in order to guide you, for to teach you is beyond my authority. I am like a child before this gathering, among whom are close on a hundred religious scholars, who goes to school in the morning and learns his lesson, then in the evening returns and repeats it to his father. His father sees whether or not what the child has learnt is correct, and the child awaits either approval or guidance from him. Yes, we are like children before you, and we are your students. You are our masters, and the masters of the other Muslim nations. I shall therefore repeat to you, our masters, part of the lesson I have learnt. It is as follows:

In the conditions of the present time in these lands, I have learnt a lesson in the school of mankind’s social life and I have realized that what has allowed foreigners, Europeans, to fly towards the future on progress while it arrested us and kept us, in respect of material development, in the Middle Ages, are six dire sicknesses. The sicknesses are these:

FIRSTLY: The rising to life of despair and hopelessness in social life.

SECONDLY: The death of truthfulness in social and political life.

THIRDLY: Love of enmity.

FOURTHLY: Not knowing the luminous bonds that bind the believers to one another.

FIFTHLY: Despotism, which spreads, becoming widespread as though it was various contagious diseases.