The Fourteenth Word
Addendum
In the Name of God, the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate.
When the earth quakes with a violent quaking destined for it; and the earth yields up its burdens, and humanity cries out, “What is the matter with it?” On that day, she will recount all its tidings, as your Lord has inspired her to do so. (99:1-5)
This sura states explicitly that the earth moves and quakes at a command, on receiving inspiration. Sometimes it trembles.
[NOTE: The following comprises my brief answers to seven questions asked in connection with the recent earthquake.]
FIRST QUESTION: More stressful than the recent earthquake’s material disaster is that the fear of its recurrence and the ensuing despair destroy the nightly rest of most people in most areas. What is the reason for this terrible torment?
ANSWER: They were broadcasting obscene songs (some sung by girls) over the radio in a sort of drunken rapture during the tarawih Prayers throughout this blessed center of Islam.63
SECOND QUESTION: Why are Muslims, instead of unbelievers, afflicted with such heavenly blows?
ANSWER: Major cases and crimes are tried and judged in large centers, while minor ones are decided in small centers. God’s wisdom requires that most of the punishment destined for unbelievers be postponed to the Last, Supreme Judgment, and that believers be partly punished in this world.64
THIRD QUESTION: Why does this disaster, which arose from the wrongdoing of particular people, encompass almost all people in the area?
ANSWER: Since the general disaster results from the majority’s wrong doing, most people must have participated in the minority’s sinful actions by giving them direct or indirect support, or in some other way.
FOURTH QUESTION: Since this disaster is the result of wrongdoing and atonement for sins, why did innocent and faultless people suffer? Why does Divine Justice allow this?
ANSWER: Since this matter deals with Divine Destiny, I refer you to the “Treatise on Destiny and Human Free Will.” Here, I say only: Beware of a trial that will surely not smite exclusively those among you who are engaged in wrongdoing (8:25). This means that this world is a field of trial and testing, a place of responsibility and struggle. Testing and responsibility require a veiling of the truth in certain matters so that, through competition and struggle, some rise to the highest rank while others fall to the lowest level. If the innocent were not touched by such disasters, everyone would submit in the same way. This would close the door of spiritual progress through struggle, and render our responsibility and testing meaningless.
If Divine Wisdom requires that the wronged and wrong-doer suffer through the same disaster, what is the share of the former in Divine Mercy and Justice? For the wronged person, there is a kind of mercy behind the wrath and anger shown in the disaster. Just as an innocent person’s lost property becomes like alms he gives to the poor and thereby gains permanence, his death in the disaster may be regarded as a kind of martyrdom through which he earns an eternal life of happiness. Thus, such people gain a great and perpetual profit from a relatively small and temporary difficulty and torment, and the earthquake becomes an instance of Divine Mercy within wrath for them.
FIFTH QUESTION: Why does the All-Just, All-Compassionate, All Powerful, and All-Wise not give specific punishments for specific wrongs, and uses a mighty element (like the earth) for punishment? Can this be reconciled with His Mercy’s grace and His Power’s inclusiveness?
ANSWER: The All-Powerful One of Majesty gives many duties to each element in creation, and causes each duty to produce many effects. Even though one effect of an element’s duties may be ugly, evil, or calamitous, its other effects may be good or beautiful. If that one ugly or evil effect pre vented the element from performing its other duties, many instances of good also would be prevented. Since not doing a necessary good is evil, instances of evil would be committed as the number of the good effects. Leaving many instances of good undone to avoid one evil is extremely ugly, contrary to wisdom and reality, and a fault. However, Divine Power, Wisdom, and Truth are free of fault. As certain faults constitute a rebellion comprehensive enough to rouse the earth and other elements to anger, and constitute an insulting infringement of the rights of numerous creatures, sometimes a mighty element is commanded to reprimand the rebellious, as part of its universal duty, so that the incident’s extraordinary ugliness can be seen by all. In such cases, this is perfect wisdom and justice, and for the wronged it is perfect mercy.
SIXTH QUESTION: The heedless say that the earthquake results from a subterranean fault in the rock strata, and consider it a natural and purposeless chance event. They do not recognize non-material causes and results, and so are unaware of the truth and learn nothing from this event. Does their allegation contain any truth?
ANSWER: No. It contains only misguidance. Each year the earth is dressed in and changes innumerable embroidered well-designed clothes. Flies are only one of the millions of species adorning the earth. Consider a fly’s wing from among numerous organs or parts of its body. The intention, will, purpose, and wisdom it manifests show that, let alone the acts, movement, and states of the huge earth, which is the cradle, matrix and protector of numberless conscious beings, nothing on it and connected with it, whether particular or universal, is ignored by Divine Will and Wisdom and left to its own devices. However, as His Wisdom requires, the Absolutely Powerful One veils His acts with apparent causes. When He wills an earth quake, He may order the rock strata to move. Even if the apparent cause of an earthquake is this movement, both this movement and resulting earth quake still occur by Divine Command and in accordance with His Wisdom.
Consider this: Someone shoots and kills someone else. If only the bullet’s movement is considered and the murderer is disregarded, the victim’s rights are violated and the result is utter foolishness and injustice. Similarly, disregarding the Lord’s command, will, and wisdom concerning any movement or occurrence connected with the earth, a docile official of the All-Powerful One of Majesty, a vessel or aircraft of His, and attributing it to nature or cause and effect, is a serious error and utter foolishness.
AN ADDITION: Misguided people and materialists seek to maintain their way and to counter the believers’ awakening in such ways or show such degree of obduracy that it makes people regret their humanity. Our awesome and wrongful rebellion, recently and to a certain degree, has assumed a general form, and this rouses the universe and certain universal elements to anger. So, in order to warn people to give up their awesome, wrongful rebellion and concerning their duty in the universe and toward God as the Lord of the whole creation, and in order to awaken them to recognize the universe’s Sovereign, whom they tend not to recognize, the Creator of the heavens and the earth sends various calamities to our way. Not on account of a particular manifestation of His Lordship, but of a universal manifestation as the Lord of the whole creation, He makes us endure such widespread and terrible calamities as earthquakes, storms, floods, and world wars, and so demonstrates most clearly His Wisdom, Power, Justice, Self-Subsistence, Will, and Sovereignty.
Although this is the truth, certain misguided people respond to such universal signs of Divine Lordship and Divine reprimands by saying: “Nature does this. It results from a fault in the rock strata, and is just the result of chance. It is the sun’s heat clashing with electricity that stopped all machinery in America for five hours. This also caused Kastamonu’s atmosphere to turn red and assume the appearance of a conflagration.”
Due to their misguidance and obstinate atheism and materialism, they do not know that natural causes are only so many occasions and veils. If their understanding were true, a huge pine tree would require a village full of factories and looms just to grow from a seed. However, by attributing the tree to its seed and certain apparent causes, materialist unbelievers deny the Maker’s numerous miracles displayed in that tree and reduce to nothing a comprehensive act of the Creator’s Lordship performed through Will and Wisdom. Sometimes they attach a “scientific” name to a most profound, unknowable, and significant reality that has countless purposes in each of its innumerable aspects. They think that doing so means that its entire nature has been understood and explained. But in reality, they only have made it commonplace and stripped it of all purpose, wisdom, and meaning.
They attribute a particular and purposeful act of the Master to a law of nature, although such laws are only expressions of one aspect of the Universal Will, Encompassing Choice and the Universal Sovereignty. By such an attribution they sever the connection between an act of the Master (an event) and Divine Will and purpose, and thus they limit it to chance and nature. This sheer ignorance is like attributing a battlefield victory to military regulations and discipline, while ignoring the purposeful, intentional actions and practices of the soldiers, commander, king, and government.
Or, it is like this: A wonder-working person produces a hundred pounds of various foodstuffs and a hundred yards of diverse cloths from a fingernail-sized wood chip. Someone comes over and, pointing to the woodchip, says that all these things have come into being out of it naturally and by chance. Thus the maker’s wonderful arts and skills are reduced to nothing.
SEVENTH QUESTION: How do we know that this earthquake was aimed at Muslims in Turkey? Why were the areas of Erzincan and Izmir the most affected?
ANSWER: It took place at night during a hard and very cold winter, and was restricted to the region insulting Ramadan. Since people have not taken the necessary lesson, it continues mildly to arouse the neglectful. These signs, together with some others, show that the earthquake is aimed at believers and warns them to perform the Prayers and other acts of worship, and the earth itself is trembling.
There are two reasons why it shook places like Erzincan more than others: First, as their faults were few and slight, they were forgiven without being left to the Supreme Tribunal in the Hereafter. Second, considering that the strong and truthful defenders of belief and Islam were few or utterly defeated in those places, the enemies of Islam established an effective center of activity. Thus, punishment must have been visited on them first.
None save God knows the Unseen.
All-Glorified are You. We have no knowledge save what You have taught us. Surely You are the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi
63 Tarawih: Supererogatory Prayer performed during Ramadan after the night Prayer. (Tr.)
64 Those (like the communist Russians) who abandoned an abrogated and corrupted religion do not incur Divine wrath (in the world) to the extent of those who betray a true and eternal religion that will never be abrogated. Thus the earth shows its anger toward believers and leaves the others (alone) at present.