Beşinci Mektup/en

In His Name, be He glorified!And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise.(17:44)

In his Letters (Maktubat), Imam-i Rabbani(*)(May God be pleased with him), a sun of the Naqshbandi Order and its hero, said: “For me, the disclosure of a single matter of the truths of faith is preferable to thousands of illuminations, ecstasies, and instances of wonder-working.”(*)

He also said: “The final point of all the Sufi ways is the clarification and unfolding of the truths of faith.”(*)

He also said: “Sainthood is of three sorts: one is the lesser sainthood, which is the well-known sainthood. The others are the middle sainthood and the greater sainthood. Greater sainthood is to open up by way of the legacy of prophethood a direct way to reality without entering the intermediate realm of Sufism.”(*)

He said also: “The Naqshi way is traversed with two wings; that is, by having firm belief in the truths of faith and by carrying out the religious obligations. The way cannot be covered if either of these two wings is defective.”(*)

In which case, the Naqshi way consists of three veils:

The First and most important is to serve the truths of faith directly; Imam-i Rabbani travelled this way in his later years.

The Second is to [advance the cause of] the religious obligations and serve the glorious practices (Sunna) of the Prophet (UWBP) under the veil of the Sufi way.

The Third is to strive to eliminate the sicknesses of the heart by way of Sufism and to journey with the feet of the heart. Of these, the first is the equivalent of obligatory, the second, close to obligatory, and the third, Sunna.

Since the reality of the matter is thus, my conjecture is that if such persons as Shaykh ‘Abd al-Qadir Gilani(*)(May God be pleased with him) and Shah Naqshband(*)(May God be pleased with him) and Imam-i Rabbani (May God be pleased with him) were alive today, they would expend all their efforts on strengthening the truths of faith and tenets of Islam. For it is through them that eternal happiness is won. Any deficiency in them results in eternal misery. A person without faith will not enter Paradise, but very many will go there without Sufism. Man cannot live without bread, but he can live without fruit. Sufism is the fruit, the truths of Islam, basic sustenance.

In former times, through spiritual journeying from forty days to as much as forty years, a person could rise to some of the truths of faith. But now, if through Almighty God’s mercy there is a way to rise to those truths in forty minutes, it surely is not sensible to remain indifferent to it.

Thus, people who have studied the thirty-three Words closely state that they have opened up just such a Qur’anic way. Since this is a fact, I am of the opinion that the Words so far written about the mysteries of the Qur’an are a most appropriate medicine and salve for the wounds of this time, and a most beneficial light for Islam as a whole, which has been subject to the assaults of darkness, and a most right guide for those wandering bewildered in the valleys of misguidance.

You know that if misguidance arises from ignorance, it is easy to dispel. Whereas if it results from science and learning, it is difficult to eliminate. In former times, only one person in a thousand was in the latter category, and only one in a thousand such people would be reformed through guidance. For such people fancy themselves. They do not know, but they think they do know. I think that Almighty God has bestowed the Words at this time, which are flashes of the Qur’an’s miraculousness, as an antidote to this atheistic misguidance.

The Eternal One, He is the Eternal One!

Said Nursî

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