I Love Abdur Rahman…!
By Asim Alavi
The sooner I heard about you I developed this extremely passionate love for you; when I saw your photo with your uncle, I found myself captivated by it. The photo might have been taken some nine decades ago in a modern studio of your time, when digital technology was not even invented. But your turban, your bulbous cheek, the elegant cloak you were in with the dagger attached to your waist………. above all, your face!! It’s shiny as some olive oil was applied, it’s so innocent, your eyes too show your innocence….. You stature also caught my attention. I felt as if you were still standing alive out there, but when I turned over the page I was disappointed. When the photographic machine caught your figure, you were smiling, right? Oh Lord! Your smile too has its own exceptional beauty!! What was in your mind at that time? Who asked you to appear for a pose with your beloved uncle? Have you ever thought that there will be a tool called the internet in the future time and your photo will be circulated among millions of people? Have you ever thought that it will be printed in some sacred Islamic literatures, which millions of others still continue to read?
I love you, not because you are Abdur Rahman, nor that you looked pretty elegant in the picture, but I love you for several other sacrosanct reasons.
When your beloved uncle, Imam Bediuzzaman Said Nursi rose against a powerful anti-Islamic tyrant force, in defence of faith, you joined him as a helper, as some of the disciples of Jesus (Peace be upon him); you were around him when he waged his ideological Jihad; you took some prudent steps to write down the scholarly articles of your beloved uncle; How foresighted you might have been at that time, in your young age, to write a biography of your beloved uncle?
When I read through the history lines and found you had departed to the Mercy of your Creator at the tender age of 27, I could not control my emotions; of course, we do not have control over the time of our death, but my heart pained hearing your death. I feel you are my younger brother, because you died at the age of 27 which is lower than my present age. If you were still alive you would be in the age of my grandpa!!!
Do you know what happened to your uncle afterwards?
Do you know how did he describe your loss? What a painful loss it was for him? It had a great effect on his entire life. I too pained reading his description of you in the following words of him:
….one time I was being held in the district of Barla in the province of Isparta in a distressing captivity under the name of exile, in a truly wretched state of suffering both illness and old age, and absence from home, and in a village along and with no one………… the All-wise Quran…. was a means of consolation for me. With it a tried to forget my pitiful, grievous and sad state. I was able to forget my native land, my friends and relations, but alas, there was one person that I could not forget, and that was Abdurrahman, who was both my nephew and my spiritual son, and most self-sacrificing student, and my bravest friend. He had parted me six or seven years previously…… Then out of the blue someone gave me a letter. I opened it, and saw that it was from Abdur Rahman, written in a way showing his true self….It made me weep, and it still makes me weep. ……..he also wanted to help me with his capable pen in spreading the mysteries of the Qur’an, my true duty in this world. He even wrote in his letter: ‘send me twenty or thirty treatises and I will write twenty or thirty copies of each and get others to write them…(Lem’alar, 232-5)
But Abdur Rahman! Do you know that your uncle was prevented from attending your funeral?! How pitiful an experience it was?
Abdur Rahman! life was not easy for your uncle, because he chose a path not full of roses and wool, but full of thorns and sharp spikes. Your uncle emerged as a great Mujaddid (Redeemer) and a heroic defender of faith at a time when Islam faced one of its greatest challenges in history since the time of our beloved Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him). Risale Nur had shattered all the schemes of the enemies of Allah. Your uncle was tormented, exiled, humiliated, threatened, intimidated and left to suffer all sorts of unbearable pains; equally he was offered all kinds of perks, worldly comforts, earth and sky, and positions.
All in return for a simple request, that he abandons his mission!!! He was asked by the anti-Islamic schemers to leave them peacefully, so they can keep propagating their evil ideas and keep misguiding people….
Oh God! The earth would have quaked; the army of Satan would have erupted into rapture, had your uncle abandoned his mission!!
Indeed your loss was unbearable for him, but his pain did not stop at that. He faced worse situations…… however he continued in his mission fearlessly, until his last breath left his body.
Allah almighty protected His Deen (Religion) through the selfless and sincere struggle of your uncle, Imam Bediuzzaman.
The seedling, Risale Nur, that you helped and watered to grow has now become a grand tree, whose root is firmly fixed, and whose branches reach the sky………..No Satan can approach it now…
Abdurrahman, I begged my respected friends to show me any traces of you other than the photo I mentioned earlier; I asked them to show me your graveyard, so I can visit and say Salam to you!
I pray Allah almighty that he gives me an opportunity to meet you in the Hereafter, a world no doubt can be cast on its existence.
Asim Alavi
http://www.nurnet.org/i-love-abdur-rahman/