A fallacious, crazy question.

Some members of the judiciary say: “Since you reside in this country, you should abide by its republican laws. So why do you elude those laws under the cloak of being a recluse? For instance, according to the present laws of the government, it is opposed to one of the principles of the Republic, which is based on equality, to assume some virtue, some merit, outside one’s duty, and through it to dominate some of the nation and exercise power and influence. Why do you have your hand kissed, though you hold no position? Why do you assume a position advertising yourself and saying: Let the people listen to me?”

T h e A n s w e r : Those who apply the law, may apply it to others after first applying it to themselves. By applying a principle to others which you had not applied to yourselves, you are infringing and opposing your own principle and law before anyone. Because you want to apply this law of absolute equality to me. So I say this:

Whenever a common soldier rises to the social rank of a field marshal and shares in the respect and acclaim the nation shows to the field marshal and is the object of acclaim and respect the same as him; or whenever the field marshal becomes as common as the soldier and assumes the soldier’s lowly position and he retains no value whatsoever outside his duty; and whenever the most brilliant military commander who leads the army to victories receives public acclaim, respect and affection equal to that of the dimmest common soldier; then as required by this law of equality of yours, you can tell me: “Don’t call yourself a hoja! Don’t accept respect! Deny your virtue! Serve the servants, and take beggars as your friends!”

I f y o u s a y : “Respect, social position, and public attention are in regard to functions and particular to those who perform them when they are performing them. But you have no function, so you may not accept the people’s respect as though you did have one.”

T h e A n s w e r : If man consisted only of a body, and he was going to live in this world for ever, and if the door of the grave was closed and death had been killed, then his duties and functions would have been limited to the army and government officials, and what you say would have had some meaning. But since man does not consist only of a body, and his heart, tongue, mind, and brain cannot be plucked out to feed his body; they cannot be annihilated; they too required to be administered.

And since the door of the grave does not close, and since anxiety for the future beyond the grave is the most important question facing everyone, then the duties based on the respect and obedience of the nation are not restriced to the social, political, and military duties looking to its worldly life. Yes, just as it is a duty to give a passport to those travelling abroad, so is it also a duty to give a passport to those travelling to post-eternity and to give them a light for that dark way, and it is such a duty that no other duty bears its importance. That duty can be denied only through denying death and giving the lie to the testimony of the thirty thousand witnesses who every day set their signatures with the seals of their corpses on the claim “Death is a reality,” affirming it.

Since there are moral and spiritual duties based on moral and spiritual needs, and the most important of those duties are the passport for the journey to post-eternity, and the pocket-torch of the heart in the darkness of the Intermediate Realm, and belief, the key to eternal happiness, and instruction in belief and its strengthening, for sure, the learned who perform those duties will not with ingratitude count as nothing the Divine bounties bestowed on them and the virtues arising from belief, and descend to the level of sinners and the dissolute. They will not soil themselves with the innovations and vices of the base. Thus, the solitude which you do not like and suppose to be inequality is because of this.

In addition to this truth I say the following, not to those like you who torment and pester me and who in egotism and breaking the law of equality are as overweening as the Pharaoh—because the arrogant suppose humility to be abasement, so one should not be humble before them—I say rather to the fair-minded, the modest, and the just:

All praise be to God, I know my own faults and impotence. I do not arrogantly want any position superior to Muslims which demands respect. I rather continuously see my endless faults and utter insignificance. Finding consolation through seeking Divine forgiveness, I want not respect from the people, but their prayers. I reckon all my friends know of this way of mine. There is only this, that while serving the All-Wise Qur’an and teaching the truths of belief, in order to preserve the dignity and pride of learning that such a rank requires, on account of those truths and in honour of the Qur’an and in order not to bow before the people of misguidance, I temporarily assume that dignified stance. I do not think ‘the worldly’s’ laws can oppose these points!

SOME ASTONISHING TREATMENT: It is well-known that everywhere teachers judge in accordance with knowledge and learning. In whomever and wherever they encounter knowledge and learning, they will nurture friendship and respect for the person due to their profession. If a professor from an enemy country visits this country even, teachers will visit him out of respect for his knowledge and learning, and offer him respect.

However, when the highest learned council of the British asked for a six-hundred-word answer to six questions they asked the Shaykhu’l-Islam’s Office, a scholar and teacher who has met with the disrespect of the education authorities here, answered those six questions with six words which met with approval, and answered with true knowledge and learning the most basic and important principles of the Europeans and their philosophers, and defeated them. Through the strength he received from the Qur’an, he challenged those European philosophers. And in Istanbul six months before the proclamation of the Second Constitution, he invited both the religious scholars and scholars of modern science to debate, and himself asking no questions answered completely correctly without exception all questions posed to him.² Those who have caused most distress to this scholar and teacher—who has devoted all his life to the happiness of this nation, and publishing hundreds of treatises in the people’s own language of Turkish has illuminated them, and is both a fellow-citizen and a co-religionist and friend and brother—those who have nurtured enmity towards him, and indeed been disrespectful towards him, have been certain members of the educational establishment as well as a few official hojas.

And so, what have you got to say to this? Is this civilization? Is it encouraging education? Is it patriotism? Is it love of the nation? Is it republicanism? God forbid! It is nothing at all! It is rather that Divine Determining showed hostility where this scholar and teacher hoped for friendship so that hypocrisy should not become mixed with his learning due to respect, and he might gain sincerity.