Habib and Shafiq,1 both lovers! Consider the finest works of divine mercy: affection, compassion, and love. Then consult your consciences, but after supposing them to be subject to eternal separation and unending parting; how they appeal for help! How your imaginations cry out, and your spirits are tormented at the transformation of affection and kindness, the most beautiful and exquisite sorts of mercy and bounty, into a terrible calamity and affliction. Is it at all possible that such necessary mercy would assist eternal separation in assaulting affection and kindness? No! That mercy is such that it would set eternal separation to attack unending parting, and beset unending parting with eternal separation, and annihilate both of them!
T h e E i g h t h P r o o f , which is explicit: This is the veracious, verified tongue of Muhammad (Upon whom be blessings and peace). His word flung open the doors of eternal felicity. The consensus of all the prophets from Adam to their Seal (UWBP) concerning this truth forms a decisive proof of it. There must be such a truth, since they were in agreement concerning it.
N i n t h P r o o f : This is the miraculous Qur’an’s announcement of eternal felicity. The seven aspects of its miraculousness have been confirmed for thirteen centuries furnishing proof of what it claims. For it discloses bodily resurrection with its message and is the key to it.2
T h e T e n t h P r o o f : This consists of thousands of proofs supplied by numerous verses. For example, the verse, “Seeing that He has created you in successive stages”(71:14) indicates an allegorical comparison (qiyās tamthīlī); and “Nor is your Sustainer ever unjust to His servants”(41:46) points to a proof of justice. Indeed, in most of its verses the Qur’an has opened up windows looking onto the resurrection of the dead.
The allegorical comparison in the first verse above is as follows: consider the human body, how it passes from stage to stage, from sperm to a blood-clot, and from that to an embryo, and from that to flesh and bone, and from that to a new creation. Each of these stages has such particular laws, such determined order, such regular development that it reveals transparently an intention, will, and choice. Next study its continued existence, for the body renews its clothes every year, and this occurs through
The names of two of Nursi’s students, which mean affectionate and compassionate, respectively. The former acted as the author’s scribe.
An allusion to the commentaries al-Kashshāf by al-Zamakhsharī and al-Miftāḥ by al-Sakkākī. See, notes 4 and 5 above.