The Seventeenth Gleam
The second Europe and the Qur’an’s students
In the Name of God, the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate.
Since Western science and civilization had some degree of influence on Old Said’s thought, when New Said began journeying in the mind and heart, they caused disease of the heart and great difficulties. For this reason, when New Said wanted to shake off that erroneous philosophy and degenerate civilization from his mind, in order to silence the suggestions and whisperings of his evil-commanding soul, which testified in favor of Europe, he felt compelled to hold the following discussion, which in one respect is very brief and in another is long, with the collective personality of Europe.
It should not be misunderstood; Europe is two. One is that which, benefiting from the religion of Jesus and Islamic civilization, serves human social life and justice through its scientific and technological inventions, the other is that which is based on naturalistic and materialistic philosophy and, supposing the evils of civilization to be virtues, has driven humankind to vice and misguidance. While journeying in spirit at that time, I said to this second collective personality of Europe, which holds in its hand useless, harmful philosophy and dissolute civilization in the place of beneficial sciences and the virtues of civilization:
Know, O second Europe! You have taken in your right hand dark, deviating philosophy and in your left hand corrupt, harmful civilization. Then you claim that humanity’s happiness lies in them. I wish your hands would be broken and that your two offerings would cause you to die.
O you wretched spirit, which spreads unbelief and ingratitude! Can one with a corrupt conscience and suffering from mental or spiritual illnesses be happy with rich clothes, superficial, deceptive glitter, and worldly possessions? Do you not see that for one who is disappointed or disillusioned by the non-fulfillment of every expectation, sweetness turns sour, pleasure changes into pain, and the world becomes narrow? How can one exposed to your evil, whose heart and spirit have been stricken with your misguidance and left frustrated and distressed, find happiness with what you offer? Can one be described as happy when their body is in a deceiving, fleeting paradisiacal state or while their spirit and heart are in hellish torment? See, you have led astray wretched humanity in this way, and caused them hellish sufferings in a false paradise.
O evil-commanding soul of humankind! Consider the following parable and see where you have driven humankind. There are two roads before us. We choose one and begin to walk. At every step helpless people are attacked by thugs who rob them of everything, destroy their houses, and beat them so savagely that even heaven weeps for them. Wherever we look we see the same scene, filled with the shouts of the oppressors and the cries and lamentations of the oppressed. Since we feel pain when others are in pain, our conscience cannot bear such injustice or laments. So, those who see such events will either abandon all human feelings and, no longer concerned with the destruction of others as long as they themselves remain safe, surrender to the utmost degree of savagery, or utterly ignore the demands of the heart and reason.
O Europe, corrupted with vice and misguidance and taken far from the religion of Jesus! You have used your genius which, like the Dajjal,23 has only a single eye, to bring humanity to this hellish state as a “gift” and then, seeing that this illness is so incurable that it casts humankind from the highest of the high to the lowest of the low, reducing them to the basest level of bestiality, you offer people charming amusements and fancies as a cure to anaesthetize them. However, your cure will kill you. The road you have opened up for humankind and the happiness you have given them resemble the first road in the parable.
The other road, which the wise Qur’an has bestowed on humankind, is this: We see that at every station, place, and town, the soldiers of a just sovereign perform their duties. Now and then the sovereign’s officials come, take the weapons and other belongings lent to them by the government, and give them their discharge papers. The soldiers are pleased, although outwardly they look sad because the horses and weapons which they love have been taken back; but now they can visit the sovereign and return to the capital of his country. If the demobilization officials meet a recruit who does not know them and they ask him to surrender his weapons, that recruit tells them, “I am the sovereign’s soldier and in his service. My final destination is with him. If he has sent you here, welcome. If not, stay away, for no matter how many of you there are, I will fight with you—not for myself, because I do not own myself, I belong to my sovereign: both myself and my weapons are in trust from my owner. So I shall not submit to you but shall preserve my sovereign’s trust and protect his royal dignity and honor.”
This is only one of the thousands of instances of joy and happiness on the second road. Throughout the journey, we constantly see new troops gathered or mobilized with joy and celebrations under the name of birth, while many others are discharged with cheers and military bands under the name of death. The wise Qur’an has offered humanity this road as a gift. If people respect it and use it as a guide, they will enter this second road. Then no fear shall come upon them, neither shall they grieve (10:62).
O second, corrupted Europe! A number of your rotten and baseless foundations are as follows. You say, “All living creatures, from the greatest angel to the tiniest fish, are their own lords; they work in their own name, and strive for their own pleasure. They have the right to life, and their only aim in life is to survive.” Do you not see the universal mutual helping among them, established by their All-Munificent Creator as a principle of munificence which is perfectly obeyed in all the spheres of the universe? Plants help animals, and animals help humanity. But, supposing that the compassionate, munificent manifestations of this universal law of mutual assistance are conflict and contention, you preach that life consists of conflict. How can this be true? Can you not see that the particles or atoms of all food help to nourish the body’s cells? This mutual assistance results from everything obeying the order of a Munificent Lord, and proves that no living creature is the lord of itself. But another rotten foundation of yours is that you say, “Everything owns itself or is its own lord.” Another clear proof that nothing owns itself is this: Among all living agents, the most honorable, and the one endowed with the most extensive will and the widest field of activity is humanity. Despite this, our part even in our daily acts, like thinking, speaking, and eating, which we do by our will and power, is minuscule. So how can those who do not own even one hundredth of their most ordinary acts such as these, claim ownership and lordship over themselves?
If this most honorable creature, one endowed with the widest scope of free will, has so little part in its own ownership and lordship, to what degree can other animate and lifeless things claim lordship over themselves?
O Europe! You have fallen into such error because your genius has caused you to forget your Lord—the Creator of everything. As a result, this illusion about your true nature has caused you to attribute all things and acts to (material) causes, and to share what belongs to God with false “claimants” to divinity. This compels all living beings to struggle with innumerable aversions and hostilities to satisfy their endless needs through an atom’s weight of power, the capacity of will of a strand of hair, a single gleam’s light of consciousness, and a tiny sparkle of life. Whatever they have (in the name of power and will, consciousness and life) cannot satisfy even one of their needs. When misfortune visits them, they seek help from deaf and blind causes. But the appeals of unbelievers are but destined to go to waste (13:14).
Your dark and darkening genius has changed humanity’s day into a night illuminated by false, illusory lights. Those lights do not smile with joy in the face of humankind rather they mock their idiotic rejoicings in their pitiful and lamentable state.
Students of your genius see every living being as a wretched one attacked by darkness from all sides. They see the world as an abode of lamentation, and all voices in it are wailings over death and suffering. Students completely educated by your genius become pharaohs and tyrants, but such pharaohs and tyrants that they adore the meanest things and are attached to every beneficial means as if these means were their lords. They are apparently refractory, but so humble themselves for the sake of pleasures that they even kiss Satan’s feet for the meanest benefit. They appear to be very powerful, but as they have no point of support (in their inner worlds), they are in reality infinitely weak. Your students seek only to satisfy their carnal appetites, pursuing their own personal benefits under the screen of patriotism and self-sacrifice, and working to satisfy their greed and conceit. They love only their own self and sacrifice everything for it.
The sincere students of the Qur’an, however, are worshipping servants of God, but they are such esteemed servants that they do not lower themselves even before the greatest creature or interest, and do not make even the supreme benefit of Paradise the aim of their worship. They are mild and gentle, but only humble themselves before their Creator and with His permission, and they exert themselves for the well-being of all humanity in both worlds. They are poor, but independent of all through what their Munificent Lord has stored in them; they are weak, but the strongest of all through their Master’s strength, Whose power is infinite. Let alone seeking this fleeting world as their aim in life, they do not seek even to enter Paradise, and are not pleased with it. Would the Qur’an allow its true students to take this fleeting world as their aim in life while it does not allow them to take even eternal Paradise as their final goal? (Their aim is to obtain the good pleasure of their Lord alone, and Paradise is only a reward.) Thus you can understand what different aims these two kinds of students pursue in their efforts.
You can further compare the zeal and self-sacrifice of the students of the wise Qur’an with the pupils of your corrupt philosophy as follows:
The pupils of your corrupt philosophy flee from even their own family members to pursue their own interests, and even file a lawsuit against them. Whereas, the students of the Qur’an regard all righteous inhabitants of the heavens and earth as family members, and feel so strong and sincere a relationship with them that they pray for them, saying, “O God, forgive all believing men and women!” Their happiness makes the Qur’an’s students happy. They see even the greatest things, such as the Supreme Throne of God and the sun, as God’s dutiful and subjugated officials and as servants and creatures like themselves.
The Qur’an imparts such joy and elation to the spirits of its students that in place of the string of ninety-nine prayer beads, it gives all the atoms of the ninety-nine worlds that display the manifestations of the ninety-nine Divine Names to its students as prayer beads. It says to them, “Recite your glorifications and supplications with these!” Look at such saintly students of the Qur’an as ‘Abdul-Qadir al-Jilani, ar-Rufa‘i,24 and ash-Shadhili,25 and see how they used everything in the universe, down to the chains of atoms, raindrops, and breaths of all creatures to glorify, mention, and praise God.
Thus, look at the miraculous instruction of the Qur’an of miraculous exposition and see how humans are elevated by it—although defeated by a microbe and driven to distress and despair by the least grief and anxiety, see to what exalted ranks they rise, to what extent their faculties are developed by the Qur’an’s enlightening guidance. Such people regard the world and its contents as insufficient to say their beads, for their daily recitations, and they belittle Paradise as the aim of their invocations, glorifications, and praises. Despite this, they do not consider themselves greater or more virtuous than the least of God’s creatures. They combine the utmost dignity with the utmost modesty and humility. You can see from this how abject the students of corrupt philosophy are.
So, concerning the truths which the one-eyed genius of corrupt Western philosophy perceives wrongly, the guidance of the Qur’an—which considers the two worlds, which looks at them with its two shining eyes, penetrating the Unseen, and points with its two hands to the happiness of humankind in both worlds—says:
O humanity! The selfhood and property which you hold in your hand is not yours; it is in trust to you. It belongs to the Owner (of all things); He is an All-Compassionate and All-Munificent One, Who has power over and knows everything. He wants to buy from you His property that He entrusted to you, to preserve it on your behalf so that you will not lose it. He will give you a very great price in return. Like a soldier, you have responsibilities and certain duties, so act in His Name and for His sake. He provides you with whatever you need and protects you against whatever you cannot overcome.
The purpose of your life is to reflect the manifestations of His Names and Essential Qualities. When misfortune visits, you say, “Surely we are God’s and in His service, and surely to Him we are bound to return (2: 156). So, O misfortune, if you have come with His permission, welcome. We are returning unto Him and desire a vision of Him. He will free us from life’s duties and difficulties whenever He wills. If, O misfortune, this is to happen through your hand, it is alright. However, if He has allowed you to come to test my truthfulness to His trust, but has not allowed me to submit myself to you, so long as I have the power I will never submit His trust to one not entitled to receive it.”
This is one of the numerous examples of being able to see the reality of the two ways. But people vary in guidance and misguidance, and heedlessness has many degrees. Everyone cannot perceive completely this truth in all its degrees. For heedlessness numbs the senses. Especially in the present age, it has numbed the senses to such an extent that the “civilized” are insensible to this acute pain. However, increased sensitivity owing to developments in the sciences, and the warnings of tens of thousands of deaths every day may yet tear this veil of heedlessness asunder. But how regrettable it is that many people in Muslim lands imitate Westerners blindly and take the way of misguidance under the influence of their irreligious trends of thought and scientific materialism.
O young people, especially those in Muslim lands! Do not try to imitate Westerners blindly! After you have suffered such misfortune at the hands of this second Europe, how can you still trust in and follow its debauched fallacies? Those who imitate them in their dissipation join their ranks unconsciously and condemn to death both themselves and their brothers and sisters. Be aware that the more you follow them in immorality, the more you contradict your claims of patriotism! Does your following them in this way mean despising devotion to “national” values and ridiculing the nation? May God guide us, and you, to the Straight Path.
Said Nursi
23 The Dajjal (the Anti-Christ in the Christian tradition) is the person or persons or a movement that claims the non-existence of God, extremely opposes religion and tries to eradicate it from people’s life. (Tr.)
24 Ahmad ibn ‘Ali ibn Yahya ar-Rufa‘i (1120–1184), founder of the Rufa‘iya Sufi order, is one of the most renowned and celebrated saints of Islam. (Tr.)
25 Shaykh Hasan ash-Shadhili (d. 1258): One of the leading, most celebrated saints of Islam. He founded the Shadhiliyah, one of the most important Sufi brotherhoods. (Tr.)