I have understood certainly the last two or three days that unfortunately we suffered a blow from Divine mercy. I understood even that one of the many indications of a verse concerning the people of rebellion looks to us. It is this:

But when they forgot the warning they had received.... on a sudden We called them to account.¹

That is, “When they forgot the instruction and advice with which we have warned them and did not act in accordance with it, We took hold of them and afflicted them with disaster.”

Yes, recently we were prompted to write a treatise on the meaning of sincerity. In truth, it was a most luminous and exalted rule of brotherhood, a sacred principle which allows ten men to withstand calamities and events which normally could only be withstood with the strength of tens of thousands. But unfortunately we, and foremost myself, did not act in accordance with the warning. In accordance with the allusive meaning of the verse, according to the science of jafr, the value of We called them to account is one thousand three hundred and fifty-two. We were arrested on the same date. Some of us suffered a slap dealt by Divine compassion. Others suffered, not such a blow, but were included in these tribulations in order to be a solace to our brothers who did suffer it, and as a means of earning reward and profit.

For three months I was barred from mixing with others, but for the past three days I have been able to learn my brothers’ states of mind. An unimaginable incident had occurred opposed to the meaning of sincerity involving brothers whom I had supposed to be the most sincere. I understood from this that an allusive meaning of the verse, But when they forgot the warning they had received.... on a sudden We called them to account looked to us from afar. For the people of misguidance, for whom the verse was revealed, it is punishment, but for us it is a blow from Divine compassion in order to train our souls, as atonement for sins, and so that we may increase our spiritual degrees. Evidence that we suffered this blow because we did not completely appreciate the value of the Divine bounty we had received is that we were not contented with our sacred service of the Qur’an through the Risale-i Nur, a most sacred striving in God’s way which receives the effulgence of ‘greater sainthood’ through the mystery of the legacy of Prophethood and is a means to attaining the essence of the way of the Companions. Through my severe

warnings on several occasions, the wish to join a Sufi order was forestalled, the advantages of which are very few for us at the moment and could possibly have caused us much harm in this situation. Otherwise, both our unity would have been destroyed, and it would have caused both differences in ideas which would have reduced the value of four alifs—which through solidarity is one thousand one hunded and eleven—to four, and mutual antipathy, which would have reduced our strength to nothing.

The author of the Gulistan, Shaykh Sa’di-i Shirazi, relates: “I saw one of ‘the people of the heart’ in a tekke while occupied with his spiritual journeying. Several days later I saw him among students in the medrese. I asked him why he had left the effulgent tekke and come to the religious school. He replied that there everyone could save themselves—if they were successful, whereas here in the religious school these persons of high aspiration were trying to save many others besides themselves. Nobility and high endeavour were theirs; virtue and exertion were theirs; that was why he went there.

Shaykh Sa’di wrote a summary of this in his Gulistan.

So if the small matter of students parsing verbs is superior to the recitations in the tekkes, since the Risale-i Nur teaches in the clearest and most certain manner the sacred truths of belief stated in the confession of faith: “I believe in God, and His angels, and His Books, and His prophets, and in the Last Day” and silences the most obdurate atheists and obstinate philosophers, to abandon it, or cause its activities to come to a standstill, or not to be content with it, and desiring the Sufi way to enter the closed Sufi tekkes without asking permission of the Risale-i Nur, is entirely wrong and shows how much we deserve this blow of Divine compassion.

S a i d N u r s i

FOOTNOTES

1. Qur’an, 6:44; 7:165.