Themes · theme
Doing every act purely for God's pleasure — purified of show, ego and worldly reward. The central concern of the 20th and 21st Flashes.
4 Flashes
A set of first-hand accounts in which Nursî and his fellow workers, whenever they grew slack in serving the Qur'an for some self-interested reason, met a setback that was the exact reverse of their aim — read not as punishment but as a "compassionate slap" nudging them back to sincerity.
The companion treatise to the 21st: five points on sincerity (ihlâs) that open with a piercing question — why do the worldly cooperate while the people of truth fall into rivalry? — and answer it by locating the disease in the craving for men's regard, and its cure in seeking God's pleasure alone.
Sincerity (ihlâs): doing every act for God's pleasure alone, purified of show, ego and worldly reward — with three things that break it and four rules to win and protect it.
A confidential treatise written in Barla, answering "the worldly" who harass him: why the province itself should answer for him; why enforced "absolute equality" contradicts human nature and the virtue born of belief; and why teaching belief is a real duty deserving respect — closing with how their very injustice became, by divine determining, a means to his sincerity.
