Since those who inflicted such suffering on the Prophet's (UWBP) family are now suffering severe torments in the hereafter, there is no need for us to attack them in order to assist his family members. His family received so high a reward in return for that temporary oppression that we cannot comprehend it with our minds. We should not pity them but congratulate them on the infinite mercy they have received. For on the one hand, by suffering a few years' hardship they gained eternal bliss of infinite proportions in the hereafter, and on the other, they won the ranks of spiritual monarchs, shahs of the world of reality, in place of the petty, transient sovereignty and temporary rule, and confused politics of their time in this world. Instead of being governors, they became the commanders of saints and spiritual poles; their gain was not a thousandfold, but millions.

It is for this reason that from the New Said's special masters, Imam Rabbani, Gawth al-A'zam, and Imam Ghazali [^83] — and especially from these two masters that I was taught the supplication Jaushan al-Kabir of Zayn al-'Abidin (May God be pleased with him), And through the instruction I received from Hz. Husayn and Imam 'Ali (May God exalt him), and especially in my constant spiritual link with them these last thirty years through the Jaushan al-Kabir, I received the former truth and the way that has now been imparted to us from the Risale-i Nur. To look to or even think about the tyrants' atrocities, let alone probe them, is opposed to our way. For they and the other victims have received reward and recompense far exceeding what we can conceive of. To dwell on those matters is detrimental to the Qur'anic duties with which we are now charged in the face of the present calamitous assaults on religion. The rules of the science of the principles of religion (uṣūl al-dīn) which the learned theologians of the science of theology (kalām) and erudite scholars of the principles of religion and of Sunnism agreed on after their minute studies and reasoned debates, and weighed up on the Qur'an's verses and Hadiths, about the Islamic articles of faith, command the preservation of the Risale-i Nur's way, and corroborate and strengthen it. No one anywhere, not even the innovators, have been able to criticize it. Since it preserves the true meaning of sincerity, Muslims of every shade enter its fold. Bigoted Shi'is, the most materialist

[^83]:Imam Rabbani, a popular title of Shaykh Aḥmad Sirhindī (d. 1034/1624) was born in Sirhind in India is known as the Regenerator of the Second Millennium (Mujaddid-i Alf-i Thānī); he purified Islam of heterodox accretions and was founder of the Mujaddidī branch of the Naqshbandī Order. Gawth al-A'zam refers to Shaykh 'Abd al-Qādir al-Gīlānī (d. 561/1165-6), the Hanbalite theologian, preacher, and Sufi, after whom the Qadiriyya Order was named. Ḥujjat al-Islām Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111). Eminent theologian, jurist, Sufi, and thinker known his criticisms of philosophy. For Jaushan al-Kabir, see fn 36 above. [Tr.]