Letters ( revised ) | THE SIXTEENTH LETTER | 82
(80-91)
I leave that door open so that the truths of belief I have gained for myself and the spiritual remedies I have myself experienced may be acquired by others. Perhaps Almighty God will accept this service and make it atonement for my former sins. Apart from Satan the Accursed, no one, be it a believer or an unbeliever, one of the veracious  or an atheist,  has the right to oppose this work.  For unbelief  resembles nothing else. In tyrannizing, vice, and grievous sins there may be an inauspicious diabolical pleasure, but in unbelief there is no sort of pleasure at all. It is pain upon pain, darkness upon darkness, torment upon torment.

Just how contrary to reason it would be for someone like me who is unattached, alone,  and  compelled  to  atone  for  his  former  sins  to  leave  aside  working  for  an endless eternal life and serving a sacred light like belief, and to cast himself in old age into the unnecessary, perilous games of politics – just how contrary to wisdom, just what a lunacy it would be even lunatics would understand!

But if you ask why service of the Qur’an and belief prohibit me, I would say this:

the truths of belief and the Qur’an are each like diamonds.  If I were polluted  by politics, the ordinary people who are easily deceived, would wonder about those diamonds I was holding: “Aren’t they for political propaganda, to attract more supporters?”  They might  regard  the diamonds  as bits of common glass.  Then,  by being involved with politics I would be wronging the diamonds by as though reducing their value. O you whose view is restricted to this world! Why do you struggle against me? Why do you not leave me to myself?

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

I reply: Good sirs! I am not a shaikh, 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 Ignorance.”[2] For years I have considered negative nationalism and racialism to be fatal poisons, since they are a variety of European disease.


 

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[2] See, Bukhari, Ahkam, 4; ‘Imara, 36, 37; Abu Da’ud, Sunna, 5; Tirmidhi, Jihad, 28; ‘Ilm, 16; Nasa’i, Bay’a, 26; Ibn Maja, Jihad, 39; Musnad, iv, 69, 70, 199, 204, 205; v, 381; vi, 402, 403.

No Voice

Letters ( revised )