The Flowers from the Seeds of Truth-10
This tremor in humankind, the shaking of Muslim societies, will remove the humiliation caused by the tremor and give them stability. It will probably cause the West to wane and the East to become illuminated.
At one time someone said, “The civilization of unbelievers has brought calamity upon Muslims. Now socialism has appeared, and thrown the world into chaos; its followers are extremely fanatical.”
I said in reply: “Never fear! Popular civilization is the goal of socialists. It has principles not so contrary to Islam. Let the West fear it.”
But the present, dissipated civilization is peculiar to the elite; it has tried to corrupt Islam and cost it much, bringing about much calamity.
It has taken the greatest “bribe,” for it has been kneaded with the leaven of materialism and Inquisition; it is seductive in many respects, equipped with deceptive and inciting elements.
This seditious, enchanting sorcery sells itself to Muslims in return for religion, chastity, and elevated, noble feelings. Offering a glittering life, this deceit corrupts, in multiple ways, both the Religion and chastity.
As for socialism, it offers a simple life and offers itself to the common people. It does not compel people to make sacrifices in return for their religion and chastity; no one feels indebted to it.
Just as people need sustenance, so too they need pleasure. If their need for pleasure is not satisfied with licit, spiritual “food,” they seek to satisfy it in evil, lowly, and dissipated ways.
For example, there are persons who invite you for a meal. One of them is addicted to ostentation, and is fond of amusement; they invite you with kind words.
The other has a simple life, content with little; they invite you to a simple soup, without using flattering words. It is the time of offering the Prayer.
You accept the first invitation, which is very rich, abandon performing the Prayer in congregation and its Sunna part; you may even accept it at the cost of abandoning the Prayer entirely.
However, you do not accept the other, simple invitation and prefer to do the Prayer with its Sunna part, which gives spiritual delight and lasting pleasure.
The first invitation represents the present civilization, while the other, the popular civilization, is more equitable.
Pure justice issues from Islam and gives life to the spirit. It does not destroy your life; the life it offers is free of wrong and therefore of darkness. It leads to perfect truth.
Muslims have learnt a lesson; due to their neglect and heedlessness, Islam has resented them. While Christians – making friends with civilization and science in a deceptive way and appropriating these – have prevailed over us.
Now an awesome weapon is being manufactured in the East; its completion is near at hand. It is for the most part truth, which is our property, and therefore we must protect it. As for its deceitful, varnished part, we must leave it to its manufacturers.
If we remain indifferent to it, and feel resentful against it, as we did in the past, Christendom will make friends with it and use it against us to the detriment of Islam. It will be very difficult to resist.
It is a new idea, both calamitous and useful, which is turned toward the public. If an idea addressed to the public does not acquire sacredness, it will soon decline and die.
There are two great religions which provide an idea with sacredness, but one will bring darkness upon it, while the other, light.
This astute Eastern idea – when it was born, it discovered that the present Christianity was its enemy, standing right beside it. So, it never made peace with the religion.
This idea or way surely needs permanence and its permanence depends on its acceptance by the public.
Acceptance by the public requires that there is sacredness. That which can give it sacredness must be a religion that considers the public mercifully.
This means that this idea or way will inevitably resort to Islam, or it will die; it must be well aware of this.
If you say, “Why is it that Islam has grown wretched and outlandish, losing its glory, and we have sunk together, along with the prosperity it gave us? The star of Islam is not yet on the rise.”
I say in reply: “It has happened so because we have fallen in love with the West and turned to it with an inauspicious love.”
We have caused the sun of Islam to set. When we turn our faces to the east in earnest, it is then that the glory of Islam will illuminate the moon. It will receive its light from the sun of Islam and scatter it, and the crescent of Islam will rise high.
We have been deceived and we have committed great errors, spending our love abroad and spreading hostility at home. We must come to our senses so that we may recover and develop.
The answer to the Anglican Church
Once a fierce, pitiless enemy of Islam, a political intriguer, a scheming deceiver who desired to show themselves as superior, in the guise of a priest, with the intention of denial,
At a grievous time, squeezing our throat with its claws, they asked us four things in a spiteful manner, wanting us to answer in six hundred words.
We should have responded by spitting in the face of such spitefulness, and by keeping silent in resentment in the face of their intrigue, and by giving a silencing, resounding answer to their denial.
However, I will not stoop to speak to that enmity, but will give the following answer to a truth-seeking one:
The truth-seeking one asked: “What is the religion which Muhammad brought?” I answered:
“It is contained in the Qur’an. The basic purposes of the Qur’an are the six pillars of belief and the five pillars of Islamic life.”
His second question was: “What has it given to human thought and life?” I answered: “It has given unity to human thought and a straight direction to life. My witnesses to this are:
Say: “He, (He is) God, (Who is) the Unique One of absolute Oneness” (112:1), and Pursue, then, what is exactly right as you are commanded (11:112).
He also asked: “How does it heal the present diseases of humanity?” I answered: “Through the ban on interest and usury, and the obligation of Zakah. My witnesses to this are:
God deprives interest and usury of any blessing (2:176); God has made trading lawful and interest and usury unlawful (2:275); Establish the Prayer and pay the Zakah (the Prescribed Purifying Alms) (2:43).
Fourthly, he asked: “How does it view the tumults and revolutions in humanity?” I said in reply:
“Labor is essential, and wealth cannot be accumulated or held only in the hands of the rich and oppressors. My witnesses to this are:
Man has only that for which he labors (53:39); Those who hoard up gold and silver and do not spend it in God’s cause (to exalt His cause and help the poor and needy): give them the glad tidings of a painful punishment (9:34).
Rather than the general gravity, it is the spiritual gravity of the Qur’an which preserves our globe
It is this heavenly rope which holds our earth and rotates it around its daily and yearly axes. It anchors the earth securely, and is mounted on it, preventing it from rebelling.
The Shari‘a descended from God’s Supreme Throne and caused a luminous worship to rise from humankind. Of worship, the five daily Prayers and the calls to Prayer recited before it
Are bound together, one after the other. These five luminous ropes have bound humanity and the earth both with the realm of the Unseen and the Divine Supreme Throne.
These connecting bonds, the starting point of which are the five daily Prayers, and the end point of which are the Divine Throne and the Unseen, connect the corporeal, visible realm with the Unseen, the earth with humankind, and humankind with the heavens.
These five bonds are a belt around the earth, made up of five belts; both separate and connected to one another. They are also its garment, the two poles being the arms; earth’s inhabitants are never left naked.
These belts become united in a single instant, resembling the light of the sun. They are at the same time separate, like the luminous bands of rainbow, and
At a single point they are both connected to the Divine Throne and connect the earth to the Divine Throne. They impart life to the earth, rotating it. If this garment is torn,
Or if one of the ropes is severed, watch the uproar! The darkness of cold weighs down on it heavily, and it freezes; this indicates the imminence of its death and the destruction of the world: an utterly terrible tremor.
Assuredly We have honored the children of Adam (17:70).
Someone asked: “Why is it that only humankind has been honored with the supreme rank – to undertake the Supreme Trust – and made vicegerent on the earth?”
I said in answer: The best of things is that which is in the middle and moderate. If a cone is drawn in the center of the universe, from side to side, the atom is at its pointed end.
At the center point of the luminous diameter of the universe, which extends as far as the sun of the suns, is humanity, standing and protecting the Supreme Trust.
The distances between the atom and humanity and between humanity and the sun are of the same length. Humankind is a unique link in the necklace of creation.
For that unique gem is a pleasant shell for the pearl orphan, the Prophet Muhammadu’l-Hashimi, upon him be peace and blessings; it is a miniature sample of the whole of creation, which encapsulates the Unseen and the visible world.
It has windows, each opening onto a world; it looks at these worlds through these windows. In addition to its inner and outer senses, it has many other senses.
Like smell and taste, motive or urge is also a sense, as is enthusiasm. Both are very subtle, not dependent on reason or sight, and have many places to travel.
They – motive and enthusiasm – hold in their hands many things perceived through presentiment, true dreams, and sound spiritual discovery or illumination.
Thinking that the covering is the essence means losing the essence
Five things curtain five other things: the visible corporeal realm curtains the Unseen; nature, the Divine Will; blind force, Divine Power; the word, the inferred meaning; and the meaning inferred, the meaning itself.
Concentration on the curtain always leads to error and gives rise to groundless suspicions. For example, the meaning inferred: its place is the mind and it entertains the intelligence.
Preoccupation with and concentration on the meaning formed in the mind leads to deviation from the meaning itself, and to a form that is lifeless and infertile.
This weak, unproductive activity consumes energy and effort, and its output is a form of no use, which neither justifies the effort and energy, nor satisfies one’s enthusiasm, nor pleases one’s sense of delight.
Therefore, the meaning inferred should either be made transparent or holes should be made in it so that it is open onto the outer world and to the activity of the intelligence.
For the outer world is broad, a place where hearts and minds are active, and it comprises established realities. The shirt which you have sewn, like a spider’s web, from a part of the meaning in your narrow mind –
Do not attempt to place that shirt – which is too tight for a fly – on the Supreme Seat and Throne of God. On the page of the meaning that you infer in your mind you have drawn a tiny map, as tiny as a the wing of a fly, but as roomy as the capital city for holding suspicions,
Then you lose yourself in that tiny, fragile space and desire to gallop across it. What a calamity that is!
O materialist, naturalist one, blinded by force and deceived by forms and words. Give up following the scientifically materialist genius so that you can rise to right guidance.
Out of the five curtains I have indicated only one as an example; it is the least of the five, so compare others to it. The fallacies of materialism lead you into hellish pits.
Instead, hold fast to the chain that raises the soul to the heavens. It raises us high into Paradise.
Prayer should not be made for something impossible and should not contain sinful words
Any prayer made sincerely is absolutely accepted; whatever is asked for is given either as asked for or in some other way. But there are some conditions and one who prays should always assume the required manner of asking from God.
Without the required good manners, neither prayers nor any other act of worship will be accepted.
One cannot assume a manner of complaining about God or reproving Him in prayer; nor can one pray whimsically and capriciously.
Anything impossible or contrary to Divine wisdom and the Divine order of the universe should not be asked for.
One cannot also ask for infinitude concerning something finite. Saying, “Make me attain the highest of goals!” is a fantasy that acknowledges no limits, and is not a prayer that requires modesty or entreaty.
Likewise, fixing an amount, saying, for example: “to the numbers of the things in God’s Knowledge,” is not suited to prayer – Unless one means abundance by that amount. However, one cannot always bear intention in mind while praying.
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi