A Muslim Convert Once Before

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ Brother James Harris posted the following quote, on The Sharing Group, on the 5 th March 2015: “Ustadz Sa’id Ukur Nursi (r.a.) wrote, in his 28 th Letter, on the dangers of ahadits interpretation attempts by the layman., ;It is not permissible to discuss ambiguous ahadits among the ordinary people, and to show off and justify oneself like a lawyer, and to rely on egotism to support one ’ s arguments rather than on truth and right.   The question being broached and argued about is having an adverse effect on the minds of the poor ordinary people.   They cannot comprehend obscure allegorical ahadits like these, and if they deny them, it opens the terrifying door to their also denying definite, unambiguous ahadits that they cannot understand with their limited intelligences.   If they take the hadits on face value and accept the literal meaning and they spread it around, it paves the way for the people of misguidance to object t...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ Ustadz  Sa’id  Ukur Nursi ( r.a. ) said, “The Prophet Jonah ( a.s. ) was Cast into the sea and swallowed by a large fish.   The sea was stormy, the night was turbulent and dark, and hope was exhausted.   But it was while he was in such a situation that his supplication, ‘There is no god other than You, Glory be unto You!   Indeed, I was among the wrongdoers,’ acted for him as a swift means of salvation.   Now we are in a situation many times more awesome and dangerous than that in which Jonah ( a.s. ) found himself.   Our ‘night’ is the future.   When we look upon our future with the eye of neglect, it is a hundred times darker and more fearful than his night.   Our ‘sea’ is this spinning globe.   Each wave of this sea bears on it thousands of corpses, and is thus a thousand times more frightening than Jonah’s ( a.s. ) sea.   Our ‘fish’ is the desires of our soul which strive to shake and de...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ Ustadz Sa’id Ukur Nursi ( r.a. ) wrote, “The principles of present-day civilisation are almost wholly negative.  Its foundations and its values rest on five main principles, and its machinery runs on these.  They are as follows.  Firstly, its central point of reference and support is force instead of right, and the mark of force is aggression and hostility, and their result is treachery.  Secondly, its goal is self-interest instead of virtue, and the mark of self-interest is rivalry and dispute, and their result is criminality.  Thirdly, its guiding law of life is conflict instead of cooperation, and the mark of conflict is contention and mutual repulsion, and their result is poverty.  Fourthly, its principle for social interrelationships is racialism, which flourishes through harming others and is nourished through devouring others.  The mark of racialism and nationalism is the existence of endless clashes and di...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ Ustadz  Sa’id  Ukur Nursi ( r.a. ) said, “Another thing Satan does is to destroy sound judgement concerning the truths of belief and to damage integrity and correctness of thought.   How does he do it?   Well, it is like this.   His plan is to destroy hundreds of evidences which prove the truths of belief by referring to a single evidence which appears to refute those truths.   He totally ignores the principle which says that, ‘A single proof is superior to a hundred denials’, and pays no attention to the fact that the statement of a witness proving a claim is preferable to a hundred people denying it. To understand this, think of a palace that has a hundred doors, all of them closed.   As soon as one palace door – just one – is opened, you can enter the palace and open the other ninety-nine doors.   And even if one or two doors remain closed, you cannot say that it is impossible to enter the palace! ...

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ Ustadz Sa’id Ukur Nursi ( r.a. ) wrote, in “The Flashes”, “We hear many people who neglect the five daily prayers ask, ‘What need does God have of our worship that He should Threaten those who give up worship with the fearsome punishments of Hell?’   Well, the answer to this is simple: God Almighty has no need of your worship; nor, indeed, has He need of anything else.   No, it is you who needs to worship, for in truth, you are sick.   As we have proved, in many parts of the Risalah an-Nur , worship is a sort of remedy for your spiritual illnesses and wounds.   Now, if a sick person advised by his doctor to take medication regularly were to ask the doctor, ‘Why do you need me to take my medicine?’, you can understand how absurd he would sound!”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ Ustadz  Sa’id  Ukur Nursi ( r.a. ) said, “Worry is itself an illness, since worry is an accusation against Divine Wisdom, and a criticism of Divine Mercy.”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ Ustadz  Sa’id  Ukur Nursi ( r.a. ) said, “I thank God that abandoning politics prevented me from reducing the Qur’an’s diamond-like truths to pieces of glass under the accusation of exploiting them for political ends.”

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ In Ustadz Said Ukur Nursi’s ( q.s. ) “Treatise on Scrupulosity”, from “The Second Station of the Twenty-First Word,” as translated by Dr. Colin Turner, he said, “This is a scruple arising from searching for the best form of an action.  Supposing it to be fear of God, the more rigorous it becomes, the more severe the condition becomes for the person.  It even reaches the point that while searching for even better forms of action, he deviates into what is unlawful.  Sometimes searching for a sunnah makes him give up what is obligatory.  He says, ‘I wonder if my act was sound?’, and repeats it.  This state continues, and he falls into terrible despair.  Satan takes advantage of this state of his, and wounds him.  There are two cures for such a wound.   In the first cure, scruples like this are worthy of the Mu’taziliyyah , because they say, ‘Actions and things for which a person is responsible are either, of ...