I am obliged to explain a matter to all my friends and especially to visitors:
Most of my life has passed in solitude, and since for the past thirty to forty years I have been the object of surveillance and assaults, I am averse to meeting and conversing with people unnecessarily and feel disinclined to do so. Also, since my early life, gifts both material and otherwise, have made me uncomfortable. Also, at the present my visitors and friends have multiplied, and they expect something from me. Just as a physical sweet given as a gift now makes me ill, so is being visited a non-material gift, as is meeting with people. Especially if the visitors come from other places and take trouble just to shake hands; to do so is a significant immaterial gift, But I have nothing to give in return. Moreover, such gifts are not cheap; indeed, in effect they are expensive. I do not consider myself worthy of reverence and respect; I cannot respond to that in kind either. So for now I have been prevented from unnecessary meetings and conversations, which are like immaterial gifts for me, just like material gifts. They sometimes make me ill, just as material gifts do when I cannot give their full equivalent in return. So no one should feel offended or upset.
Reading the Risale-i Nur is ten times more profitable than meeting with me. In any event, if anyone meets with me, it is on account of the hereafter, belief, and the Qur'an. I have severed all relations with the world, so to meet with me on its account is meaningless. As for the hereafter, belief, and the Qur'an, the Risale-i Nur leaves no need for me. Especially the letters in the biography. I do not speak unnecessarily even with my select brothers who attend on me. If I meet with certain people to discuss some of the conquests of the Risale-i Nur and its dissemination, it may be permissible and does not distress me, I say this to those who come to visit me without
knowing this point, that for the past few years I have been putting announcements in the papers informing those who come to visit me, especially from distant places and have to return without seeing me, that I include them in my private prayers. I pray for them every morning. So they should not feel upset either.
Our Highly Respected Brother, Sâlih!
Our Master sends you and the two religious, true deputies many greetings; he prays for you and calls down God's blessings on you and on them. Our Master says:
"Long ago I used to expect some strong hands to appear in Urfa who would lay claim to the Risale-i Nur. For it is a sort of centre between Anatolia, Arabia, and the east. If the Risale-i Nur was to become established there, it would spread to all those lands, I offer endless thanks to Almighty God that the religious and zealous of the region have started to embrace the Risale-i Nur. I am sending a number of my own collections there which I bought with my own money, and have corrected while suffering serious illness from poison. I have chosen Urfa although prominent people from elsewhere have requested them. I am giving them to the Urfa Nur School. God willing, I shall send further copies to them, for there they will serve the Qur'an and belief to the full. I hope from divine mercy that they will be instrumental in a small version of the Isparta Medresetü'z-Zehrâ and of Egypt's al-Azhar University being established there, and of a small example of the Islamic medreses of Damascus and Baghdad.
"Also, since the Risale-i Nur's way is the way of friendship and Urfa is the seat of Abraham, the Friend of God (Peace be upon him), God willing, our way of following in the footsteps of Abraham will shine out there. "Also, there is a strong possibility that I shall go to Urfa this coming winter if I can be saved from this terrible sickness from poison. I have a powerful desire to do this."
This is what our Master said. We too send you many greetings and respects,
I pray every morning for all the people of Urfa, including the women and children and those lying in their graves. I send my greetings to them all. Urfa is blessed with its very stones and soil. I am very ill. Let them pray for me too.
In His Name, be He glorified!
And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise. (Q 17:44)
Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!
My Dear, Loyal Brothers!
On the twenty-seventh night of Ramadan, which in the Islamic world is reckoned to be the Night of Power I felt both a sort of poisoning and ghastly stomach upset, and another terrible illness that was as though suffusing my nerves, conscience, and heart. Together with these two sicknesses, physical and spiritual, I suddenly felt a sympathy for all living creatures and their pains. I experienced a mental state far more grievous than my illnesses. Then I felt a sorrowful despair more severe than the other two illnesses at my being unable at the end of my eighty-year life to strive at worshipping in a way fitting to its final Night of Power, which gains a lifetime of worship of eighty years. Then just as a feeling of pain produced by the nerves and performing the function of the evil-commanding soul was crushing me, an inner meaning of the verse «For us God suffices, and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs» (Q 3: 173) came to my assistance. It dispelled those three illnesses, and endless thanks be to Almighty God, in a way outside the customary I was able to bear it. It also healed the three illnesses. As proved in the Treatise for the Sick, for the patient who trusts in God, one hour of physical illness is the equivalent of at least ten hours' worship, and on the Night of Power even more than that. So with the illness I was suffering on the Night of Power replacing the worship I was unable to perform due to my weakness and incapacity, it became a fully healing salve. Then the sickness of the grief I felt out of pity for the pains and sufferings of living beings, was transformed into spiritual joy and pleasure through the manifestation of divine compassion. That is to say, since the compassion, clemency, and mercy of the Creator for creatures are the most appropriate and sufficient, their suffering is turned into a sort of pleasure or
reward for them. This transforms the pain arising from compassion into pleasure, for to demonstrate compassion greater than divine mercy is meaningless and unjust. This was not merely a salve for me, but a healing remedy. Moreover, in the face of the pain at losing at the end of my life an invaluable spiritual treasury, I shared in the mystery of the spiritual partnership of all the select Nur students with all their good works and prayers in the name of all; and I participated in the supplications and expressions of divine unity uttered by the congregations of all beings and living creatures, in the Fatiha and tashahhud in the prayers (salât), as explained in The Shining Proof (el-Hüccetü'z-Zehrâ) and A Key to the World of Light (Nur Anahtarı); and since the elements earth, air, water, and light are all tongues, I joined in the gifts of life that emerge from the earth and water, and the praise and worship proceeding from the air, the beautiful words, material and otherwise, uttered by the light, and the thanks and praise for all the bounties in the universe and the universal worship and seeking of help of all creatures, especially living creatures, in the Fatiha and tashahhud in the prayers; and I accompanied all the people of truth and the believers who travel the right path and declared "Amen!" to their prayers and supplications. The universal mystery of participating in all the above came to my assistance that night and was such a panacea for the grievous spiritual sickness I was suffering at being unable to perform my worship in my sick, weak, despairing state, that I experienced a spiritual joy that in truth I had not found in my healthiest states in the time of my youth and in my most pleasurable invocations. I offered endless thanks and was resigned to that awful illness. I exclaimed: "All praise be to God to the number of all the seconds and minutes of Ramadan in all time!"
In His Name, be He glorified!
Our Master says:
"I tell my dear brothers who wish to meet with me: As long as there is no necessity, I no longer have the endurance to meet with people, and cannot speak much owing to being poisoned, weakness, old age, and illness. But I tell you with all certainty that every part of the Risale-i Nur is a Said.
Whichever book you look at, you will profit ten times more than meeting with me face to face, and will meet with me in reality. I have decided that every morning I shall include in my prayers those who wanted to meet with me for God's sake but were unable to, and I shall continue to do so."
For the past month or two now our Master is unable to speak with his helpers even. His temperature rises when he starts to speak. He explained the wisdom in this as follows as a result of a warning he received: "The Risale-i Nur leaves no need for me. No need remains for me to speak. Also, I can speak with only twenty or thirty out of the thousands of my friends. There is a powerful possibility that I have been prevented from speaking so as not to offend thousands of people for the sake of twenty. They should excuse me for not meeting with them personally. I could not endure to shake hands at the festival even and be looked at. So no one should feel offended.
[We present again to you and to the respected deputies the attached letter, which we sent to some of them when, due to his illness, our Master sent me to Ankara four years ago to deal with the matters related to the Risale-i Nur trials there. The reason for my again sending them is that the same matters continue, especially the moves to found the university in the eastern provinces.]
The extraordinary spread of the Risale-i Nur both at home and abroad these past thirty years and its positive results, and the renewed efforts to found a large university in the east, which have continued for fifty-five years, are two vital matters that follow on from and complement one another, and are of crucial importance for the Islamic world at this time. They are two events that are a source of pride and concern both for this nation, particularly the eastern provinces, and for the four-hundred-million-strong Islamic nations, and for the Christian world, which is needy for general peace. And they are two universal disseminators and proclaimers of the Islamic religion and the truths of the Qur'an.
For the past fifty-five years, our Master has exerted himself in numerous
ways and made the very greatest efforts to found in eastern Anatolia an Islamic university called the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ which would correspond to al-Azhar University. He always insisted on the absolute need for it. As it says in the piece our Master wrote to the President and Prime Minister congratulating them on this question, the University of the East would win a place of pride among Muslims as a sort of centre of the Islamic world. The highly valuable, sacred work for religion of the past and the enduring moral qualities of the thousands of esteemed, blessed scholars and gnostics, martyrs and people of reality who are our ancestors and are buried there, would be personified in this university, where they would persist in serving the cause of belief in a wider field.
The basis of instruction in the University of the East, and of its curriculum, would be the Risale-i Nur, which expounds the All-Wise Qur'an's truths of belief, and proves all the questions it deals with with the rational and positive sciences and logical arguments, and addresses the reason, and is suitable to be taught in the universities and schools of the present era.
The Risale-i Nur appeared through the mediation of a student of the masters and medreses scattered over eastern Anatolia, which for centuries have acted as sources of the water of life for that region. With these latter-day illumined fruits of theirs, those esteemed masters will once again take up their duties, expanding them and their service of the Qur'an to embrace the whole world. We hope for this with all our spirit and beseech divine mercy that it will be realized. The present time and place and conditions of life and the need for general reconciliation all say: "Amen! Amen!" to this, and so they will say it.
As a fruit and universal result of the activities in the east related to knowledge and its acquisition, and as the programme of the Eastern University in respect of Islam, the Risale-i Nur closely concerns those who strive to serve this nation and the Islamic world. And the fact that the Risale-i Nur is now being sought in America and Europe and is spreading there, demonstrates the paramount importance of what we say.
They read me a newspaper the articles of which I saw consisted of lies and slanders. Such slanders are extremely harmful for both Isparta and the publishers of the Risale-i Nur.
First Lie: It accuses me of giving instruction in Sufism, calling the readers of the Risale-i Nur "disciples" (murid) and the Risale-i Nur, a Sufi path (tarikat).
Whereas those who know me know that I teach the truths of belief and the Qur'an, not the Sufi way, as has been established in courts of law. The people who listen to my teachings are called Nur students. Our way is not the Sufi way; it is the truths of belief.
Its Second Lie: The calumniating paper mixes in some erroneous statements from another newspaper, saying: "The young people of Eğirdir have begun to combat Said and his disciples." All the youths of Isparta and Eğirdir know that this is absolutely baseless. In fact, when they heard about it, they protested angrily. It was just that a man from Eğirdir who is not young wrote somewhat critically that he had met with me thirty years ago. So to say that the youths had started to combat them is a clear lie. The fact is I always look on all young people whoever they are as brothers, I have not heard of any youth in either Isparta or Eğirdir who is working against me or my students.
Its Third Calumny: The libellous newpaper says quoting someone else: "Said and his disciples are secretly engaging in politics. They are trying to change this country's system by breaching public peace and security." The fact that five courts in twenty-eight years have acquitted me on this proves that it is a lie and that I have no connection with politics. And the fact that there has been not even the slightest sign of this shows just how defamatory it is. All my friends know that for the past thirty-five years I have completely withdrawn from politics, as has been established by the courts.
Its Fourth Calumny: Said Nursi called some women devils. What I actually said was: "In the former (pre-republican) period in the large cities, especially Christian girls who were immodestly dressed, or even half naked, were damaging Islamic morality under the leadership of Satan." It is a clear and most ugly falsification to distort these sentences about a few immodestly dressed girls as though they refer to all women. I accord women the greatest respect, importance, and value in my treatise entitled, A Conversation with the Women, and since they are ahead of men in respect of compassion and one of the Risale-i Nur's key principles is compassion, I refer to them as "My Esteemed Sisters," and am more than aware of their genuineness and sincerity.
Its Fifth Libellous Calumny: Its using the term "an accursed idea" to refer to reactionism and retrogression, meaning, returning to the injunctions and morality of Islam, is a disbelieving slander that would cause the globe of the earth to tremble, and is an insult to not only the people of Isparta and the Nur students, but also to the world of Islam.
[A reply to the fabricated news that our Master was touring the villages; it is nothing to worry about.]
A statement we presented to the police in Isparta, where our Master Said Nursi has been staying as a guest for the last two years.
1. Our Master Said Nursi has considered himself to be a guest of the police in all the provinces and towns of Anatolia in which he has stayed over the past thirty years, and the members of those police forces have always treated him kindly and protectively. Our Master began to compose the Risale-i Nur, a genuine, brilliant commentary on the Qur'an, thirty years ago in Isparta, and initiated a truly effective way of serving the truths of belief. One benefit of this service, which is turned to the hereafter, is its instilling in the heart by reason of belief, a permanent sense that restrains from evil. It is due to this that it is a means of maintaining public order. He also disseminated everywhere the Qur'anic principle which ensures true justice and is derived from the verse, «No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another» (Q 6:164 etc.), meaning that no one is answerable for another's errors. According to this and the principle that the rights of one innocent person may not be sacrificed for even a hundred wrongdoers, it is completely opposed to the Qur'an's injunctions to cause harm to ninety innocents because of ten criminals. And despite the injustices visited on himself, he stated that for the good of the Islamic nation he would sacrifice his life in the hereafter, let alone his life in this world, and he does say this.
As affirmed by those patriotic persons who are concerned with social tranquillity, by reason of both the Risale-i Nur's instruction in the truths of belief and the Qur'anic truths in his court defences which resulted in acquittals, our Master, who teaches those truths - which guide society to happiness in this world and the next - is the chief means of preserving public order and ensuring general security. He has been scrutinized in every respect by numerous investigations these last thirty years, yet absolutely nothing pertaining to him has been found to be indictable. Indeed, following the acquittals and his works being granted complete freedom, the works are spreading everywhere and meeting with approval and applause in Anatolia and in the centres of the Islamic world and some places in the West.
In the face of such aggressive, corrupting currents as communism, which opposing religion, morality, and tradition, have overrun with their destruction half Europe and China and which threaten the whole world and force governments to take preventative measures, and faced too by covert,
criminal societies which strive to create anarchy, our Master Said Nursi's works, the Risale-i Nur, have performed a disinterested, effective, and widespread service. Holding up as witnesses the good conduct of its readers, which with the spread of its hundreds of thousands of copies, have reached similar numbers, and citing the fact that, as affirmed by the police, not one of the Nur students has disturbed public order, we say that the Risale-i Nur is a Qur'anic barrier which will halt those destructive currents. Fair-minded members of the police attest to this. Let alone the benefits of service to belief that look to the hereafter, at one time our Master explained as follows a vital benefit for the nation, and time has shown just how right he was. He said then that there were two awesome currents that were threatening the happiness of this country and nation in respect of both this life and the afterlife.
The First was the irreligious current that had appeared to the north and was threatening to overrun this country; it had to be countered with the Qur'an's truths and the lights of belief, For since its destruction was moral and spiritual, the struggle against it had to be conducted by moral and spiritual means. The Risale-i Nur, which consists of flashes from the Qur'an's truths, could oppose that current of misguidance as a repairer of the force of an atom bomb, and it did oppose it.
Secondly: In order to dispel the Islamic world's hostility towards the Turkish nation, which for a thousand years was the standard-bearer and heroic army of Islam, it is to re-establish the idea of the Turks being its standard-bearer, as they were in former times. It is to perform a crucially important service for this nation's happiness by in this way winning for it four hundred million true brothers. By disseminating the truths of belief in this country, the Risale-i Nur has demonstrated this tremendous benefit in fact.
A Risale-i Nur student halted the Russians' propaganda in the eastern border regions with the treatises of the Risale-i Nur and the homilies he derived from them. In this way, a single student performed the services of an army for the country, nation, and public order. Since the aims and purposes of the Risale-i Nur look only to the hereafter and serve belief seeking divine pleasure alone, it is also most beneficial for the life of society by reason of the worldly benefits it reaps.
2. The following facts leave no need to say anything further: due to the thirty to forty years of isolation, solitude, illness, and imprisonment he has suffered, our Master cannot endure to meet with people unnecessarily and from the evening to the following morning does not allow even his assistants to approach him, and so has offended his friends who have come to
visit him from far off. Ever since his youth, it has been characteristic of our Master Said Nursi to be solitary and not to meet with people unnecessarily. He did not even invite his only surviving brother to visit him, although he lived in a nearby town and he had not seen him for thirty years. The people who attend to his needs even cannot enter his room from evening to morning unless there is some compelling need. Due to his severe illness and his being unable to endure meeting with people, he has wounded many of his friends who have come from distant places by refusing to see them. Since all of our Master's extraordinary contributions with the Risale-i Nur to maintaining civil order are known to the police, who for thirty years have displayed a friendly attitude towards him and everything about him has been scrutinized by them and by the courts, it is their duty as the defenders of the public's rights not to spoil their favourable view of him which is based on observation, due to the fabrications of a few atheists and enemies of religion.
3. Our Master is ill and cannot attend the Friday prayers even. Sometimes he feels an overpowering need for fresh air. He goes to Barla - but only rarely - where he lived for ten years and where he as a room and he stays for some time. Sometimes in the summer he visits places that are far from habitation and there is no one. He remains for a few hours, then returns. He travels by car due to his advanced years, inability to walk, and indisposition, and so that the people's adulation does not discomfort him. He goes nowhere apart from this, to no village or inhabited place, and for the above-mentioned reasons does not even visit places where his friends of thirty years are found.
These, then, are his circumstances, and this is his true situation.
[A statement which has been widely spread and shows the falsity of the public prosecutor's accusations of causing popular unrest, and which has been given to the police headquarters in Ankara.]
The Nur Students are Preservers of Public Order
Decisive evidence that the six hundred thousand Nur students preserve public order is the fact that in twenty-eight years, the six police forces of six provinces have not recorded any incident involving them, despite their suffering unjust treatment. In fact, our Master asked the Afyon prosecutor when he made such accusations: "Have you been able to show any one such incident this last twenty-eight years? Since you haven't been able to do so, how can you make such accusations? Apart from a very minor incident involving a young student, six hundred thousand students have been involved in none, which proves that the Nur students preserve public order." He said this to the Afyon prosecutor, and silenced him. [Authors]
In His Name, be He glorified!
My Dear Brothers!
I am giving you some good news: while travelling by motor boat from Eğirdir to Barla, an awesome, unprecedented sea-storm removed all the difficulties and led to the appearance of a great instance of mercy, as with the serious illness on the Night of Power, We were on the point of being drowned together with the six friends who were with us, which would have made us martyrs, and the sea, a wide grave for us. Then as a sign that the behind the storm, the rain had a connection with the Risale-i Nur, as repeated experiences have shown, and that at this time of extreme need for rain the Risale-i Nur will be delivered from the dangers of its covert enemies and their extensive schemes, and as a sign that that perilous situation was made into acceptable almsgiving for us, the lake, which is a source of the rain that eagerly complies with the dominical commands coming from divine mercy, caressed our faces of us, the Nur students, with rain and dealt us also a compassionate slap with its enthusiastic compliance with the commands of divine mercy. We understood that while the situation was apparently one of ire, in reality it was an instance of compassionate caressing. I felt before the storm broke and the rain fell that a calamity would occur and that it would be a key to the treasury of mercy, so I continuously read the Jaushan and the invocations of Shah Naqshband. In the middle of that awesome storm, I happily accepted that the lake would be our grave. People who die in such circumstances are martyrs, so I did not pity my six companions since they would be both martyrs and saints. I only felt some pity for the child who was with them. The boat's motor broke down and its sail was useless as the wind was blowing in the opposite direction. The waves were enormous, and though initially it appeared that they would overwhelm us and the boat, they did not, and we beheld them in patience and offered thanks, till finally we reached the shore safely. We exclaimed: "All praise be to God for all circumstances!'
Our Master says:
"In order to serve belief in the face absolute unbelief these last fifty to sixty years and to save the nation from anarchy, which results from unbelief, and, by preserving with all my strength public order - a consequence
of the sincerity present in serving belief - to save ten innocents from suffering injustice due to one criminal, I have sacrificed my comfort, honour, and dignity, and if necessary my life, and have endured patiently all the harassment and oppression, and meaningless, unnecessary things. Solely to serve belief these last thirty to forty years, I have patiently withstood their making mountains out of molehills and storms in teacups and their assaults on me, and to preserve public order, a consequence of that service. An example:
"My dress was not interfered with in any of five courts of law, and although in Istanbul for two month I made trips around the city and there were even one hundred and twenty police at the court there, they did not interfere with my dress, which was the same. No one raised objections and anyway, they had no right to do so. For I am both a recluse, and go neither to the mosque, nor to the crowded market and other places. I only go out in the car. I speak to no one if there is no need. I wander the hills and lonely places to take the air. So the worldly have no right to interfere with me and bother me."
Now, having made the journey to Istanbul by car in connection with some important matters concerning belief, a number of officials there were sent to our Master, who has millions of devoted students, completely illegally and making mountains out of molehills concerning a matter that held the importance of not even a fly's wing. But our Master responded, saying: "Since in serving belief, complete sincerity, and patience and forbearance are essential so as to halt anarchy and preserve civil order, I have sacrificed my comfort and honour for that service, and I forgive them."
When our Master visited Istanbul this time, he told the two officials who were sent to him by the public prosecutor to take his statement: "I have already made my statement in court concerning this matter, and the court conducted its investigations and acquitted us. I have nothing else to say." He repeated the statements he delivered in the Istanbul court and which were sent to Samsun Court. He also has a number of reports he obtained previously, saying that he is obliged to wear scarves on his head because of his ailments, and that he has to rest due the severe colds and other illnesses he suffers, and that he is need of a change of air. His remaining permanently in the same place is detrimental to his health. He does not condescend to show them these reports because it was not necessary before, and now he does not deem it necessary.