to say it.
But since, as explained above, the sons of this land, who go under the name of Turks, consist of six groups, to cause harm to five of the groups and spoil their pleasure in life, and to afford a temporary, worldly pleasure the consequences of which are bad, to only one group, rather, to intoxicate them, is scarcely friendship to the Turkish nation; it is enmity.
Yes, according to race, I am not counted as a Turk but I have worked with all my strength, with complete eagerness, in compassionate and brotherly fashion, for the groups among the Turks of the Allah‑fearing, the disaster-stricken, the elderly, the children, and the weak and the poor. I have worked for the young people as well, who are the sixth group; I want them to give up any unlawful acts that will poison their worldly life, destroy their lives in the hereafter, and for one hour’s laughter, produce a year of weeping. The works I have taken from the Qur’an and published in the Turkish language – not only these six or seven years, but for twenty years – are there for everyone to see.
Yes, praise be to Allah, through these works derived from the All‑Wise Qur’an’s mine of lights, the light is shown which the group of the elderly wants more than anything; the most efficacious remedies for the disaster-stricken and the sick are pointed out in the sacred pharmacy of the Qur’an; the door of the grave, which causes more thought to the elderly than anything else, is shown to be the door of mercy, not the door leading to execution. A truly powerful point of support in the face of the calamities and harmful things confronting the sensitive hearts of children, and a place of recourse to meet all their hopes and desires, have been extracted from the mine of the All-Wise Qur’an, and they have been demonstrated and profited from in fact. And the heavy obligations of life, which crush most the poor and weak, have been alleviated by the truths of belief of the All-Wise Qur’an.
Thus, these five groups are five out of the six parts of the Turkish nation, and we are working for their benefit. The sixth group are the young people. We feel a powerful brotherhood with the good ones from among them. But between those like you who have deviated from the straight path, and us, there is no friendship at all! Because we do not recognize as Turks those who embrace misguidance and want to abandon Islamic nationhood, which holds all the true causes of pride of the Turks. We consider them to be Europeans hiding behind the screen of Turkishness! Because even if they claim to be Turkists a hundred thousand times over, they could not deceive the people of truth. For their actions and works would give the lie to what they claim.
O you who follow European ways! And you deviants who with your propaganda try to make my true brothers look coldly on me! How do you benefit this nation? You extinguish the lights of the first group, the pious and the righteous. You scatter poison on the wounds of the second group, who deserve kindness and care. You destroy the solace of the third group, who are most worthy of respect, and you cast them into despair. You destroy completely the morale of the fourth group, who are truly in need of compassion, and you extinguish their true humanity. You make fruitless the hopes and calls for help of the fifth group, who are most needy for assistance, help, and solace, and in their eyes, you turn life into something more ghastly than death. And to the sixth group, who need to be warned and to come to their senses, you give such a heady wine to drink in the sleep of youth that its hangover is truly grievous and terrible.
Is this your nationalist patriotism for the sake of which you sacrifice so many sacred things? Is this what Turkism has to offer the Turks? I seek refuge with Allah the Most High from it a hundred thousand times!
Sirs! I know that when you are defeated in the face of truth, you have recourse to force. In accordance with the fact that power lies in the truth, not in force, you can set fire to the world around my head, but this head, which has been sacrificed for the truth of the Qur’an, will not bow before you. And I tell you this, that not a limited number of people like you who are in effect despised by the nation, but if thousands like you were physically hostile to me, I would pay them no attention, attaching no more value to them than to injurious animals.
Because what can you do to me? All you can do is to either bring my life to an end, or spoil my work and service. I am attached to nothing in the world apart from these.
As for the appointed hour which befalls life, I believe as certainly as witnessing it that it does not change, it is determined. Since this is so, if I die as a martyr on the way of truth, I do not hang back from it, I await it longingly. Moreover, I am old and I find it hard to believe that I shall live for more than another year. To transform one year’s apparent life into everlasting eternal life through martyrdom is an exalted aim for people like me.
As for my work and service, through His mercy, Allah the Most High has given such brothers in the service of belief and the Qur’an that through my death it will be carried out in numerous centres instead of one. If my tongue is silenced by death, powerful tongues will speak in its place, continuing my work. I can even say that just as a single seed produces the life of a shoot by entering the earth and dying, and a hundred seeds perform their duties in place of one, so I nourish the hope that my death will be the means to service greater than was my life!
Fifth Satanic Stratagem
Profiting from egotism, the supporters of the people of misguidance want to draw my brothers away from me. Truly, egotism man’s most dangerous vein. It is his weakest vein, too. They can make people do terrible things by encouraging it. My brothers! Beware, do not let them strike you with egotism, do not let them hunt you with it!
You should know that this century the people of misguidance have mounted the ego and are galloping through the valleys of misguidance. The people of truth have to give it up if they are to serve the truth. Even if a person is justified in making use of the ego, since he will resemble the others and they too will suppose he is self‑seeking like them, it will be an injustice to the service of the truth. In any event, the service of the Qur’an around which we are gathered does not accept the ‘I’, it requires the ‘we.’ It says: “Don’t say ‘I’, say ‘we.’”
Of course, you have realized that this poor brother of yours did not set out with the ‘I’. And he did not make you serve it. Indeed, he showed himself to you as an ego‑free servant of the Qur’an. He does not care for himself and has made it his practice not to take the part of his ego. In any case, he has proved to you with decisive evidence that the works that have been presented for general benefit are common property; that is, they have issued from the All-Wise Qur’an. Nobody can claim ownership of them egotistically. Even if, to suppose the impossible, I did claim them as my own because of my ego, as one of my brothers said: since this door of Qur’anic truth has been opened, the scholars and those seeking perfection should not look at my defects and insignificance and hold back from following me; they should not deem themselves self-sufficient.
For sure, the works of the former righteous and exacting religious scholars are a huge treasury sufficient for every ill, but it sometimes happens that a key holds more importance than the treasury. For the treasury is closed and a key may open lots of treasuries. I reckon that those who are excessively egotistical in regard to their learning have understood that the published Words are each keys to the truths of the Qur’an and diamonds swords smiting those who try to deny those truths. The people of virtue and perfection and those who are strongly egotistical in regard to their learning should know that the students are students not of me but of the All‑Wise Qur’an, and that I study along with them.
If, to suppose the impossible, I claimed to be the master, since we have a way of saving all the classes of the people of belief – from the common people to the elite – from the doubts and scepticism to which they are exposed, then let those scholars either find an easier solution, or let them take the part of our solution and teach it and support it. The corrupt religious scholars are faced with a grave threat; religious scholars have to be especially careful at this time.
So suppose, like my enemies, that I perform a service like this for the sake of egotism. Since a large number of people give up their egotism and gather around a Pharaoh‑like man with complete loyalty for some worldly and national aim and carry out their work in complete solidarity, does this brother of yours not have the right to ask for your solidarity around the truths of belief and the Qur’an by giving up egotism, like those corporals of that worldly society, so long as he conceals his egotism? If even the greatest of the scholars among you were not to agree, wouldn’t they be in the wrong?
My brothers! The most dangerous aspect of egotism in our work is jealousy. If it is not purely for Allah’s sake, jealousy interferes and spoils it. Just as one of a person’s hands cannot be jealous of the other, and his eye cannot envy his ear, and his heart cannot compete with his reason, so each of you resembles a sense, a member, of the collective personality of the body we constitute. Your essential duty springing from the conscience is not to compete with one another, but to take pride and pleasure in each other’s good qualities.
One other thing remains and it is the most dangerous: for yourselves and your friends to be jealous this poor brother of yours. There are scholars of standing among you, and some scholars are egotistical when it comes to their learning. In that respect they egotistical even if they themselves are modest. They cannot easily give it up. Whatever their hearts and minds may do, their evil‑commanding souls seek pre-eminence and to sell themselves, and even to dispute the treatises that have been written. Although their hearts love the treatises and their minds appreciate them and recognize their worth, out of jealousy arising from the egotism of learning, their souls want to decry the value of the Words, as though nurturing implicit enmity towards them, for then the products of their own thought can compete with them and be sold like them. But I have to tell them this:
Even if the members of this circle of Qur’anic teaching are leading scholars and authorities on the Law, their duties in respect of the sciences of belief are only to make explanations and elucidations of the Words that have been written, or to set them in order. For I have understood through many signs that we have been charged with the duty of issuing fatwas concerning these sciences of belief. If someone within our circle writes anything more than this due to a feeling in his soul arising from the egotism of learning, it will be like a cold dispute or a deficient plagiarism. For it has been established through numerous evidences and signs that the parts of the Risale‑i Nur have issued from the Qur’an. In accordance with the rule of the division of labour, each of us has undertaken a duty, and we convey those distillations of the water of life to those who are in need of them!
Sixth Satanic Stratagem
It is this: they take advantage of the human traits of laziness, the desire for physical comfort, and attachment to other duties. Yes, satans among jinn and men attack from every angle. When they see those of our friends whose hearts are stout, intentions pure, loyalty strong, and enterprise, elevated, they attack from other sides. As follows:
In order to put a stop to our work and discourage from our service, they profit from those friends’ laziness, desire for physical comfort, and attachment to other duties. They keep people from the service of the Qur’an with every kind of trick so that without their being aware of it, more work is found for some of them. Then they cannot find the time to serve the Qur’an. And to others, they show the enticing things of this world so that arousing their desires, they become slack in their service; and so on.
These ways of attack are numerous, so cutting them short, we refer them to your perspicacious understanding.
My brothers, take great care! Your duty is sacred and your service, elevated. Every hour of your time may be as valuable as a day’s worship. Be aware of this and don’t waste any of them!
O you who believe! Persevere in patience and constancy; vie in such perseverance, strengthen each other; and fear Allah, that you may prosper. ❋ And sell not My signs for a miserable price.
Glory to your Sustainer, the Lord of Honour and Power! [He is free] from what they ascribe [to Him]! ❋ And peace be on the prophets! ❋ And praise be to Allah, the Sustainer of All the Worlds.
Glory be unto You! We have no knowledge save that which You have taught us; indeed, You are All‑Knowing, All-Wise!
Allah! Grant blessings and peace to our master Muhammad, the Beloved Unlettered Prophet, of Mighty Stature and Exalted Rank, and to his Family and Companions. Amen.
A Sacred Date
The date a significant mystery of the All‑Wise Qur’an became clear was again contained in the word “Qur’an.” It was like this:
According to the abjad system the numerical value of the word “Qur’an” is three hundred and fifty‑one. It contains two alifs; if the concealed alif is read alfun, it is alfun with the value of a thousand. That is to say, the year one thousand three hundred and fifty‑one may be called the Year of the Qur’an, for during it the strange mystery of the ‘coincidences’ in the word “Qur’an” became apparent in the parts of the Risale‑i Nur, which is the Qur’an’s commentary. The miraculous mystery of the coincidences of the word “Allah” in the Qur’an appeared the same year. A Qur’an showing the miraculous patterns, arranged in a new way, was written the same year. That year students of the Qur’an endeavoured to preserve the Qur’anic script with all their strength in the face of its being changed. Important aspects of the Qur’an’s miraculousness became apparent that same year. And the same year numerous events occurred which were related to the Qur’an, and it seems they will continue to occur.
Addendum to the Sixth Section, Which Is the Sixth Treatise
Six Questions
This addendum was written in order to avoid the disgust and insults that will levelled at us in the future. That is to say, it was written so that when it is said: “Look at the spineless people of that age!”, their spit should not hit us in the face, or else to wipe it off.
Let the ears ring of the leaders of Europe, savage beneath their humanitarian masks! And let this be thrust in the unseeing eyes of those unjust oppressors who inflicted these unscrupulous tyrants on us! It is a petition with which to hit over the head the followers of modern low civilization, who this century have a hundred thousand times over necessitated the existence of Hell.
In the Name of Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
No reason have we why we should not put our trust on Allah. Indeed He has guided us to the way we [follow]. We shall certainly bear with patience all the hurt you may cause us. For those who put their trust should put their trust on Allah.
Recently the concealed aggression of the irreligious has taken on a most ugly form; tyrannical aggression against the unfortunate people of belief and against religion. Our private and unofficial call to prayer and iqāma was interrupted during the private worship of myself and one or two brothers in the mosque I myself repaired. “Why are you reciting the iqāma in Arabic and making the call to prayer secretly?” they asked. My patience is exhausted by keeping silent, so I say, not to those unscrupulous vile men who are not worth addressing, but to the heads of the Pharaoh‑like society who with arbitrary despotism play with the fate of this nation:
O you people of innovation who have deviated from the straight path of religion, I want the answer to six questions.
The First
Every government in the world, every people which rules, and even cannibals or the chief of a band of brigands, have some principle, some law, by which they rule. So according to which principle do you carry out this extraordinary aggression? Show your law! Or do you accept as the law the arbitrary whims of a handful of contemptible officials? Because no law can interrupt private worship in that way; there cannot be such a law!
The Second
On what force do you rely that you are so bold as to violate the principle of freedom of conscience, which governs almost everywhere in mankind, especially in this age of freedom and in civilized circles, and to treat it lightly and so indirectly to insult mankind and dismiss their objections? What power do you have that you attack religion and the people of religion in this way as though you had taken irreligion as a religion for yourselves in bigoted fashion, although by calling yourselves secular you proclaim that you will interfere with neither religion nor irreligion? Such a thing will not remain secret! You will have to answer for it! So what answer will you give? Although you could not hold out against the objections of the smallest of twenty governments, you try to violate by force freedom of conscience, as though you completely disregard the objections of twenty governments.
The Third
According to what principle do you propose to people like me who follow the Shafi‘i school of law, the Hanafi school, in a way opposed to the elevatedness and purity of that school, due to the false fatwas of certain corrupt religious scholars who have sold their consciences to gain the world? If, after abrogating the Shafi‘i school, which has millions of followers, and making them all follow the Hanafi school, it is forcibly proposed to me in tyrannical fashion, it may perhaps be said that it is a principle of irreligious people like you. Otherwise it is arbitrary and despicable, and we do not follow the whims of people such as that, and we do not recognize them!
The Fourth
In accordance with which principle do you propose to those like me who belong to another nation, by means of a corrupt, innovating fatwa, to “perform the iqāma in Turkish” in a way completely contrary to Turkish nationalism, which is sincerely religious and sincerely respectful towards religion and has since early times blended and united with Islam, in the name of Turkism, which has the meaning of Europeanism? Yes, although I have friendly and brotherly relations with true Turks, I have in no way any connection with the Turkism of imitators of Europe like you. How can you propose such a thing to me? Through which law?
Perhaps, if you abolish the nationhood of the Kurds, of whom there are millions and who for thousands of years have not forgotten their nationhood and language, and are the true fellow‑citizens and companions in jihad of the Turks, and make them forget their language, then perhaps your proposal to those like me who are reckoned to be of a different race would be in accordance with some sort of savage principle. Otherwise it is purely arbitrary. The arbitrary whims of individuals may not be followed, and we do not follow them!
The Fifth
A government may apply all laws to its citizens and to those it accepts as its citizens, but it cannot apply its laws to those it does not accept. For they are able to say: “Since we are not citizens, you are not our government!”
Furthermore, no government can inflict two penalties at the same time. It either imprisons a murderer, or it executes him. To punish by both imprisonment and capital punishment is a principle nowhere!
However, despite the fact that I have caused no harm whatsoever to this country and nation, for eight years you have held me in captivity in a way not inflicted on even a criminal belonging to the wildest and most foreign nation. Although you have pardoned criminals, you have negated my freedom and deprived me of all civil rights. You have not said: “He too is a son of this land,” so in accordance with what principle and law do you propose, contrary to the wishes of your nation, these freedom‑destroying principles to someone like me who is a foreigner to you in every respect?
Since in the Great War you have counted as nothing all the heroic deeds to which this person was the means and were testified to by the army’s commanders, and considered his self‑sacrificing struggles for the sake of this country to be crimes; and since you deemed his preserving the good morality of this unfortunate nation and his serious and effective work to secure its happiness in this world and the next to be treason; and since you have punished for eight years (and now the punishment has been for twenty-eight years) someone who does not for himself accept your injurious, dangerous, arbitrary principles, which in reality are without benefit and spring from unbelief and from Europe; the punishment is the same. I did not accept its application so you made me suffer it. So according to what principle is it to enforce a second punishment?
The Sixth
In view of the treatment you have meted out to me, according to your belief, I oppose you in general fashion. You are sacrifing your religion and life in the hereafter for the sake of your lives in this world. According to you, due to the opposition between us and contrary to you, we are all the time ready to sacrifice our life in this world for our religion and for the hereafter. To sacrifice two or three years of humiliating life under your domination in order to gain sacred martyrdom, is like the water of Kawthar for us.
However, in order to make you tremble, relying on the effulgence and indications of the All‑Wise Qur’an, I tell you this with certainty:
You shall not live after killing me! You shall be driven out of the world, your paradise and your beloved, by an irresistible hand, and swiftly cast into everlasting darkness. Behind me, your Nimrod‑like chiefs will be quickly killed and sent to me. In the divine presence I shall grasp hold of them by their collars, and on divine justice casting them down to the lowest of the low, I shall take my revenge!
O you miserable wretches who sell religion and your lives in the hereafter for this world! If you want to live, do not interfere with me! I hope from divine mercy that my death will serve religion more than my life and will explode over your heads like a bomb, scattering you! Cause me trouble if you have the courage! If you do anything, you shall see! With all my strength I proclaim this verse in the face of all your threats: Men said to them: “A great army is gathering against you;” and frightened them; but it only increased their faith. they said: “For us Allah suffices, and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs.”