The person who gave up atheistic Naturalism and came to believe said: "All praise be to God, I no longer have any doubts, but there are still a few questions about which I am curious."
FIRST QUESTION
"We hear many lazy people and those who neglect the five daily prayers ask: 'What need has God Almighty of our worship that in the Qur'an He severely and insistently reproves those who give up worship and threatens them with such a fearsome punishment as Hell? How is it in keeping with the style of the Qur'an, which is moderate, mild and fair, to demonstrate the ultimate severity towards an insignificant, minor fault?"
The Answer: God Almighty has no need of your worship, nor indeed of anything else. It is you who needs to worship, for in truth you are sick. As we have proved in many parts of the Risale-i Nur, worship is a sort of remedy for your spiritual wounds. If someone who is ill responds to a compassionate doctor who insists on his taking medici nes that are beneficial for his condition by saying: "What need do you have of it that you are insisting in this way?", you can understand how absurd it would be.
As for the severe threats and fearsome punishments in the Qur'an concerning the giving up of worship, they may be likened to a king who in order to protect his subject' rights, inflicts a severe punishment on an ordinary man in accordance with the degree that his crime infringes those rights.
In the same way, the man who gives up worship and ritual prayer is violating in a significant manner the rights of beings, who arc like the subjects of the Monarch of Pre-Eternity and Post-Eternity, and is in fact acting unjustly towards them. For the perfections of beings are manifested through the glorification and worship performed by that aspect of them which is directed towards their Maker. The one who abandons worship does not and cannot see this worship. Indeed, he denies it. Furthermore, beings occupy an exalted position by reason of their worship and glorification, and each is a missive of the Eternally Besought One, and a mirror to the Names of its Sustainer. Since he reduces them from their high positions and considers them to be unimportant, lifeless, aimless, and without duties, he is insulting them, and denying and transgressing their perfections.
Indeed, everyone sees the world in his own mirror. God Almighty created man as a measure and scale for the universe. And from the world He gave a particular world to each person. This world He colours for him in accordance with his sincere beliefs. For example, a despairing, lamenting, weeping person sees beings as weeping and in despair, while a cheerful, optimistic, merry person sees the universe as joyful and smiling. A reflective man given to solemn worship and glorification discovers and sees to a degree the certain, truly existent worship and glorification of beings, while a person who abandons worship through either neglect or denial sees beings in a manner totally contrary and opposed to the reality of their perfections, thus transgressing their rights.
Furthermore, since the one who gives up prayer does not own himself, he wrongs his own soul, which is a slave of its True Owner. His Owner delivers awesome threats in order to protect His slave's rights from his evil-commanding soul. Also, since he has given up worship, which is the result of his creation and aim of his nature, it is an act of aggression against Divine wisdom and dominical will, and he therefore receives punishment.
In Short: The abandoner of worship both wrongs his own soul, which is the slave and totally owned property of Almighty God, and wrongs and transgresses the rights of the universe's perfections. Certainly, just as unbelief is an insult to beings, so is the abandonment of worship a denial of those perfections. And since it is an act of aggression against Divine wisdom, it is deserving of awesome threats and severe punishment.
Thus, it is to express this deservedness and the above facts that the Qur'an of Miraculous Exposition chooses in a miraculous way that severe style, which, in complete conformity with the principles of eloquence, corresponds to the requirements of the situation.