predictions made in that short treatise occurring on the same dates, all constitute a flash of that sura's miraculousness (i'caz). But my enthusiastic interpretations concealed the truth. ∗∗∗

► (154) ◄

My Dear, Esteemed Brother!

To think of and exacerbate the most grievous, the very worst, wound of the Islamic world, which for one thousand three hundred years has caused it to weep and all the people of reality to sigh at the pity of it, causes me distress greater than I can bear as a follower of my particular path, For twenty-five years, serving the cause of belief sincerely and truly has held me back from every sort of politics and not allowed me to have the newspapers read to me. Similarly, the state of mind I have had to adopt has allowed me to apply to the government only with my court defences lest, while a prisoner, I concern myself with political life; and it has made me completely disregard the ghastly World War lest the work for belief be impaired or tainted by politics or sincerity marred. But although compliance with the Qur'anic command to save belief is obligatory since at the present time fearsome monsters are attacking the believers before our very eyes on the front of the truths of belief, and they have sunk their fangs into many of them, to turn one's back on the present and return to the past to gaze on the atrocities visited on the Prophet's (UWBP) family crushes my spirit and breaks my morale, and heaps on it torment after torment.

Numerous unjust events that were perpetrated in the name of the cruel principle of tyrannical politics, namely, that individuals may be sacrificed for the community, claimed to be the lesser of two evils and a sort of relative justice and advantageous for their rule. In this century, even, due to that cruel principle and on the deluded pretext that harm would come to their policies, five or ten men have ruined thousands and have wiped out a village because of one man's fault.

Since in early times this cruel principle was adopted to an extent by Muslims, the pious forefathers and the Sunni authorities felt compelled to remain silent and closed those doors. Saying: "God did not involve us in their quarrels and kept our hands clean. So in gratitude for this, we shall keep our tongues clean by not talking about them," [^82] they did not open those doors.

[^82]:al-Sha'rānī, al-Yawāqīt wa'l-Jawāhīr, ii, 69; al-Bājūrī, Sharḥ Jawharat al-Tawḥīd, 334. [Tr.]