The Sixteenth Gleam

 

The conditions for the saintly predictions to come true& The most immediate matter confronting Muslims at the present & Deliverance and success are and should be expected from God Almighty & Visiting the hairs attributed to the beard of God’s Messenger & The sun’s setting in a spring of hot and black muddy water & The barrier Dhul-Qarnayn built and Gog and Magog & Five things of the Unseen

 

In His Name, All-Glorified is He.

There is nothing but it glorifies Him with His praise. Peace be upon you eternally, and God’s mercy and blessings!

 

My dear and faithful brothers Hoja Sabri, Hafiz Ali, Mesut, the Mustafas, Husrev, Rafet, Bekir Bey, Rüştü, the Lütfüs, Hafiz Ahmed, Shaykh Mustafa, and others!

I feel I should write to you briefly about four matters which have been discussed by many.

 

The first curious question

Some from among our brothers, like the honorable Çaprazzade Abdullah, asked, “Some saints of spiritual discovery predicted that the Ahl al-Sunna would enjoy relief and success last Ramadan, but it did not happen. Why do such saintly people of spiritual discovery make wrong predictions?

What follows is a summary of the answer I gave them:

A Prophetic Tradition says that sometimes a calamity is judged to come upon (those who deserve them), but if some alms are given in the meantime, they can confront and repel it.48 This Tradition shows that a Divine judgment given in return for an act can be canceled due to certain conditions. So, the judgments of which the saintly people of spiritual discovery have become aware are dependent on certain conditions, and if those conditions are not present, the judgment is not put into practice. Like the judgment about the time of a person’s death which is not final but made dependent on certain conditions, the judgments in question are given and written on the Tablet of Effacement and Confirmation, which is a sort of notebook of the Supreme Preserved Tablet, (on which all the final, decisive judgments of Destiny are kept recorded). It is extremely rare that spiritual discoveries can penetrate the Supreme Preserved Tablet; most of them cannot rise that far.

This reality explains that the predictions based on spiritual discoveries concerning last Ramadan or the Religious Festival of Sacrifice or certain other times did not come true because the conditions required for their occurrence were not fulfilled. Those who made them did not tell lies, nor were they mistaken in their discoveries, for they had been decided but did not come about because the conditions on which their occurrence was dependent were not present.

It is a reality that the sincere prayers of the majority of Ahl al-Sunna could have formed a reason for the removal of religious heresies and innovations. But since some other innovations were practiced in the mosques in the blessed month of Ramadan, they formed an obstacle to the acceptance of the prayers, and the expected relief did not come. Like almsgiving that repels calamities, as declared in the above-mentioned Prophetic Tradition, the sincere prayer of the majority attracts general relief. But since the necessary power of attraction was not formed due to innovations in the mosques, the expected relief and success were not bestowed.

Bediuzzaman said Nursi

48 at-Tirmidhi, “Zakah” 28; al-Bayhaqi, Shu‘ab al-Iman, 3:245; al-Ajluni, Kashf al-Khafa’, 2:30. (Tr.)