Risale-i Nur and clear proofs, and are being shown to the Risale-i Nur Students in this area as a spur and encouragement. [^152]

[^152]:Ibid., 53.

#### The Way of the Risale-i Nur and its Function

*The Way of the Risale-i Nur and its Function*

Bediuzzaman wrote to his students that the Risale-i Nur's function was to save and strengthen belief in the face of the concerted attacks against it at the present time. [^153] Besides those briefly described in the preceding chapters, he explained also that what was being suffered at that time was the accumulated objections and doubts levelled against belief and the Qur'an by the European [Western] philosophers over a period of some thousand years. Their aim was to shake the pillars of belief, which are the foundation and key of eternal life and everlasting happiness. Thus, what was essential was to strengthen belief and transform it from "imitative belief' into "certain belief'. [^154] , [^155] In one letter he described the enormity of the Risale-i Nur's role like this:

[^153]:Ibid., 48, and, 10.

[^154]:Nursi, Şualar, 140 (Eng. tr.: Rays, 188).

[^155]:A closer translation of "certain belief', in Turkish tahkikî, in Arabic, tahqiqi, iman, would be 'verified', 'ascertained through enquiry', 'resulting from investigation', or 'confirmatory'.

The Risale-i Nur is not only repairing some minor damage or some small house; it is repairing vast damage and the all-embracing citadel which contains Islam, the stones of which are the size of mountains. And it is not striving to reform only a private heart and an individual conscience; it is striving to cure with the medicines of the Qur'an and belief and the Qur'an's miraculousness the collective heart and generally-held ideas, which have been breached in awesome fashion by the tools of corruption prepared and stored up over a thousand years, and the general conscience, which is facing corruption through the destruction of the foundations, currents, and marks of Islam which are the refuge of all and particularly the mass of believers.

Certainly, for such universal breaches and awesome wounds, proofs and equipment of the utmost certitude and the strength of mountains, and well-proven medicines and numberless drugs of the effectiveness of a thousand remedies are necessary. Emerging at this time from the miraculousness of the Qur'an of Miraculous Exposition, the Risale-i Nur performs this function, and is also the means of advancing and progressing through the infinite degrees of belief. [^156]

[^156]:Nursi, Kastamonu Lahikası, 25.