► (107) ◄ This Piece is Somewhat Confidential

This Piece is Somewhat Confidential

It is for the Select Students Alone

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

I always used to wonder why, although it should have been people from the religious schools (medrese) who embraced the Risale-i Nur more than anyone, it has been those of them who have assumed official duties that have held themselves most aloof from it.

It is now necessary to explain a small part of the answer that occurred to me.

Firstly: Because covert dissemblers have used certain people in high places against us and conducted intense propaganda officially, the officials have been perturbed and compelled to keep their distance. The hojas from among them who are egotistical, suspicious, and have embraced the innovations, started to be even cooler towards us and to seek pretexts and excuses. And because The Seven Signs (İşarât-ı Seb'a) from the Risale-i Nur deals fierce slaps at the innovators, and in the ode Arjuza in the Eighth and Eighteenth Flashes, Imam 'Ali (May God be pleased with him) deals awesome blows at the misguided ulema (ulema-i su'), and the piece in the Twenty-Eighth Letter about Wahhabism, which is in one respect and to an extent conducive to innovations, deals a blow at those who have secretly embraced it, and the Risale-i Nur deals fierce slaps at the translator of the Qur'an and those who permit the Qur'an's translation to be recited in place of it, and the hojas who think of their needs and livelihoods and their social standing, and even some of the Istanbul hojas who are old friends, began to evade us and a few of them, to try to criticize us even. On account of extreme Wahhabism and its enmity towards the Prophet's (UWBP) family and Imam 'Ali, they even began to object to the Risale-i Nur's being a spiritual gift and work of the Prophet's (UWBP) family and Imam 'Ali. But we are not indignant at the Istanbul scholars; in a way we are pleased, because compared with others, they do not bother us.

More than this, for the sake of fair-minded, esteemed, deceased persons like the late Fetva Emini Ali Rıza, Ahmed Şirani, Şevket Efendi, and Mehmed Âkif, who greatly appreciated and applauded the Risale-i Nur, we consider ourselves to be friends of the Istanbul hojas and are not offended by them. God willing, the Twentieth Flash on sincerity will be given to them to read sometime, which will turn the old friends into new ones.

My brothers! Not everyone can be as staunch as you are. Certain hojas