boastingly, but overwhelmed by shame, through the sincerity and pure heartedness of the blessed Risale-i Nur students, to seek forgiveness and atonement for my sins through their intercession.
The people who oppose me do not know my secret faults; they just make a pretext of some apparent failings and wrongly supposing the Risale-i Nur to be mine, criticize me saying that I do not attend the Friday Prayers and do not have a beard. In this way, they hope to obscure the Risale-i Nur's lights and compete against its spreading.
The Answer: Together with accepting my numerous faults, I have to say that in these two matters I have powerful excuses.
Firstly: I follow the Shafi'i school of law, according to which a congregation of forty people is obligatory to perform the Friday Prayer. There are other requisites as well. For which reason, here, attendance of the Friday Prayer is not obligatory. Sometimes following the Hanafi School, I attend it as a Sunna (practice of the Prophet UWBP).
Secondly: I do not feel at ease in crowded places because for twenty years I have been unjustly prevented from mixing with people, and also recently, four months ago, I received an official warning not to have contact with people; for twenty-five years I have lived all alone. According to my school of law, I cannot perform the prayers behind everyone, because I cannot recite the Fātiḥa quickly enough and the Imam bows (rukū') when I am only half way through it, and it is obligatory for us to recite it.
As for the beard, to have one is a Sunna; it is not particular to hojas. Since my youth I have been one of the ninety per cent of this country who do not have beards. Since in the course of official offensives these last twenty years some of our friends have had to shave theirs, my not having one has proved to be an instance of divine providence and wisdom. If I had had one and it had been shaved off, it would have caused enormous harm to the Risale-i Nur because I would have died; I could not have borne it.
Some authorities have said that it is not permissible to shave off one's beard, but what they meant was that it is prohibited (ḥarām) to cut it off after you have grown one. So if one has never had one, one has only given up one Sunna. But in the face of that, through the Risale-i Nur's guidance at this time in order to avoid committing numerous serious sins, I have passed a torturous life in what has been twenty years of virtual solitary confinement. God willing, it will be atonement for giving up that Sunna.
I also say openly and with complete certainty that the Risale-i Nur belongs to the Qur'an; how could I claim ownership of it so that my faults should pass to it? I am one of its faulty servants and a salesman of that store of diamonds and jewels. My confused circumstances cannot pass to it