be planted in the earth of imaginary, temporary, partial, particular, negative, indeed, baseless, rancorous, tyrannical, and dark racialism! To try to do so is to attempt something foolish, destructive, and innovative.
To the Second Sort of nationalists, we say this: O you drunken pseudo-patriots! Perhaps the previous century could have been the age of nationalism. This century is not the age of racialism! Communism and socialism pervade everything, destroying the idea of racialism. The age of racialism is passing. Eternal, permanent Islamic nationalism cannot be bound onto temporary unstable racialism and grafted onto it. And even if it were to be, it would corrupt the Islamic nation, but it would not reform racialist nationalism. Yes, there appears to be a pleasure and temporary strength in a temporary graft, but it is very temporary and the consequences are dangerous.
Furthermore, it would open up a split in the Turkish people that could not be healed in all eternity. Then the nation’s strength would be reduced to nothing, since one section would have broken the power of the other. If two mountains are placed in the two pans of some scales, a few pounds weight can move the two, raising one, and lowering the other.
T h e S e c o n d Q u e s t i o n consists of two signs:
The First is the FIFTH SIGN, and is a very brief answer to an important question:
Q u e s t i o n : There are numerous authentic narrations about the appearance of the Mahdi at the end of time and his putting the world to rights, which will have been corrupted. However, the present time is the time of the group or social collectivity, not of the individual. However great a genius an individual person is, even a hundredfold genius, if he is not the representative of a group and if he does not represent a group’s collective personality, he will be defeated in the face of the collective personality of an opposing group. At this time, however exalted the power of his sainthood, how can he reform the world amid the widespread corruption of a human group such as that? If all the Mahdi’s works are wondrous, it would be contrary to the divine wisdom and laws in the world. We want to understand the reality of this matter of the Mahdi. How can we?
T h e A n s w e r : Out of His perfect mercy, every time the Muslim community has been corrupted, Almighty God has sent a reformer, or a regenerator, or a vicegerent of high standing, or a supreme spiritual pole, or a perfect guide, or blessed persons resembling a Mahdi, as a mark of His protecting the Shari‘a of Islam until eternity; they have removed the corruption, reformed the nation, and preserved Muhammad’s (UWBP) religion.