This suggests that Almighty God lays the duties of guidance and illumination on great guides when they have undergone a period of purification and training in seclusion. As soon as the breaths, now purer than distilled water, leave their breasts and are reflected in people's hearts, their effect is something quite other.

The victories al-Ghazzali won nine hundred years ago in the field of virtue and morality, Bediuzzaman won this century in the arena of belief and sincerity.

Yes, it was always his unparalleled kindness and compassion that drove our Master to fight in this awesome jihad. Let's listen to how he describes it:

"They ask me: Why do you attack this and that? So I tell them: I wasn't aware of it. There is a great conflagration before me, the flames of which are touching the skies. My children are burning in it. My belief has caught fire too, and is burning. I am racing to put out the fire and save my belief. If someone wants to hold me up on the way, or I trip on him, what importance has it? What importance has such a minor incident in the face of that conflagration? Narrow minds! Narrow views

His Self-Sufficiency and Independence

• His Self-Sufficiency and Independence

The thousands of examples of Ustad's self-sufficiency and independence which he provided throughout his life for every level of society, are well-known to everyone. He adopted as his way of life reliance on the inexhaustible treasury of the Lord of all the worlds, both physically and spiritually, and was completely self-sufficient in the face of all things other than God. This was not merely a habit. He always persisted in this whatever the cost.

Interestingly, this way has not remained limited to himself; he passed it on to his students as a sacred ideal. One cannot help but applaud this self- sufficiency of the Nur students, who have the honour of becoming submerged in the ocean of the Risale-i Nur.

See how in the Second Letter in his masterpiece Mektûbat, Ustad explains this important point in six aspects with all the nobility of belief and consciousness of knowledge:

"The First: The people of misguidance accuse religious scholars of making their learning a means of subsistence. They attack them unfairly, saying: 'They are making knowledge and religion a means of livelihood for themselves.' It is necessary to show this to be false by action.

"The Second: We are charged with following the prophets in disseminating the truth. In the All-Wise Qur'an, those who do this say, My reward