URL : TWO ADDITIONS, WHICH FORM A CONCLUSION
TO THE TENTH MATTER.
THE FIRST: Twelve years ago I heard that a most fearsome and obdurate atheist had instigated a conspiracy against the Qur'an through having it translated. He said: "The Qur'an should be translated so that just what it is can be known." That is, saying, let everyone see its unnecessary repetitions and let its translation be read in its place, he hatched a dire plan. However, the irrefutable proofs of the Risale-i Nur proved decisively that "A true translation of the Qur'an is not possible, and other languages cannot preserve the Qur'an's virtues and fine points in place of the grammatical language of Arabic. Man's trite and partial translations cannot be substituted for the miraculous and comprehensive words of the Qur'an, every letter of which yields from ten to a thousand merits; they may not be read in its place in mosques." Through spreading everywhere, the Risale-i Nur made the fearsome plan come to nothing. I surmise that it was due to the idiotic and lunatic attempts of dissemblers to extinguish the Sun of the Qur'an on account of Satan by puffing at it like silly children, having taken lessons from that atheist, that I was inspired to write this Tenth Matter while under great constraint and in a most distressing situation. But I do not know the reality of the situation since I have been unable to meet with others.
SECOND ADDITION: After our release from Denizli Prison, I was staying on the top floor of the famous Sehir Hotel. The most subtle and graceful dancing of the leaves, branches, and trunks of the many poplar trees in the fine gardens opposite me, each with a rapturous and ecstatic motion like a circle of dervishes at the touching of the breeze, pained my heart, sorrowful and melancholy at being parted from my brothers and remaining alone. Suddenly the seasons of autumn and winter came to mind and a heedlessness overcame me. I so pitied those graceful poplars and living creatures swaying with perfect joyousness that my eyes filled with tears. With this reminder of the separations and non-being beneath the ornamented veil of the universe, the grief at a world-full of deaths and separations pressed down on me. Then suddenly, the Light the Muhammedan (PBUH) Truth had brought came to my assistance and transformed that grief and sorrow into joy. Indeed, I am eternally grateful to the Muhammedan Being (PBUH) for the assistance and consolation which touched that situation at that time, only a single instance of the boundless effulgence of that Light for me, like for all believers and everyone. It was like this.
By showing those blessed and delicate creatures to be without function or purpose, and their motion to be not out of joy, but as though trembling at non-existence and separation and tumbling into nothingness, that heedless view so touched the feelings in me of desire for permanence, love of good things, and compassion for fellow-creatures and life that it transformed the world into a sort of hell and the mind into an instrument of torture. Then, just at that point, the Light Muhammed (Peace and blessings by upon him) had brought as a gift for mankind raised the veil; it showed in place of extinction, non-being, nothingness, purposeless, futility, and separations, meanings and instances of wisdom to the number of the leaves of the poplars, and as is proved in the Risale-i Nur, results and duties which may be divided into three sorts:
The First Sort looks to the All-Glorious Maker's Names. For example, if a master craftsman makes a wondrous machine, everyone applauds him, saying: "What wonders God has willed! Blessed be God!" And so too, the machine congratulates the craftsman through the tongue of its disposition, through displaying perfectly the results intended from it. All living beings and all things are machines such as that; they applaud their Craftsman through their glorifications.
The Second Sort of Instances of Wisdom looks to the views of living creatures and conscious beings. Beings each become an agreeable object of study, a book of knowledge. They leave their meanings in the sphere of existence in the minds of conscious beings and their forms in their memories, and on the tablets in the World of Similitudes, and in the notebooks of the World of the Unseen, then they leave the Manifest World and withdraw to the World of the Unseen. That is, they leave an apparent existence and gain many existences, pertaining to meaning, the Unseen, and knowledge. Yes, since God exists and His knowledge encompasses everything, in the view of reality, in the world of believers there is surely no non-being, extinction, nothingness, annihilation, and transitoriness, while the world of unbelievers is full of non-existence, separation, nothingness, and transience. The saying, which is on everyone's lips, "For those for whom God exists, everything exists; and for those for whom He does not exist, nothing exists; for them there is nothing", teaches this fact.
IN SHORT: Just as belief saves man from eternal annihilation at the time of death, so too, it saves everyone's private world from the darknesses of annihilation and nothingness. Whereas unbelief, and especially if it is absolute unbelief, both sends man and his private world to non-existence with death, and casts him into Hell-like darknesses. It transforms the pleasures of life into bitter poisons. Let the ears of those ring who prefer the life of this world to that of the hereafter! Let them come and find a solution for this, or else let them enter belief and be saved from these dreadful losses!
Glory be unto You! We have no knowledge save that which You have taught us; indeed, You are All-Knowing, All-Wise.
From your brother who is in much need
of your prayers and misses you greatly,
SAID NURSI
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