One time, I was asked the following question by the brothers who
assist me:
“For fifty days now —and now seven years have passed— (this refers to 1946) you have asked nothing at
all about this ghastly World War, which has plunged the whole world into chaos
and is closely connected with the fate of the Islamic world, nor have you been
curious about it. Whereas some religious and learned persons are leaving the
congregation in the mosques and racing to listen to the radio. Is there some
event more momentous than the war? Or is it harmful in some way to be
preoccupied with it?”
I replied to them: Life’s capital is very little and the work to
be done is much. There are spheres one within the other like concentric
circles, from the sphere of man’s heart and stomach, and that of his home and
body, and that of the quarter in which he lives and his town, and his country
and land, and the globe and mankind, to the spheres of animate beings and the
world. Each person may have duties in each of those spheres, but the most
important and permanent of these are those in the smallest sphere. While his
least important and temporary duties may be in the largest sphere. According to
this analogy, the largest and smallest are in inverse proportion. But because
of the attractiveness of the largest sphere, it causes the person to neglect
his important, necessary duties in the small sphere, busying him with
unnecessary, trivial, peripheral matters. It destroys the capital of his life
for nothing. It kills his precious life on worthless things. Sometimes, the one
following curiously the struggles of the war comes to earnestly support one
side. He looks favourably on their tyranny, and becomes a partner in it.
The Answer to the first point: Yes, an event more momentous than this World War and a case
more important than that of world supremacy has been opened over the heads of
everyone and especially Muslims, so that if everyone had the wealth and power
of the Germans and English and sense as well, they would unhesitatingly spend
all of it to win that single case. The case is this: relying on the thousands
of promises and pledges of the universe’s Owner, Who has disposal over it,
hundreds of thousands of the most eminent of mankind, and uncounted numbers of
its stars and guides, have unanimously given news —and some of them have
actually seen— that for everyone the case has opened by which they may either
win, in return for belief, or lose, eternal properties as broad as the earth
set with palaces and gardens. If they do not secure the document of belief,
they will lose. And this age, many are losing the case because of the plague of
materialism. One of the diviners of reality and investigators of truth observed
in one place that out of forty people who died, only a few won; the others
lost. Can anything take the place of that lost suit, even rule over the whole
world?
Since we Risale-i Nur students know it would be
pure lunacy to give up the duties which will win the case and abandon the
wondrous lawyer who saves ninety per cent from losing it and the task which the
lawyer employs us in, and become involved with peripheral trivia as though we
were going to remain in the world for ever, we are certain that if each of us
had intelligence a hundred times greater than what we have, we still would use
it only on this task.
Source: 11th Ray, Fourth Topic, Risale-i Nur Collection
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