Sixth cause
The disagreement of the people of truth does not come from a lack of courage, lack of aspiration to a lofty goal, or lack of endeavor for its realization. Nor does the sincere cooperation of the heedless people of worldliness and misguidance in their worldly affairs arise from their courage, or from possessing a lofty ideal, or from endeavor for the realization of the same. Rather, as the people of truth mostly concentrate on the benefits that pertain to the Hereafter, they distribute their courage, aspirations, and endeavors among numerous important matters. Since they do not also devote their time, which is the most fundamental capital of humanity, to one single concern, their cooperation with others cannot be strong. They have numerous concerns over a broad sphere of duties.
As for the worldly people of heedlessness, since their only concern is the worldly life, they devote all their energy to the matters that are concerned with the worldly life and concentrate on them with all their feelings and faculties. They firmly cling to whatever may help them with their worldly concerns. Like a crazy diamond merchant who pays hundreds of dollars for a few cents’ worth of glass, they spend all their time, which is everyone’s greatest capital, on those matters, which are actually worth five cents and to which the people of truth may pay ten cents at the most. But as this sort of attachment and concentration, even if for the sake of falsehood, has the effect of sincerity, the worldly people succeed in those matters and triumph over the people of truth. This triumph of the worldly people drives the people of truth to humiliation, subjection, pretension, and ostentation, causing them to lose sincerity. They feel constrained to flatter and toady to certain despicable, selfish, and cowardly people of the world.
O people of truth! O truth-loving followers of the Divine way of life and true spiritual paths! Counter this awful disease of discord and disagreement by overlooking each other’s faults and closing your eyes to each other’s shortcomings. Act with the good manner described in the holy Criterion’s verse, When they happen to pass by anything vain and useless, they pass by it with dignity (25: 72). Abandoning internal disputes while you are subject to external attacks and regarding the deliverance of the people of truth from decline and humiliation as your primary, most urgent and important duty that pertains to your afterlife, realize among you brother/sisterhood, love, and cooperation, which are insistently enjoined by hundreds of Qur’anic verses and Prophetic Traditions. Establish with all your powers a much stronger unity with your fellows and brothers and sisters in religion than that which exists between the worldly people, and allow no disagreement or discord among you! Never think, “Rather than spending my valuable time on such insignificant matters, I would be better to spend it on valuable things such as religious recitals, invocations, and reflection,” drawing aside and weakening unity! For something you may regard as insignificant may be very important for this spiritual jihad. In just the same way that under certain important and special conditions one hour’s watch kept by a private may be equal to a whole year’s worship, a valuable day you spend on a minor matter pertaining to religion at this time of the defeat of the people of truth may be worth a thousand days. Since whatever is done is for God’s sake, it is not considered small or great, valuable or valueless. An atom expended for God’s sake with sincerity becomes like a star. Besides, what is of importance is not the nature of the means employed, but the result it yields. So long as the result intended is God’s good pleasure, and whatever is done is religiously lawful and done with sincerity, that is, purely for God’s sake, it is not small, but great.
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi