Letters ( revised ) | The Twenty-Ninth Letter | 478
(447-527)
So I said to him: “The appointed hour of death is secret, so we could die any day. In which case, you might die on any day of the three thousand six hundred. You see, there is a one in three thousand possibilit y that you might die today rather than one in three hundred thousand like the boat; so tremble  and  weep,  and  write  your  will!”  He  came  to  his  senses,  and  I got  him, trembling, to board the boat. When on board, I told him: “Almighty God gave the sense of fear to preserve life, not to destroy it! He did not give life so that it would be burdensome, difficult, painful, and torment. If fear is caused by a possibility of one in two, three, or four, or even one in five or six, it is a precautionary fear and may be licit. But to fear a possibility of one in twenty,  thirty, or forty, is groundless,  and makes life torture!”

My brothers! If those who toady to the atheists attack you by frightening you into giving up your sacred jihad of the word, say to them: “We are the party of the Qur’an. According to the verse,

 

We  have,  without doubt,  sent  down  the Message;  and  We  will assuredly guard it,(15:9)

 

we are in the citadel of the Qur’an. The verse,

 

For us God suffices, and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs(3:173)

 

is a firm bastion surrounding us. Utilizing fear at a one in thousands possibility of some minor harm coming to our fleeting transient  lives here,  you cannot drive us through our own wills down a way on which there is a hundred per cent possibilit y of its causing thousandfold  harm to our eternal lives!” And say too: “Is there anyone who has suffered harm due to Said Nursi, our friend in the service of the Qur’an and Master and foreman in running this sacred work, or from people of truth like us who are his companions on the way of truth? Is there anyone who has been caused any trouble at the hand of his close students, that we might be caused it too? So should we be anxious at the possibility of suffering it? This brother of ours has thousands of friends and brothers of the hereafter. Although for twenty to thirty years he played an influential role in the social life of this world, we have not heard that a single of his brothers suffered harm because of him, and at that time he was brandishing the club of politics. Now he holds the light of reality rather than the club. For sure, long ago they mixed him up in the Thirty-First of March Incident and they crushed some of his friends,  but it later became  clear  that  others had  instigated  the affair.  His friends suffered misfortune, not because of him but because of his enemies. Moreover, at that time he saved very many of his friends.

No Voice

Letters ( revised )