Since there are moral and spiritual duties based on moral and spiritual needs, and the most important of those duties are the passport for the journey to post- eternity, and the pocket-torch of the heart in the darkness of the Intermediate Realm, and belief, the key to eternal happiness, and instruction in belief and its strengthening, for sure, the learned who  perform those duties  will not with ingratitude count as nothing the divine bounties bestowed on them and the virtues arising from belief, and descend to the level of sinners and the dissolute. They will not soil themselves with the innovations and vices of the inferior. Thus, the solitude which you do not like and suppose to be inequality is because of this.

In addition to this truth I say the following, not to those like you who torment and pester me and who in egotism and contempt of the law of equality are as overweening as the Pharaoh – for the arrogant suppose humility to be abasement, so one should not be humble before them – I say rather to the fair-minded, the modest, and the just:

All praise be to God, I know my faults and impotence. I do not arrogantly want any position superior to Muslims which demands respect. I am always aware of my endless   faults   and  utter  insignificance.  Finding  consolation  by  seeking  divine forgiveness, I  want  not respect from the people, but their prayers. I reckon all my friends know of this way of mine. However, while serving the All-Wise Qur’an and teaching the truths of belief, in order to preserve the dignity and pride of learning that such a rank requires, on account of those truths and in honour of the Qur’an and in order  not  to  bow  before  the  people  of  misguidance,  I  temporarily  assume  that dignified stance. I do not think ‘the worldly’s’ laws can oppose these points!

Some Astonishing Treatment

It is well-known that everywhere teachers judge in accordance with knowledge and  learning.  Out  of  love  of  their  profession,  in  whomever  and  wherever  they encounter  knowledge and learning, they will nurture friendship and respect for the person concerned. If  a professor from an enemy country visits this country even, teachers will visit him out of respect for his knowledge and learning, and offer him respect.

However,  when  the  highest  learned  council  of  the  English  asked  for  a  six- hundred-word answer to six questions they asked the Shaykh al-Islam’s Office, a scholar and teacher who has met with the disrespect of the education authorities here, answered those six questions with six words which met with approval, and answered with true knowledge and learning the most basic principles of the Europeans and their philosophers, and defeated them.