The Twenty-fourth Word

THIRD BRANCH: Since the hadiths (Prophetic Traditions) about the signs of the Last Day, the unusual events at the end of time, and the rewards and merits of certain actions have not been understood fully, some scholars who rely on their intellects have ruled some of them weak or false; others with weak belief, strong egotism, and self-pride deny them. To disperse such doubts, but without going into a detailed discussion, I will explain twelve principles.

FIRST PRINCIPLE: I explained this in greater detail at the end of The Twentieth Word. To summarize: As religion is a means of testing people, of distinguishing exalted spirits from base ones, it speaks of the matters that everyone will see or experience in the future, in such a way that they are neither fully unknown or known so clearly as to make people felt compelled to confirm them. It opens a door to reason but does not deny human free will. If a sign of the Last Day were to be so clear that everyone had to affirm it, exalted and base spirits would be equal, and holding people responsible for their beliefs and actions, as well as the purpose for testing them, would be negated. This explains the apparent ambiguity of the Traditions concerning such issues as the Mahdi (the Muslim Messiah) and Sufyan (the Anti-Christ expected to appear in the Muslim world), and the great disputes over them.

SECOND PRINCIPLE: Not all Islamic issues have the same degree of importance. One issue demands certain proof, the prevailing opinion is sufficient for another, and yet another requires only acceptance. Secondary issues or historical events are not among the principles of belief. Thus they do not require conviction and decisive proof, but only acceptance or non rejection.

THIRD PRINCIPLE: While the Companions were alive, many Jewish and Christian scholars accepted Islam. Their former knowledge thus became “Muslim.” Some of it, however, was contrary to the truth and, later on, was imagined to belong to Islam.

FOURTH PRINCIPLE: While relating Traditions, some narrators tended to make explanations and included meanings deduced from the Traditions. Later on, such additions came to be considered part of the Tradition’s text. Since we are not free of error, some of these erroneous opinions or deductions were considered to be Traditions and declared “weak.”

FIFTH PRINCIPLE: There were some among Traditionists (scholars of Hadith) who were mentioned by the Prophet: “Among any community are those who are inspired.”120 Thus, the meanings obtained by some saintly Traditionists through inspiration and communicated to others were considered Traditions in later times. However, due to certain obstructions, some inspirations may be defective and thus contrary to the truth.

SIXTH PRINCIPLE: Certain widely circulated narrations come to be like proverbs over time. Their literal meanings and the words used are not important, for only the meaning and intent are considered. Thus the Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings, would sometimes mention such narrations in the form of comparisons or metaphors for the purpose of guidance. If there is any error in the original, literal meanings of such sayings, it is due to the people’s customs and traditions and to the way the sayings have been circulated.

SEVENTH PRINCIPLE: Over time and misunderstanding, many similes and parables have assumed the form of physical facts. For example, two angels called “The Ox” and “The Fish,” represented as an ox and fish in the World of Representations or Immaterial Forms and among those who supervise land and sea animals, were imagined to be a huge ox and a physical fish. As a result, the Tradition related to them was criticized.

Once a rumbling was heard. The Prophet said: “That is the sound of a rock that has been rolling down for seventy years and only now has reached Hell’s bottom.”121 Those who do not know the context may reject this. However, about twenty minutes after the Prophet spoke, someone came and related that a well-known hypocrite had died twenty minutes ago. The Prophet had described most eloquently how the hypocrite’s life of seventy years had been a continuous descent to the lowest of the low as a stone of Hell. Almighty God let the Prophet and Companions hear that rumbling.

EIGHTH PRINCIPLE: In this arena of testing and experience, the Absolutely Wise One hides certain vital things amidst a multiplicity of things: the Night of Power in the month of Ramadan, the hour when prayers are not rejected in Friday, His favorite friends among the people, the appointed hour of death during a person’s lifetime, and the time of Doomsday in the world’s life. If we knew when we were going to die, we would spend half of our life in absolute heedlessness and the other half in terror, like that of going step by step to the gallows. To keep the balance between this world and the next, to let people live between hope and fear, living and dying must be possible at any moment. Thus living for twenty years with an unknown end is preferable to living a thousand years with a pre-known end.

Doomsday is the world’s (a macro-human) appointed hour. If it were known, people of early and middle ages person would have lost themselves in heedlessness, and those of later centuries would be in terror. Just as we are concerned with our home’s and town’s survival in our personal lives, we are also concerned with the world and the earth’s continued existence in our social lives and as members of humanity.

The Qur’an announces: The Hour has approached (54:1). This was stated fourteen centuries ago, but does not mean that the Hour is not near. Doomsday is the world’s death. In proportion to its life, a thousand or two thousand years are like one or two hours in proportion to a year. Doomsday is not only humanity’s appointed hour that it should bear any proportion to a human time scale and be seen as remote. Thus the Absolutely Wise One conceals its time in His Knowledge among the “five things of the Unseen (The Qur’an, 31:34).” Such uncertainty has caused people in every age, including the Age of Happiness (the truth-seeing age of the Prophet), to fear its coming. Some have even believed that its signs have appeared already.

Question: Why did the Companions, with their vigilant hearts and keen sight and who were instructed in the Hereafter’s details, think that a far distant future event would be near to their own time?

Answer: Benefiting from the Prophet’s enlightening company, they thought of the Hereafter more than anyone else. Well aware of the world’s transience and conscious of the Divine Wisdom in the Hour’s uncertainty, they remained alert for it and strove seriously for their afterlife. The Prophet’s frequent warning: “Expect the Last Hour, wait for it,”122 was for the same purpose and intended for guidance; it was not a pronouncement of Revelation concerning a fixed time. The cause for something should not be confused with the benefit attached to and expected from it. Such sayings of the Prophet as this arise from the wisdom in leaving certain things vague.

This is also why people of all generations, even that of the Companions’ successors, expected such end-time individuals as the Mahdi and Sufyan, and hoped to live long enough to see them. Some saints even judged that they had passed. As with the Hour, Divine Wisdom requires that the times of these individuals should remain unknown. In every age, people feel in need of the meaning of the Mahdi, of one who will come to strengthen their morale and save them from despair. The time of such matters was left vague so that people would not heedlessly follow evil leaders or let the reins of their carnal selves go free out of indifference, and so that they would fear and hold back from terrible individuals who come to lead the forces of disorder and hypocrisy. If they had been known, the purposes for guiding people would have been unrealized.

Another reason for the differences in the narrations about such end time individuals as the Mahdi is this: The texts of some Traditions have been confused or even mixed with commentaries of interpreters with their own understandings and deductions. For example, the center of power when these Traditions had reached their widest circulation was Medina or Damascus. Thus they thought that events connected with the Mahdi and Sufyan would take place there or in neighboring places like Basra and Kufa, and interpreted them accordingly. Moreover, in their imaginations, they attributed to those individuals the mighty works and events belonging to the collective identity or community that they would represent, and interpreted relevant Traditions so that people could recognize them when they appeared.

But this world is an arena of trial. A door is opened to reason, but human free will is not denied, nor ignored. For this reason, when those mighty individuals, even the terrible Dajjal (Anti-Christ) appear, most people (even himself) may not realize his true identity. These end-time individuals can be known only through the light of belief.

One Tradition about the Dajjal says: “His first day is like a year, his second like a month, his third like a week, and his fourth like your normal days. When he appears, the world will hear. He will travel the world in forty days.”123 Some, saying this is impossible, deny the Tradition. However—the knowledge is with God—this Tradition must mean that an individual will appear in the north, where unbelief is strongest and at its peak. Leading a mighty current issuing from materialism, he will deny God and religion absolutely.

There is a subtle point here: In latitudes close to the North Pole, the whole year is a day and a night, each comprising six months. The expression, His first day is like a year, alludes to his appearance close to those latitudes, in the far north. His second like a month means that coming south, there are latitudes where a summer day lasts a month. This means that the Dajjal will invade southward toward the civilized world. Coming south, there are places where the sun does not set for one week, and still coming further south, there are barely three hours between the sun’s rising and setting—as a prisoner of war in Russia, I was in such a place.

The difficulty in understanding the world will hear when the Dajjal appears has been solved through radio and telegraph. And, it is now possible to travel the world in forty days. What was formerly considered impossible is now commonplace.

As for Gog, Magog, and the Barrier (other end-time signs), consult my Muhakemat (Reasonings). Here I will say only this: Some narrations say that various Asian tribes, who forced the Chinese to build the Great Wall and utterly destroyed the civilized world, will reappear, close to Doomsday, to cause chaos in the world and overrun civilization.

Question: Where are the tribes that once performed such extraordinary acts and that will perform them once again?

Answer: Huge numbers of disaster-causing locusts appear in one sea son. When the season changes, they survive in a few locusts. When it is time, by Divine command, vast numbers grow from those few and again destroy everything in their path. It is as if their national identity’s essence becomes fine, but not broken, and resurfaces when its time has come. In just the same way, those same tribes who once destroyed the civilized world will reappear at the appointed time by God’s leave and overrun civilization. However, the factors inviting them may be different. God knows the Unseen.

NINTH PRINCIPLE: The results of some issues of belief are concerned with this narrow and conditioned world, while others are related to the wide and unconditioned world of the Hereafter. So, though some Traditions about the virtues and rewards of certain religious acts were couched most eloquently to encourage people toward good and away from evil, some consider them exaggerations. However, they are all pure truth and contain no exaggeration.

For example, a most unfairly criticized Tradition relates: “If God valued this world as much as He does a fly’s wing, unbelievers could not take even a sip of water from it.”124 This does not allude to the world, but rather to everyone’s private world, which is limited to their short lives. It cannot equal an everlasting Divine favor to the extent of a fly’s wing from the eternal world. If God valued refers to the eternal world. In other words, because it is everlasting, a light from the eternal world to the extent of a fly’s wing is greater than the amount of transient light that fills the earth.

Furthermore, the world has three facets. The first facet contains the mirrors that reflect Almighty God’s Names. The second facet is concerned with the Hereafter. That is, this world is the arable field sown with the seeds of the Hereafter, the realm in which we might gain the eternal world. The third facet, looking to transience and non-existence, is the world of the misguided, of which God does not approve. This Tradition refers only to the third facet—the world of the worldly, which is opposed to the Hereafter, the source of all wrong, and the origin of calamities. So, it is not worth one everlasting particle out of what the believers will be rewarded with in the Hereafter. Thus, those who consider this Tradition an exaggeration are ignoring this most exact and serious truth.

Another category of Traditions considered by some to be exaggerations consists of the reward for religious acts and virtues of some Qur’anic suras. For example, some Traditions relate that the reward for Suratu’l-Fatiha equals that for the Qur’an,125 Suratu’l-Ikhlas equals one-third of the Qur’an,126 Suratu’l Zilzal equals one-fourth of the Qur’an,127 Suratu’l-Kafirun equals one-fourth of the Qur’an,128 and Sura Ya Sin equals ten times the Qur’an.129 They base their criticism on the assertion that these more meritorious suras are contained within the Qur’an.

The truth of the matter is this. Imagine a field sown with 1,000 maize seeds. If we suppose that some seeds produce 7 shoots and each shoot 100 grains, a single seed equals two-thirds of the original 1,000 seeds. If 1 seed produces 10 shoots, and each shoot yields 200 grains, 1 seed is equal to twice the number of all the seeds originally sown. Many similar analogies can be made. In exactly the same way, if we suppose the wise Qur’an to be a sacred, luminous, heavenly field, each of its 300,620 letters, together with its original reward, is like a seed. Without considering the shoots these seeds may produce, the Qur’an may be compared with the suras and verses which bring multiple rewards mentioned by these Traditions.

Out of Divine Grace, the letters of some suras may sprout and yield 10, 70, or 700, like the letters of Ayatu’l-Kursi. Sometimes they yield 1,500, like the letters of Suratu’l-Ikhlas, or 10,000, like verses recited on the Night of Forgiveness (Laylatu’l-Bara‘a) and other blessed occasions. Sometimes they even yield 30,000, like verses recited on the Night of Power (Laylatu’l Qadr). These are like poppy seeds, each of which may produce 10 cones, each of which contains thousands of seeds. As the Qur’an considers the Night of Power equivalent to 1,000 months (97:3), one letter of the Qur’an recited on that night brings 30,000 rewards.

Given this, some suras and verses may bring multiple rewards and be compared in certain circumstances with the whole Qur’an, when its letters are considered in their original merits and without producing a new crop of merits. For example, Suratu’l-Ikhlas and the Basmala (In the Name of God, the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate) both have 69 letters. Since this sura equals one-third of the Qur’an and the Qur’an has 300,620 letters, 3 times 69 is 207. Thus each letter of this sura has about 1,500 merits or rewards. Similarly, since Sura Ya Sin equals 10 times the Qur’an, if all the letters of the Qur’an are multiplied by 10 and the result is divided by the number of the sura’s letters, we discover that each letter has about 500 merits or rewards. So, if you apply the others to this, you will understand what a subtle, true and unexaggerated reality related by these Traditions.

TENTH PRINCIPLE: As with most other species, certain people among humankind are extraordinary in their acts and achievements. If they excel in good deeds, they become the pride of humanity; otherwise they are the cause of their shame. They acquire a collective identity and become models for imitators. Since it is not certain who among people has this capacity, theoretically, and sometimes it is even possible, everyone could be like them. Also, as such people can emerge in any place, every place may have some of them.

It follows that any act has the potential to deserve the following reward: The Prophet, upon him be peace and blessings, declared: “The reward for two rak‘ats of Prayer performed at such and such a time equals the Hajj (pilgrimage to the Ka‘ba).”130 This means that all the two-rak‘a Prayers performed at that time may earn a reward equal to performing the pilgrimage. The reward promised in such narrations is not actual or for everyone at all times. Rather, as certain conditions must be fulfilled, it is possible that the reward will be earned.

Such general promises have to do with possibility or potentiality. For example, one Tradition says: “Backbiting is like murder.”131 This means that there is a sort of backbiting more harmful than deadly poison. Again, for example: “A good word equals in virtue emancipating a slave, which is very meritorious.”132 By indicating the highest reward one may gain from a good deed, the Prophet sought to arouse eagerness for good and aversion to evil. Moreover, the things of the Hereafter cannot be measured on this world’s scales, for the greatest thing in this world cannot equal the least thing in the Hereafter. Since rewards for good deeds are related to the Hereafter, we cannot grasp them fully with our worldly, narrow mind.

Another example: God’s Messenger, upon him be peace and blessings, declares that people are given the reward of Moses and Aaron if they recite:

All praise and gratitude are for God, Lord of the heavens, Lord of the earth’s layers, Lord of the worlds. His is sublimity in the heavens and the earth. He is the All-Glorious and Mighty, the All-Wise. All praise and gratitude are for God, Lord of the heavens, Lord of the earth’s layers, Lord of the worlds. His is grandeur in the heavens and the earth. He is the All-Glorious and Mighty, All-Wise. His is the absolute dominion, Lord of the heavens, and He is the All-Glorious and Mighty, the All-Wise.133

This narration has been much criticized. However, we imagine with our narrow minds and limited outlooks what kind of reward Moses and Aaron can receive in the Hereafter. We forget that the Absolutely Compassionate One may give one of His servants in infinite need of everlasting happiness as much reward for one invocation as what we think they received for everything. For example, primitive and uncultured people who have never seen the king are unaware of his kingdom’s splendor. So they imagine a village headman and, with their narrow experience, think that the king is a little bit greater than their headman. Some uneducated people in the eastern regions used to say: “Our lord knows what the sultan does, while he cooks his bulgur soup in a saucepan over the fire.”134 In other words, they imagined the sultan as someone greater than an ordinary person who still cooked his own bulgur soup. If someone were to tell them: “If you do this for me today, I’ll reward you with as much splendor as you think the sultan has,” he would be promising those people as much splendor as he could imagine what the sultan has.

Our worldly views and narrow minds cannot know the actual rewards received in the Hereafter. This Tradition compares the actual, unknown reward for a believer’s invocation not to the actual (and unknown) reward of Prophets Moses and Aaron, upon them be peace, but to the reward we think they received. Moreover, the sea’s [smooth] surface and a drop’s “pupil” are equal in holding the sun’s image. The difference is only in regard to quality, which depends on capacity. The nature of the reward reflected in the mirror of the ocean-like spirits of Moses and Aaron is of the same nature as the reward received by a believer with a drop-like spirit from a Qur’anic verse. They are the same in regard to nature and quantity, while their quality depends on capacity.

Furthermore, sometimes a word or act of glorification opens up a treasury of happiness that one could not open before through a lifetime of Divine service. In certain circumstances, one verse may earn as much reward as the whole Qur’an. Also, the Divine gifts and enlightenment which the noblest Messenger, who was endowed with God’s Greatest Name, received through one verse may have been as much as all the gifts and enlightenment received by another Prophet. It may be correct to say that a believer, who through succession to Muhammad’s mission is endowed with God’s Greatest Name’s shadow, may receive reward as much as a Prophet’s enlightenment, one that would correspond to his (or her) own capacity in respect of quality.

Also, reward and virtues are from the realm of light, one world of which may be contained in an atom of this world. Just as heaven and its stars may appear in a tiny glass fragment, such reward and virtue, which are of pure light and thus can fill the heavens, may be contained in an invocation or recitation of a Qur’anic verse that acquires transparency through sincerity and pure intention.

In short: O unfair weak in belief but strong in dialectics! Consider these ten principles, and do not use what you consider a “suspect” Tradition as a pretext to slight the reliability and authenticity of the Prophetic Traditions and the Messenger’s purity and infallibility. These ten principles make it impossible for you to deny the Traditions and warn you: “If there is a real flaw, it is like what we have explained and cannot be attributed to the Traditions. If there is no real flaw, the problem arises from your misunderstanding.” Denying and rejecting these Traditions means you must contradict and refute these ten principles. Therefore, consider them carefully and do not try to deny those Traditions you consider contrary to the truth. Instead of criticizing them, say: “There must be a way to explain or interpret this.”

ELEVENTH PRINCIPLE: Just as the Qur’an contains difficult and allegorical verses needing interpretation or requiring total submission, Traditions also have difficulties that sometimes require extremely careful interpretation. The examples above may be sufficient to illustrate this truth.

Those who are awake can interpret a sleeping person’s dream, and sometimes those who are sleeping can hear the conversations of those who are awake and interpret their words according to their world of sleep. In the same way, O unfair one stupefied in the sleep of heedlessness and false reasoning! Do not deny in your “dream;” rather, interpret the vision of the one who always and truly was awake and about whom God declared: His eye never wavered nor swerved (53:17), and himself said: “My eye sleeps, but my heart sleeps not.”135 If a mosquito bites someone who is sleeping, he may dream that he has been severely wounded. If questioned, he would reply: “I’ve been wounded. They fired guns and rifles at me.” Those sitting by him would laugh at his anguish in sleep. Thus the view of heedlessness and philosophy in its “sleep” cannot be the criterion for the truths of Prophethood.

TWELFTH PRINCIPLE: The way of Prophethood and belief, as well as the doctrine of Divine Unity, deal with everything from the viewpoint of Unity, the Hereafter, and God’s Divinity. Thus they see truth and reality from the same perspective. Modern scientific views and philosophy, however, are concerned with nature, causality, and things in their multiplicity. These two points of view are distant from each other. Therefore, the greatest aim of philosophers and scientists is almost imperceptible in comparison with the aims of the scholars of religious methodology and theology.

This is why scientists have advanced greatly in their detailed explanations of beings’ structures and natures, but are more backward than a simple believer in the exalted Divine sciences and eschatology. Those who do not understand this consider the meticulous scholars of Islam backward when compared to philosophers. But how can those whose minds see no further than their eyes, who are submerged in the multiplicity of things, reach those who have achieved the sublime sacred aims through succession to the Prophet’s mission?

Furthermore, when looked at from two different viewpoints, a thing may display two different truths. For example, science views the earth as a mid-sized planet revolving around the sun among countless stars. When compared to most stars, it is a small body. But as explained in The Fifteenth Word, the people of the Qur’an see it as something quite different. Despite its small size in comparison with the heavens, the earth is the universe’s heart and center with respect to the meaning and art it contains. For the earth is humanity’s cradle and dwelling-place, and humanity, despite its impotence, is the fruit of the Tree of Creation, and a most comprehensive, complex, wonderful, and honorable miracle of Divine Power. The earth is also the place where God’s miracles of Art are exhibited and the manifestations of Divine Names are concentrated. It reflects God’s infinite activity as the Lord of all beings. It is also the center and pivot of the endless Divine creativity displayed in infinite liberality, especially in the numerous small plant and animal species, as well as the place where samples of creatures of the broadest worlds of the Hereafter are shown in small scale. It is the speedily operating workshop for eternal textiles, the fast-changing place of copies of eternal scenes, and the narrow, temporary field and tillage rapidly producing seeds for permanent gardens (in the Hereafter).

It is because of this greatness of the earth with respect to its meaning and its importance in regard to art, that the wise Qur’an puts it on a par with the heavens, although it is like a tiny fruit of a huge tree when compared with the heavens. It places the earth in one pan of a pair of scales and the heavens in the other, and repeatedly mentions them together, saying, the “Lord of the heavens and the earth.”

So, compare other issues with this. Understand that the dim, lifeless truths of the modern scientific and philosophical approach cannot compete with the Qur’an’s brilliant, living truths. Since the point of view of each is different, they appear differently.

Bediuzzaman Said Nursi

120 al-Bukhari, “Fada’ilus-Sahaba” 6; Muslim, “Fada’ilu’s-Sahaba” 23; at-Tirmidhi, “Manaqib” 17.

121 Muslim, “Janna” 31; Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Musnad, 3:341.

122 at-Tirmidhi, “Fitan” 39.

123 Muslim, “Fitan” 110; Abu Dawud, “Malahim” 14; at-Tirmidhi, “Fitan” 59.

124 Muslim, “Munafiqun” 18; al-Bukhari, “Tafsir Sura 18” 6; Ibn Maja,” Zuhd” 3.

125 al-Bukhari, “Tafsir Sura 1” 1; at-Tirmidhi, “Thawabu’l-Qur’an” 1; an-Nasa’i, “Iftitah” 26.

126 at-Tirmidhi, “Thawabu’l-Qur’an” 10; Ibn Maja, “Adab” 52; Abu Dawud, “Witr” 18.

127 at-Tirmidhi, “Thawabu’l-Qur’an” 14; Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Musnad, 3:147.

128 at-Tirmidhi, “Thawabu’l-Qur’an” 9; Ahmad ibn Hanbal, al-Musnad, 3:147.

129 at-Tirmidhi, “Thawabu’l-Qur’an” 7; ad-Darimi, “Fada’ilu’l-Qur’an” 21.

130 at-Tirmidhi, “Jumu’a” 59; at-Tabarani, al-Mu’jamu’l-Kabir, 77:40.

131 ad-Daylami, Musnadu’l-Firdaws, 3:116.

132 at-Tabarani, al-Mu’jamu’l-Kabir, 7:230; al-Bayhaqi, Shu’abu’l-Iman, 6:124.

133 Ahmad al-Gumushanevi, al-Majmu’atu’l-Ahzab, 263.

134 A soup made of boiled and pounded wheat. (Tr.)

135 al-Bukhari, “Tahajjud” 16; at-Tirmidhi, “Adab” 86; Abu Dawud, “Tahara” 79.