TRANSLATION of 154th LETTER

Serve your brother(s), your sisters(s), your wife, your mother, and all your brothers in Islam! Hold fast to the Sunna, [that is, to the Sharî’at], of our beloved Prophet Muhammad Mustafâ ‘sall-Allâhu alaihi wasallam’! [Learn this Sharî’at, not from the untruthful books reflecting the personal views of people who falsely assume to be religious authorities, but from books through which lovers of Allâhu ta’âlâ convey the information coming from the ’Ulamâ of Ahl as-sunna! It would be a great fortune to have been blessed with the ability of distinguishing these books from the sham books, thus being secure against the harm and mischief of those misleading books. Lucky for those who have attained this blessing!]

Disasters that befall people are the will and foreordination of Allâhu ta’âlâ. We should be contented with and submissive to His foreordination. We should recite the Fâtiha (sûra), say prayers, give alms, and present their thawâb to the souls of the dead (parents, relatives, friends, martyrs, religious scholars, teachers, etc.). We should visit the graves of the Awliyâ, and ask, beg for their help. Serving their living children and grandchildren will cause one to receive fayz from them. We should bring up our children under Islamic education! We should train them to cover themselves, (that is, to dress in a manner prescribed by Islam), teach them religious knowledge, e.g. how to perform namâz, etc., beginning when they are quite young! We should be punctual in performing the five daily prayers of namâz and perform them behind a Sunnî imâm! We should learn how to read Qur’ân al-kerîm correctly, without making errors, and we should read it every day!

A distich:

So grieved is my soul for separation from m’dearest ones,
That my bones ache to the core. Oh, I miss them so much!

-418-