FIRST VOLUME, 56th LETTER

May Haqq subhânahu wa ta’âlâ bless you with realization of your religious and worldly wishes! The medicine for protection against the harms of worldly flavours and transient blessings is to use them in a manner compatible with the Sharî’at. In other words, it is to obey Allâhu ta’âlâ’s commands and prohibitions. Those flavours will be harmful if they are not utilized compatibly with the Sharî’at. They will cause Allâhu ta’âlâ’s wrath and torment. Maximum possible abstinence from enjoying them is the safest course to follow for real and definite salvation. Those who cannot manage that degree of abstinence should use the medicine requisite for protection. Thereby they will be safe from their harms. Shame on those people who can neither manage the necessary abstinence nor protect themselves by using medicine and who, thereby, leave themselves vulnerable to patent disasters and afflictions in addition to a pathetic deprivation from eternal happiness! [Islam does not prohibit worldly flavours and pleasures. What it prohibits is an exorbitant and bestial indulgence in them.] So pitiable are those people who succumb to the indulgences of their nafs and fail to enjoy the worldly flavours in manners and doses prescribed by the Sharî’at, thereby divesting themselves of the felicitous and everlasting flavours of Paradise. Do they not know that Allâhu ta’âlâ sees all? Have they never heard that enjoyment of worldly blessings within the limits of moderation drawn by Islam’s Sharî’at is the only way of acquiring immunity from harms? There is the inevitable and imminent Judgment Day, when all the worldly activities of each and every person will be laid before them. [Apparently, those who chase after worldly pleasures and tastes do not seem to believe that there will be rising after death, that people who adapt themselves to Islam’s Sharî’at will attain the blessings of Paradise, whereas those who flout the Sharî’at will be subjected to the fire of Hell. Paradoxically, Europeans and Americans, whom these deniers of the life to come look on as modern and great people, do believe in Paradise and Hell. They crowd into churches. Embrace the worse features of Europeans by imitating their immoralities and dishonest acts in the name of modernism, on the one hand, and criticize your countrymen, calling them regressive and bigoted people, on account of their belief in the Hereafter, –which is an asset they share with Europeans–, on

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the other: this ludicrous oddity unveils the fetid inner intentions. We should not believe these wretched people, who are merely slaves to their sensuous desires and pleasures.] How lucky for those who have attained love of Allâhu ta’âlâ by abstaining from His prohibitions in the world, when the Promised Day comes! How lucky for those who do not succumb to the temptations of the sequinned worldly life, who fear their Rabb (Allâhu ta’âlâ) and curb their sensuous desires, who advise their household and their inferiors that they should perform their daily salâts steadily, [and who teach their spouses and daughters how to cover themselves in a manner prescribed by the Sharî’at when they go out!] How lucky for them! Salâms to those people who follow the way to felicity shown by Allâhu ta’âlâ and who adapt themselves to Muhammad ‘alaihis-salâm’!