Essentials of Belief

The Requirements of Belief  – [An extract from a letter written to some students of the Risale-i Nur at Istanbul university ] “In His name, be He glorified! AT the end of the The Staff of Moses, there is the answer I gave to the question of one of our brothers, Küçük Ali, small in name but great in spirit. Read it, for some critics said to him, in an effort to belittle the Risale-i Nur, “Everyone knows God; the common man believes in God just like the saint.”  They wished in this way to present the exalted, valuable and most essential discussions contained in the Risale-i Nur as superfluous. Now too in Istanbul, with a still more destructive intention, some hypocrites of anarchist persuasion, who have fallen prey to utter unbelief, wish cunningly to deprive everyone of the truths of the faith that are contained in the Risale-i Nur and are as essential to man as bread and water. They say: “Every nation and every individual knows God; we have no great need for new instruction in this matter.” To know God, however, means to have certain faith in God’s dominicality encompassing all beings, and in all things, particular and general, from the atoms to the stars, being in the grasp of His power, action and will; it means believing in the truths of the sacred words, “There is no god but God,” and assenting to them with one’s heart. But simply to say, “God exists,” and then to divide His kingdom among secondary causes and nature and attribute it to them; to recognize secondary causes as sources of authority, as if – God forbid – they were the partners of God; to fail to perceive His will and knowledge as present with all things; to refuse to recognize His strict commands, and to reject His attributes, and the messengers and prophets He has sent – this has nothing to do with the reality of belief in God. Rather the person who does all this, and says “God exists,” does so only in order to find some relief from the torment he suffers in the world after his unbelief has made it a hell for him. Not to deny is one thing, to believe is some­thing completely different. No being endowed with consciousness, in the whole universe, can indeed deny the All-Glorious Creator to Whom every particle of existence bears witness. Or if he does make such a denial, it will be refuted by all of creation, and hence become silent and diffident. But believing in him is, as the Qur’an of Mighty Stature informs us, to assent in one’s heart to the Creator with all of His attributes and names, supported by the testimony of the whole universe; to recognize the messengers He has sent and the commands He has promulgated; and to make sincere repentance and feel genuine regret for every sin and act of disobedience. Conversely, to commit every kind of sin, and then never to seek pardon for it or concern oneself with it, is a sure sign of the absence of any element of faith Thus my spiritual offspring, an important event has become the occasion for a brief exposition of a long and complex matter.” -Ustad Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (from The Fruits From the Tree of Light ) Dr. Osman Birgeoglu ]]>