A conversation with prisoners
In His Name, All-Glorified is He.
Prisoners are in great need of the Risale-i Nur’s consolation; especially those who suffered the blow of youth and spend the prime of their lives in prison need the Risale-i Nur as much as they need bread. Youths are driven by emotion rather than reason. Emotion and desire are blind; they cannot see consequences and prefer an ounce of immediate pleasure to tons of future pleasure. They kill for a minute’s satisfaction of revenge, and then suffer uncountable hours of painful imprisonment. One hour of dissolute pleasure spent raping a woman may destroy a lifetime’s contentment through the fear of prison and enemies.
Young people meet many pitfalls that cause them to transform life’s sweetness into a most bitter and remorse-laden existence. In particular, a huge and mighty state to the north is misusing its youths’ passions and shaking this century with its storms. For it has made lawful for its blind-emotion driven young people the beautiful daughters and wives of upright, innocent people. By allowing men and women to go together to public baths, it encourages immorality. It also allows the vagabond and the poor to use freely, even plunder, the property of the rich. Everyone trembles in the face of this calamity.
During this age, all Muslim youths must act heroically and respond to this two-pronged attack with “sharp swords” like the Risale-i Nur’s “Fruits (of Belief)” and “A Guide for Youth.” Otherwise, those unfortunate youths will destroy their future, their happiness in both worlds, their eternal afterlife, and transform both into torment and suffering. They will wind up in hospitals due to their abused energy and dissipation, in prisons due to their excesses, and be full of regret when they are old. But if they protect themselves with Qur’anic training and the Islamic truths, some of which the Risale-i Nur expounds, they will become truly heroic youths, perfect human beings, prosperous Muslims, and in some ways masters over the rest of animate beings.
If young people in prisons spend just one hour a day on the five Prescribed Prayers, and while imprisonment prevents the perpetration of many sins, avoid other painful sins and seek God’s forgiveness for the crime that led them to their present state, both their own future and their relatives, nation, and country will benefit. In addition, the Qur’an of miraculous exposition and all other revealed Scriptures give the certain, glad tidings that their fleeting ten to fifteen years of youth will gain them an eternal, brilliant youth. If young people act in gratitude for the delightful blessing of youth by following the Straight Path in obedience to God, the blessing increases and becomes eternal and even more pleasurable. If they do not, they are pursued by calamity, pain, and grief. Their lives become nightmarish and then disappear. They live aimlessly, and so harm both their relatives and their nation and country.
If those who have been imprisoned unjustly perform the Prescribed Prayers will find that each hour spent behind bars equals one day of worship. Their cells will become like a place of retreat for them, and they themselves may be considered among the pious people of old times who retreated to caves to devote themselves to worship. If they are poor or aged or ill and seek to learn the truths of belief, will find that each hour spent in prison will equal twenty hours of worship, provided they seek God’s forgiveness for the crime they committed and perform the religious obligations. The prison will resemble a rest house, a place of friendliness owing to those who compassionately care after them, and a place of training, and education. Staying in prison may even bring them greater happiness than they could find on the outside, for there they would be perplexed and assaulted by sin. If they receive proper education while in prison, former murderers or revenge-seekers would be released as repentant, mature, and well-behaved people who can benefit their nation. Those who saw the Denizli prisoners attain this rank quickly through the moral instruction of the Risale-i Nur remarked: If, instead of fifteen years of imprisonment, they receive a fifteen-week instruction from the Risale-i Nur, this will reform them much better.
Since death does not die and the appointed hour is unknown, it may come at any time; since the grave cannot be closed, and people enter it in successive convoys; and since the Qur’an declares that believers experience death as a discharge from worldly duties and that belief saves them from eternal punishment, while unbelievers experience death as an execution leading to everlasting torment and unending separation from their loved ones and all other creatures, for sure, the happiest people are those who thank God in patience and, benefiting from their time in prison, take the necessary moral and religious teaching to serve the Qur’an and belief on the Straight Path.
O addicts of enjoyment and pleasure! I am now seventy-five years old. I have come to know with utmost certainty from thousands of experiences and proofs that true enjoyment, pure pleasure, grief-free joy, and happiness are found only in belief and the sphere of its truths. One worldly pleasure yields many pains, as if delivering ten slaps for a single grape, and thus mars the pleasure of life.
O you unfortunate people suffering imprisonment! Since you are mourning here and your life is bitter, benefit from your time in prison so that you may not mourn in the Hereafter and so that your eternal life may be sweet. Just as an hour’s watch under severe battle conditions sometimes equals a year of worship, the hardship of each hour spent worshipping in prison multiplies and changes hardship into mercy.
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi