If you say: The shaykhs sometimes interfere in our business, and they sometimes call you a shaykh.

I reply: Good sirs! I am not a shaykh, I am a hoja [teacher]. The evidence is this: I have been here four years and if I had taught a single person the sufi way, you would have had the right to be suspicious. But I have told everyone who has come to me: Belief is necessary, Islam is necessary; this is not the age of sufism.

If you say: They call you Said-i Kurdi; perhaps you have some nationalist ideas, and that doesn’t suit our interests.

I would reply: Sirs! The things the Old Said and the New Said have written are clear. I cite as testimony the certain statement, “Islam has abrogated the tribalism of the Age of Ignorance.” For years I have considered negative nationalism and racialism to be fatal poison, since they are a variety of European disease. And Europe has infected Islam with them thinking it would cause division, and Islam would break up and be easily swallowed. My students and those who have had anything to do with me know that for years I have tried to treat that disease. Since it is thus, good sirs, I wonder why you make every incident a pretext to harass me? According to what principle do you cause me distress at every worldly incident, like punishing and inflicting trouble on a soldier in the west because of a mistake made by a soldier in the east due to the connection of the army, or convicting a shopkeeper in Baghdad because of a crime committed by a tradesman in Istanbul due to their being in the same line of business? How can the conscience demand this? What benefit can require it?

THIRD POINT

My friends who wonder how I am and are astonished at my meeting every calamity silently with patience ask the following question: “How can you endure the difficulties and troubles with which you are faced, whereas formerly you were very proud and angry and could not endure even the least insult?”

T h e A n s w e r : Listen to two short incidents and stories and you shall receive your answer:

The First Story: Two years ago an official spoke insultingly