The Twenty-fifth Word

Treatise on the Qur’an’s miraculousness

Two concluding notes

FIRST NOTE: Twelve years ago, I heard that a dangerous and obstinate unbeliever ordered the Qur’an to be translated so that people could see its reiterations and understand just what it really is. He also intended to substitute the translation for the original in the prescribed prayers. However, as the Risale-i Nur shows decisively, an exact translation is impossible, for no other language can preserve Arabic’s virtues and fine points, as Arabic is very strict in syntax and grammar. No translation can replace the Qur’an’s miraculous phrases and words, which are comprehensive in meaning, and each letter of which brings from 10 to 1,000 merits.

The Risale-i Nur also stopped the plan to have only translations of the Qur’an recited in mosques. But since hypocrites taught by that heretic continue to seek a way to extinguish the sun of the Qur’an in the name of Satan, I felt compelled to write the Flower of Emirdag. As they do not allow me to meet with people, I have no knowledge of the latest developments.

SECOND NOTE: After our release from Denizli prison, I was sitting on the top floor of the well-known Hotel Sehir. The graceful dancing of the leaves, branches, and trunks of the poplar trees in the fine gardens opposite me, each with a rapturous motion like a circle of dervishes touched by a breeze, pained my heart, which was grievous and melancholy at being parted from the brothers and remaining alone. Suddenly I recollected autumn and winter, and a heedlessness overcame me. I so pitied those graceful poplars and living creatures swaying with perfect joy that my eyes filled with tears. Since they reminded me of the separations and deaths beneath the universe’s ornamented veil, the grief at a world full of death and separation pressed down on me. Suddenly, the light of the Muhammadan Truth came and changed that grief and melancholy into joy. Indeed, I am eternally grateful to the person of Muhammad for the help and consolation that came to me at that time, for only a single instance of the boundless grace of that light for me, as for all believers and everyone. It was as follows:

Picturing those blessed and delicate creatures as trembling at death and separation, and going into non-existence in a fruitless season (the view of the heedless), weighed heavily on my feelings of passion for permanence, love of beauty, and compassion for fellow creatures and living things. It changed the world into a kind of hell, and the mind into an instrument of torture. Just at that point, the light that Muhammad brought as a gift for humanity lifted the veil and showed not extinction, non-existence, nothingness, futility, and separation, but meanings and purposes as numerous as the poplars’ leaves, and, as demonstrated in the Risale-i Nur, results and duties that may be divided into certain types, as follows: One type relates to the Majestic Maker’s Names. For example, everyone applauds an engineer who makes an extraordinary machine: “What wonders God has willed. May God bless him (or her).” By carrying out its functions properly, the machine congratulates and applauds its engineer. Everything, every living creature, is such a machine and congratulates and applauds its Maker.

Another type of purpose for the lives of things like poplar trees is that they each resemble a text that, when studied, reveals knowledge of God to conscious living beings. Having left their meanings in such beings’ minds, their forms in these beings’ memories and on the tablets of the World of Symbols or Immaterial Forms, and on the records of the World of the Unseen and in the sphere of existence, they leave the material world for the World of the Unseen. In other words, they are stripped of apparent existence and gain many existences pertaining to meanings, the Unseen, and knowledge.

Since God’s Existence and Knowledge encompass all things, there is no room in a believer’s world for non-existence, eternal extinction, annihilation, and nothingness. But an unbeliever’s world is full of non-existence, separation, and extinction. A famous proverb says: “Everything exists for the one for whom God exists; nothing exists for the one for whom God does not exist.”

In short, then, just as belief saves us from eternal punishment when we die, it saves everyone’s particular world from the darkness of extinction and nothingness. Unbelief, especially denying God, changes life’s pleasure into painful poison, terminates the individual and his or her particular world with death, and casts such people into dark Hell-like pits. Those who prefer this world over the Hereafter should heed this. Let them find a solution for this or accept belief, and save themselves from a fearful, eternal loss.

All-Glorified are You. We have no knowledge save what You have taught us. Surely You are the All-Knowing, the All-Wise.

Your brother who is in much need of your prayers and misses you greatly.

—Said Nursi

Bediuzzaman Said Nursi