The underlying reason for the two trials this year need to be explained. The reason for the trial here was this:
Fifty years ago, I interpreted a Hadith about the Sufyan and the brimmed hat. Then much later the courts said that this was an attack on a commander. One reason for the severity of the sentence handed down to me by Afyon Court was shown to be that attack. But it had not been written at that time and the commander was not alive. Although the hundred million Muslims living under British rule repudiated both it and its religion, this was not held to be an offence. And the newspapers now strike at least twenty times more severely than I did with that Hadith at that commander, at those former leaders and commanders, yet they are not charged with offences and are free to do so. Fifty years ago I cast the stone of a Hadith and twenty years later it struck the head of a commander and broke it. He is now dead and gone and his relations with the government and this world are severed. Whereas now the assaults on the leaders of the former party (RPP) as deputies or officials and although they are connected with the government, are perhaps a hundred times greater than the slap the Risale-i Nur dealt, but the newspapers are free to publish them.
The truth about the books being seized is this: only one or two pages of
a single book out of the one hundred and thirty-three books of the Risale-i Nur mentioned that slap. So to seize all the books because of it is a cruel injustice like punishing one hundred and thirty-three men because of one man's error. The books of anti-patriotic, anti-religious atheists, heretics, and communists being found in bookshops and libraries and people reading them, even the thoroughly anti-Islamic book of Dr. Dozy, demonstrates that this seizure of the Risale-i Nur is an unjustifiable, wrongful injustice.
No religious scholar or philosopher has objected to or criticized the Risale-i Nur these past twenty-eight years although it has been distributed in the main centres of the Islamic world and in this country. The courts and politicians have objected to only two matters; one, about Islamic dress, the other about a commander at the end of time wearing a brimmed hat and forcibly making others wear it. Subsequently, four or five courts acquitted all the books including those two matters. So now to seize the Risale-i Nur with its twenty thousand pages due to those one or two pages, as though convicting it, resembles this: if a man attacks another, not unfairly but fairly, but others do not deem this an offence nor do five courts of law count it a crime, to seize twenty thousand pages of the Risale-i Nur because of two pages and imprison them in Afyon for four and a half years, like convicting twenty thousand men due to an imaginary offence, is an error and crime a hundred times greater than that attack, and an assault against this country.
In His Name, be He glorified!
Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!
My Dear, Loyal Brothers!
Firstly: Endless thanks be to Almighty God that you, the leading students of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ, demonstrate that medrese's essential meaning, which for fifty-five years has been my long-sought goal and is a result of my life.
Secondly: Since I am unable due to severe illness and other causes to speak with my Nurju brothers and I am deprived of their conversation, I appoint both you, and the lessons the Risale-i Nur has given to the New Said in the Qur'an medrese, and the lessons concerning the life of society the Old Said received in the medrese of The Damascus Sermon and its
addenda, to speak in place of this wretched brother of yours with my brothers whom I miss so greatly.
Thirdly: I offer my condolences to the hero Tahirî, who has made his own house into a small Nur School, and to his relatives, and Isparta, and the Nur circles, on the death his father, who gave his son Tahirî, the outstanding, sincere disseminator of the Risale-i Nur, Tahirî, to its fold. May Almighty God grant mercy to his spirit to the number of the Risale-i Nur's letters.
Fourthly: İnebolu set aside three hundred copies of Zühretü'n-Nur for my account. So I said that one hundred and fifty should be sent to me, and one hundred and fifty to Isparta. Mine arrived, and as for yours, they can be in exchange for the Letters Collections you are going to give me later, and if I owe you anything, you can fix the account.
Fifthly: Convey my greetings to my brothers in 'Iraq and particularly to the keeper of Ustad-i A'zam's tomb and my brothers in Baghdad, and tell them that if my life permits, I desire with all my life and spirit to travel to that region.
In His Name, be He glorified!
My Dear Brothers!
I was given one of the Old Said's printed works, I took a curious and careful look at it. The following piece was imparted to my heart, which, if appropriate, may be added to the end of the Letters (Mektûbat).
Firstly: For twenty to thirty years I had been searching for a copy of Münâzarat, but had been unable to find one. It was printed forty-one years ago by the Ebüzziya Press and consists of lessons I gave in the third year of the Second Constitutional Period to the Ertuş tribe, and particularly the Kudan and Mamhuran. My intention was to explain constitutional government as prescribed by the Shari'a to the tribes thoroughly, and to induce
them to accept it. Recently, someone found a copy and sent it to me. I took the head of the Old Said and studied it attentively with the inspirations of the New Said. I understood that with a strange premonition, the Old Said felt the material and non-material events that would happen now, thirty to forty years later. Behind the veil of the nomadic Kurdish tribes, he as though saw the irreligious truly backward and treacherous true reactionaries of the present, who mask themselves with a veil of civilization and patriotism and who drive this nation back to pre-Islamic customs, and was speaking with them and striking them on the head.
Secondly: I read carefully from pages 105 to 109 of the printed work, and it seemed as though there was some sort of saint among the tribes I was instructing at that time by means of question and answer. I was unaware of it. At that point, he objected strongly, saying:
"You're exaggerating! You see the imaginary as real, and you're insulting us. These are the end times, everything is going to get gradually worse." It says the following in the book:
"Why should the world be the world of progress for everyone else and the world of decline and retrogression for us? Is that the case? See, I'm not going to speak to you, I'm turning this way; I shall speak to the people of the future:
"O you Saids, Hamzas, Ömers, Osmans, Tahirs, Yusufs, Ahmeds and the rest of you who are hidden behind the high age of three centuries hence, and listening silently to my words, watch us with a secret, unseen gaze! I am addressing you! Raise your heads and say: 'You are right!' And it should be incumbent on you to say it. Let these contemporaries of mine not listen if they do not wish. I am speaking to you over the wireless telegraph that stretches from the valleys of the past called history to your elevated future. What should I do? I was hasty, I came in winter, but you will come in a paradise-like spring. The seeds of light sown now will open as flowers in your ground. And we await this from you as the recompense for our service that when you come to go to the past, pass by my grave, and place a few of those gifts of spring by the citadel of Van, which is the gravestone of my medrese and houses my bones, and is the custodian of the Horhor's earth."
That is to say, as it says in the Thirteenth Hope of the Treatise for the Elderly, ".... and the death of my medrese, which had flourished and been the gathering-place of friends and was the preparatory school for the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ, indicated the vastness of the immaterial corpse of all the medreses in Anatolia, which had been abolished and died; the great
monolith of Van's citadel had become a gravestone to all of them." O you who are to come three hundred years hence, plant the flower of a Nur School on the summit of the citadel! That is to say, construct a physical Medresetü'z-Zehrâ, which has not yet been resurrected bodily but lives in the spirit extensively and populously.
In any event, the Old Said lived mostly following the dream of that medrese, and from pages 147 to 157, the printed work explains the founding and vital advantages of the Medresetü' z-Zehrâ.
It is an auspicious sign that on the collapse of the ghastly twenty-five- year despotism which killed the medreses, the Education Minister, Tevfik, decided on the construction of a Medresetü'z-Zehrâ in Van called the University of the East, and beyond all hope in the midst of pressing affairs, the President, Celâl, even, shared Tevfik's views. This indicates that the Old Said's predictions and hopes of forty years will be realized.
Here, three truths will be explained, to elucidate the answer of forty-five years ago.
The First: With a premonition, the Old Said perceived two strange events, but they needed interpreting like true dreams. Just as if something black or white is beheld through a red filter, it appears red; so he beheld the truth of the matter through the filter of Islamic politics, and it altered it to a degree. The lofty saint who was present saw the error and objected violently in the way explained. There are two parts to the truth of it:
The First: He used to say that a brilliant light would appear in the Ottoman lands, and even before the proclamation of the constitution he many times told this to his students in order to console theme He said too that in the face of all the evils they were witnessing, it would bring happiness to this country. Forty years later, the Risale-i Nur demonstrates this truth to eyes that are blind even.
Not considering the Risale-i Nur's narrow field quantitatively, but perceiving the vast benefits it would yield in regard to quality and reality, and looking from the point of view of politics, he spoke of it as occurring throughout the Ottoman lands. The lofty saint objected because [Said] conceived of its narrow field being extensive. He was right, but the Old Said was also right. For since the Risale-i Nur saves belief, that narrow field saves through belief, everlasting, eternal life, and a million of its students become like a thousand million. That is to say, to try to secure not a million, but a thousand people's eternal life is more valuable and in effect
more extensive than working for a thousand million people's transient worldly life and civilization, With his premonition resembling a true dream, the Old Said envisaged the narrow field embracing all the Ottoman lands. God willing, with the seeds sown by the Risale-i Nur sprouting in a hundred years time, the broad field will be the Risale-i Nur's and his former view will show that his misinterpretation of it was in fact correct.
The Second Truth: Forty years ago, as written in the Old Said's works and in the Statement of Purpose at the beginning of Signs of Miraculousness, Said used to say to his students insistently and repeatedly that there was going to be a tremendous upheaval in both society and humanity that would be both material and moral and spiritual. He would say that his giving up the world and going into seclusion and remaining unmarried would be envied. In fact, when Shaykh Bakhit, one of the leading ulema of al-Azhar University, came to Istanbul in the first year of the Second Constitutional Period, he asked the Old Said:
"What have you got to say about the Ottoman constitutional government and European civilization?"
Said replied: "The Ottomans are pregnant with a European state and will give birth to it one day, while Europe is pregnant with Islam and one day will give birth to an Islamic state."
The learned Shaykh Bakhit concurred with this and said to the scholars accompanying him: "I can't argue with this man and defeat him!"
We have witnessed the first birth with our own eyes; in a quarter of a century Turkey is further from religion than Europe. God willing, the second birth with occur in twenty to thirty years. There are numerous signs in both East and West that an Islamic state will emerge in Europe.
The Third Truth: The Old Said repeatedly predicted due to the premonition both he and the New Said had, that there would be a momentous event, both material and spiritual, and a huge, vastly destructive upheaval in the Ottoman lands. But contrarily to the matter of the Risale-i Nur, he saw the extremely broad field to be narrow. As time and the Second World War confirm, he interpreted as follows the broad field he saw in the Ottoman lands:
It is a fact that the destruction wrought on humanity by the Second World War was enormous, but, since it concerned worldly life and transitory civilization, it was less than that wrought on the Ottomans. Since the
upheaval the Ottomans met with was destruction that damaged everlasting life and eternal happiness and was an upheaval of Islam, its significance was more terrible than the Second World War, and corrects that error of the Old Said, interprets his true dream, and demonstrates the premonition almost visibly. Apparently, the saint there was right, but in truth, it proves that those perceptions of the Old Said were more correct, and rebuffs the saint's objections.
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, Blessed Brothers!
Firstly: We considered it appropriate to tell you a summary of a lesson that was given at the request of the leading students of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ. The lesson's subject was the Prophet's (Upon whom be blessings and peace) - the Pride of the Universe and Result of the World's Creation - saying the following in place of the greetings on the Night of the Ascension in the divine presence, on account of all the beings in existence and in the name of humankind, indeed, of all living beings and all creatures: "Salutations, blessings, benedictions, and supplications, and good words - all are God's!" Since each of these words expresses a universal meaning and all the Islamic community recites them in the prescribed prayers (salât) many times every day, each of all the believers of all levels has a share in them. In connection with this and with the fact that by means of the radio the element air displays wondrous miracles of power, as was explained previously in the Addendum to the Point About the Air, the following was imparted to my heart:
"It is understood from allusions in the Qur'an that for a believer, the worship he performs in this brief worldly life produces an everlasting
domain in everlasting happiness, so when his worship becomes universal, he worships together with his private world and will receive a reward as extensive as his world." Then the universal meanings of the words: "Salutations, blessings, etc.", which are explained in the discussion about divine knowledge in the Second Station of The Shining Proof, occurred to my spirit, and when reciting "Salutations" in the tashahhud of the prayers, the four elements of my private world - earth, water, air, and light - suddenly appeared to my imagination as four universal tongues. Each tongue was reciting through the tongue of disposition millions and trillions of: "Salutations, blessings, benedictions, and supplications, and good words - all are God's!" I saw this with my imagination.
As the tongues of the element earth, living beings are all living words and declare: "Salutations!" For a handful of earth may act as a flowerpot for most flora and be a source for them. So either there has to be found in every handful of earth miniscule factories to the numbers of all the factories mankind has ever built, which is totally absurd, or this occurs through the limitless power and infinite knowledge and will of an Absolutely Omnipotent One. That is to say, in displaying this ability, the element earth utters with all its parts and particles the words, "Salutations to God!" (al-tahîyyâtu lillâh) in uncountable numbers. That is to say, all the gifts living beings offer from pre-eternity to post-eternity through their lives are the Necessarily Existent One's alone.
Then, like in everyone's private world, the second element of my private world, water, with all its atoms and particularly with regard to being the source of living beings and serving their lives, was disseminating through the universe through the tongue of disposition millions and trillions of the blessed word "blessings" (al-mubârakât). For the duties that the droplets of water perform in the awakening of seeds and grains and in the seeds manifesting their innate functions, and in the perfect, orderly duties of those most beautiful and wondrous tiny creatures and young, and in the circumstances of those blessed beings, which cause all conscious beings to exclaim: "How great are God's blessings! What wonders God wills!" - for all those tasks and duties to be performed each atom of the element water would have to possess the knowledge of thousands of Platos and the will and wisdom of thousands of Luqmans the Wise. And this is absurd to the number of atoms of water. In which case, those blessed beings manifest those countless miracles through the boundless power, mercy, wisdom, and will of a Most Powerful One of Glory, a Most Merciful and Compassionate One, and they all utter the words "All blessings are God's" (al-mubârakât li-llâh) to their number. Since this is so, on the night
of the Ascension, the Prophet Muhammad (Upon whom be blessings and peace), the Result of the World's Creation, declared "All blessings are God's!" in the name of all creatures. That is, since all these states and arts, which prompt acclaim and applause and cause one to exclaim, "What wonders God has willed! All blessings are God's!" proceed from the power of the All-Glorious One alone, the Prophet (UWBP) offered all those blessings to God Almighty in His presence.
Then, since all the atoms of a handful of the element air in everyone's private world - even those expended when uttering the word «Hû!» (He) declare, "All benedictions are God's" (al-salawât li-llâh), which signifies all the supplications, orisons, entreaties, and worship present in the duties they manifest of receiving and transmitting sounds, and since they offer those trillions upon trillions of words to their Maker and Creator with a universal tongue, the Most Noble Messenger (Upon whom be blessings and peace) offered them and their universal meaning to Almighty God, also saying, "All benedictions are God's!" That is to say, all supplications and entreaties arising from need, and thanks proceeding from bounties, and worship and prayers, are due to the Creator of All Things alone. Otherwise, as is explained in the Addendum to the Point About the Air, each atom of air in the handful expended when uttering the word «Hû!» (He) would have to possess absolute power and will with which to know all languages, and see where the speakers are located, and hear everything near and far, and understand all accents and idioms and many other things besides, and do all this without confusing them, which of course is absurd to the number of those atoms. Since this is so, without doubt and of necessity each of those atoms points to and testifies to the All-Wise Maker together with all His attributes. Simply, each testifies to Him as the great world testifies to Him, but to a lesser extent. That is to say, "All benedictions are God's!" was pronounced during Muhammad's (Upon whom be blessings and peace) Ascension, invoking blessings to the number of atoms of air.
Then, as a universal tongue, the element of light and fire - that is, the element light, physical and non-physical, with and without heat - utters with the tongue of disposition in boundless and infinite fashion and with countless tongues: "Good words - all are God's!" That is, all fine words, lovely meanings, and exquisite beauties, and the manifestations of the pre-eternal Most Beautiful Names whose splendour is seen on the face of the cosmos; and the beauties of the universe and creatures apparent through the belief of foremost the prophets, saints, and purified ones, and of all the believers, and the praise, acclaim, thanks, glorifications, and declarations of God's oneness, unity, and greatness proceeding from their belief, which,
in accordance with the verse «Unto Him arise all good words» (Q 35:10), all rise to the Sublime Throne, as do the countless beauties and fine words on the first of the world's three faces, the face which acts as a mirror to the divine names, and the innumerable good deeds and good things and spiritual fruits and beauties on its second face, which is the seedbed for the hereafter. Intending to ascribe all these beauties to the All-Powerful One of Glory, the Monarch of Pre-Eternity and Post-Eternity, the Glory of the Universe (Upon whom be blessings and peace) declared: "Good words all are God's!" offering to the All-Worshipped One of Glory in the name of all creatures this universal worship offered with the universal tongue of the element of light and fire. For all the duties the element light, both physical and non-physical, performs point to the Necessarily Existent One both all together and singly and testify to Him in countless millions of ways.
Like earth, air, and water, the element light and fire demonstrates self-evidently and decisively in all those ways that causes are merely a veil. All effects and creations are the All-Powerful One of Glory's. For similarly to existence and life, light is worthy of being touched by divine power without veil and since external causes in no way act as a screen, it displays divine oneness within divine unity. Even in an extremely minor and particular duty, it displays universal and extensive evidence of divine oneness. This has been proved very briefly in A Point About the Air and its addenda. The following are two small examples out of millions.
The First: A small manifestation of non-physical light in a person's head in the form of knowledge, were the words of the ninety books inscribed in his memory, which is the size a fingernail. He could only complete a reading of them by reciting from the page of his memory a part of them for three hours every day for three months. And the same man could refer at will to the meanings, words, and forms and sounds in his memory that he had heard and seen in his eighty-year lifetime and the things that had excited his curiosity, and could see the things preserved there, so many as to fill a library, all written out and stacked in order.
If it had not been for the vast extent of that retentive faculty, the size of a fingernail, and its all-embracing light like the sun, and its non-physical luminescence, and its pages as broad as the face of the earth, the man could not do those things. Since it would be totally impossible and absurd, the tiny faculty of memory testifies that the Absolutely Knowedgeable One creates in man's head with His knowledge, wisdom, and power a sample of the Preserved Tablet, which a page of His determining and power.
A Second, Small Example is electricity. A man studied the strange setup
of his electric lamp. He saw that although the atoms and materials of its hundreds of buttons and centres and metal wires were lifeless, unconscious, and inactive, on the slightest contact the darkness filling ten square kilometres instantaneously disappeared and in half a second the area was filled with light. The visible darkness suddenly disappearing and the light appearing certainly was not imagination. Either those lifeless, unconscious atoms that made the contact both carried within themselves a boundless power and light, and suddenly stretched out their hands to places a hundred kilometres away and chasing away the darkness, filled them with light, which all the satans, atheists, and materialists could not make even a Sophist believe, even if they all came together; or it occurs through the power and wisdom of the All-Powerful of Glory, the One All-Knowing of the Unseen, the Absolutely Knowledgeable One, whose rule extends over the whole universe, and from whose name of Light all lights receive their effulgence, and is the Light of Lights, the Creator of Light, and the Dispenser of Light. There are countless other examples like these two.
Thus, just as "Good words - all are God's!" signifies the universe offering to the All-Glorious One through the tongue of the element light, all the lights, beauties, fine things, good words, virtues, and perfections in all beings; so too, did Muhammad (Upon whom be blessings and peace), the result of the universe's creation and the reason for the world's creation, declare on the night of the Ascension in the name of all the beings in the universe, of which he was the representative, "Good words - all are God's!"
After the Most Noble Messenger (Upon whom be blessings and peace to the number of atoms in existence) had uttered these four meaningful phrases in place of the greetings, as is explained in the Risale-i Nur, Almighty God responded by saying: "Peace be upon you, O Prophet!" as though indicating that all his community would utter the same words, and
as an order and command, and acceptance. Then by saying: "Peace be upon us and upon all God's righteous servants!", he included within the sacred greeting, both himself, and his community, and all his peers who had preceded him, and showing that it was a universal and general greeting, he included also all creatures, of which he was the representative.
When the members of his community say: "Peace be upon you, O Prophet!" in the prayers, they are complying with the command and decree contained in that divine greeting. They are also paying allegiance to him. And every day they reiterate and renew their allegiance, that is, their acceptance of his office and their obedience to the decrees he brought. Their utterance is also congratulations on his messengership. Also, with these words the whole world of Islam every day express their thanks for his having brought the good news of eternal happiness.
Just as each person feels grieved at the annihilation of his being, so he is pained at the destruction of his house; and he is harrowed at the spoiliation of his country; and he feels grievous pain at the death of his friends and at separation from them; and on thinking of the passing of his personal world, which is as wide as the world itself, and its separations, and that world finally disappearing, his spirit and conscience are seared with hellish pain. So, on condition they are not completely lacking in spirit, heart, and intelligence, all sensible persons will understand the good news of everlasting happiness that Muhammad the Arabian (Upon whom be blessings and peace) saw with his own eyes on the night of the Ascension and the glad tidings of the believers' eternal life in Paradise and that those they love and are attached to have not been annihilated and that it is certain that they will again meet with them after their disappearance. In response to this joyous gift, just as the whole world of Islam every day declares: "Peace be upon you, O Prophet!"' so too, in response to the pages and levels of the cosmos becoming letters of the Eternally Besought One through the gift he brought, and the true value and perfections of creatures becoming apparent through his messengership, all creatures declare tacitly through the tongue of this truth: "Peace be upon you, O Prophet!" Furthermore, the members of his community greeting one another with the words "Peace be upon you!" is a practice of the Prophet (UWBP) (Sunna) and one ray of this vast truth.
In His Name, be He glorified!
Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!
My Dear, Loyal Brothers!
Firstly: We congratulate you on the Three Months and the holy nights, which may win an everlasting life of eighty years, and on the Nights of Regâib, the Ascension (Mirac), Acquittal, and Power (Kader); and we request of divine mercy that the spiritual gains and supplications of each of the Nurju brothers will be accepted for all of them; and we congratulate you on your achievements in the service of the Risale-i Nur.
Secondly: So that you will not pity me too much, I am telling you that the calamity of the total loss of memory I am suffering due to having been poisoned is in fact a bounty and instance of divine mercy for me and a key to disclosing a number of truths. But I still request your prayers with my whole life and spirit.
Yes, I have just read the invocations at the beginning of The Shining Lamp (Siracü 'n-Nur) and I saw that many wondrous truths are concealed beneath the veils of familiarity, habit, and monotony. Especially irreligious naturalists, philosophers, and the neglectful, they ascribe truths as huge as mountains to common causes as tiny as atoms, and fail to see the numerous miracles of divine power beneath the veils of the laws of divine practice. They thus block up the paths in everything to knowledge of the Absolutely Powerful One. They are blind to bounties in everything and close up the doors of thanks and praise.
For example, just as the manifestation of divine power may inscribe a single word on the page of the air as a million, or millions, of words; so, as intimated by the verse, «Unto Him ascend all good words» (Q 35:10), nonmaterial, acceptable truths are inscribed by the pen of power, all together and instantaneously, in the globe of the atmosphere, yet this extraordinary miracle of power is hidden from the view of the neglectful, although it has continued since the time of Adam. And now, it is established through the
same truth, which they call the radio, that the manifestation of an infinite pre-eternal power which comprises a limitless knowledge, wisdom, and will, is present and seeing in every atom of the air, for although the infinite numbers of different words enter the miniscule ears of each atom and emerge from their infinitesmal tongues, they do not get mixed up, nor are they spoiled or confused. That is to say, because, even if all causes were to gather together, they could in no way achieve the manifestation of sacred power in the natural duties of a single atom and could in no way interfere in the wondrous art in the infinitesimal ears and tongues of all atoms, the people of misguidance and neglect have hidden them under the veil of familiarity, habit, laws, and monotony, and attaching some common name to them, have temporarily deceived themselves.
For example, as is explained in the note to the Addendum to the Four-teenth Word, if an exceptionally skilful artisan were to make a hundred pounds of foods and a hundred yards of cloth out of a small chip of wood, then someone were to say, pointing to the chip: "All these things are natural and appeared out of this by chance," thus completely disregarding all the wondrous arts and skills of the master, it would be delirious stupidity and demented misguidance. In just the same way, to ascribe to two seeds like peas such miracles of power as the pine and fig trees, which comprise thousands of wondrous arts, and say: "They came out of these;" or to attach the name "radio" to a gift of the Most Merciful which makes the globe of the atmosphere into a conference hall and the face of the earth into a schoolroom and place of instruction and knowledge, comprising uncountable bounties and requiring endless thanks, and is indubitably an advance (muaccel) sample of the divine favours to be bestowed in everlasting happiness for man - to merely use the word radio and talk of electricity and airwaves for what is directly bestowed from the treasury of mercy, thus drawing a veil of ingratitude over those innumerable bounties, is a grotesque adsurdity of the naturalists and materialists, as in the example above, which being an infinite crime, makes them deserving of infinite punishment.
My brothers! In truth, today I read the invocation at the beginning of The Shining Lamp with the intention of correcting it. Because my memory had deserted me completely, I was confronted with the invocation's truths as though I had newly come into the world at eighty years of age, unacquainted with familiarity and habit, so they did not act as veil. I read it with fervour and pleasure, and benefited enormously. I considered it quite marvellous. And I understood that our covert enemies had deceived certain
officials, and making a pretext of the end part of The Shining Lamp, had seized it, but in fact they were trying to prevent the spread of the Invocation at the beginning of it. That is, the Invocation is a reason for the irreligious attacking The Shining Lamp, just as with "A Point About the Air" in A Guide for Youth.
Thirdly: I give the good news with all my life and spirit that by reason of the maximum sincerity of the Nur students, and their geniune loyalty and unshakeable solidarity, all the calamities that have befallen us have been transformed into vast bounties, and beneath the veil, the Risale-i Nur is making unimaginable conquests. For example, a hundred liras were necessarily given for the car to bring me to the court here, that is, Istanbul, from Isparta. I can assure you that if I had given two thousand liras just for this question and for the resulting service which concerned only the Guide and my own person and had occurred and were beginning to occur. The results concerning people at large may be compared with this.