Overcoming Doubt

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

In Ustadz Sa’id Ukur Nursi’s (q.s.) “Treatise on Scrupulosity”, from “The Second Station of the Twenty-First Word,” and translated by Dr. Colin Turner, he said, “Satan first casts a doubt into the heart.  If the heart does not accept it, it turns from a doubt into abuse.  It depicts, before the imagination, some unclean memories and unmannerly, ugly states which resemble abuse, and causes the heart to declare, ‘Alas!’, and fall into despair.  The person suffering from scruples supposes that he has acted wrongfully before his Sustainer and feels a terrible agitation and anxiety.  In order to be saved from it, he flees from the Divine Presence and wants to plunge into heedlessness. 

The cure for this wound is this, O wretched man suffering from scruples!  Do not be alarmed!  For what comes to your mind is not abuse, but something imaginary.  And like to imagine unbelief is not unbelief, to imagine abuse is not abuse either.  For according to logic, an imagining is not a judgement, and abuse is a judgement.  Moreover, those ugly words are not the words of your heart, because your heart is saddened and sorry at them.  Rather they come from the inner faculty situated near the heart which is a means of Satanic whisperings.  The harm of scruples is imagining the harm.  That is, it is to suffer harm in the heart through imagining them to be harmful.  For it is imagining to be reality an imagining which is devoid of judgement.  Also, it is to attribute to the heart Satan’s works; to suppose his words to be from it.  Such a person thinks it is harmful, so it becomes harmful.  That is anyway what Satan wanted.”