The Words | GLEAMS | 742
(724-779)

If Mankind Wants Life, It Must Put to Death Usury of Every Sort

Relations between the upper and lower classes have been severed. From below arise cries of revolution, shouts of revenge, screams of hatred and envy.

From above descend fires of tyranny and scorn, the burden of arrogance, the inciter of oppression.

What should arise from below are love, obedience, respect, and conformity. And from above should descend compassion and bounty, kindness and education.

If mankind wants these, it should embrace zakat and drive out usury and interest.

Qur'anic justice stands at the door of the world telling usury and interest: "No entry! You have no right to enter! Return whence you came!"

Mankind did not heed this command, and received a blow;17 it should heed it

now before receiving one more severe.

* * *

Mankind Smashed Slavery, So Will It Smash Wage-Earning

In a dream I said: the skirmishing between nations and states is making way for fierce battle between the social classes.

For in the era of slavery, man did not want slavery and smashed it, spilling his blood. Now he has become a wage-earner; he bears that burden and will smash it too.

Mankind has grown old, having passed through five stages: primitive nomadism, slavery, captivity;18 now the wage-earning age has begun and is passing.

* * *

An Unlawful Way Leads to the Opposite of What Was Intended

The murderer may not inherit19 is an important principle: "Someone who pursues his goal by unlawful paths, generally pays the penalty of achieving the opposite of what he intended."

Love of Europe was illicit, as well as blind imitation and familiarity. Its consequences and recompense were the tyrannical animosity of the beloved, and crimes.

The loser and sinner will find neither pleasure nor salvation.


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17. This is a powerful prediction. Mankind did not listen, and received an awesome blow with this Second World War.
18. See, Nursi, Mektubat (Ottoman ed.) Istanbul n.p., n.d., 455. Here, Bediuzzaman, ascribing it to "the materialist view of history," lists five main stages that mankind has passed through: i) primitive nomadism; ii) slavery; iii) captivity; iv) wage-earning; v) ownership and free enterprise. Concerning the third stage, he writes: "... (men) were saved from slavery, but in accordance with the tyrannical principle 'Might is right,' the powerful treated the weak as captives. Then as a result of numerous revolutions such as the French Revolution, that stage was transformed into the wage-earning stage." [Tr.]
19. Tirmidhi, Fara'id, 18, No: 2109; Ihn Maja, Fara'id, 8, No: 2645; Musnad, i, 49; Darimi, Fara'id, 41.

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The Words