Al-Baqarah 163: Your God is the only One God. There is no God besides Allah. Allah is Ar-Rahman (the Merciful), Ar-Raheem (the One who very generously accepts repentance).

We come to our lesson.

Surah Al-Baqarah, verse 163. Your God

is One God. There is no god but Him. He is the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.

Allah Almighty from pre-eternity to eternity — that of all these beings He is the absolute Owner, He has been making known from the beginning up to our time, and from our time until the Day of Judgment, to people. What does He make known? There is no god but Allah.

This whole universe, whatever there is, from the atom to the sphere, all of it is what Allah Almighty created.

Allah Almighty is qualified with the attributes Rahman and Rahim. The attribute Rahman: the One who in the universe gives provision to what He created, treats them equally, whether idolater or fire-worshipper, religious or irreligious.

Without injustice to any of them, according to the wish and desire of each thing He created, according to their wills, He creates causes and fulfills their wishes and desires.

Not the things He will do, mind you — people's. He doesn't carry out His own wills. Whatever, within people's wills, they want to do with their wishes and desires, He creates causes, and they then, with a (?) act, by people's own decisions, the good deeds and sins they commit He writes for each person, has them written by the Noble Scribes. The angels on their right and left.

That is the attribute Rahman. And the attribute Rahim is in the hereafter for the believer alone. Because Allah Almighty, who sent people to an unseen world, made His existence known to them. So that those people can prove what kind of beings they are, Allah Almighty treats those people equally in the world of possession, gives everyone provision and distributes to them equally on earth equally — and in the verse He says, We distributed even the earth to you equally. So no one will be able to say to Allah Almighty, You treated people unjustly. In the hereafter, however, it is for the believer alone; there is the attribute Rahim.

He removes the attribute Rahman there. With the attribute Rahim, in the hereafter for the believer alone. Why? He did it in the world, but there He doesn't. Are those who know and those who don't ever the same, He says. I sent you to an unseen world. In that unseen world that person believed in Me, in My existence, without seeing.

And he observed exactly what I said. And you were carried away by fame, glory, arrogance, pride, ego, grandeur. As if you would never die, you decked yourself in worldly whims and blessings. And you turned your back on Allah, you were ungrateful, you gave no thanks. So of course you have no way to measure up to him. So if I now compare you with him, if I give you too the (?) I gave him, I would be doing injustice. Go now, He says, to the place you deserve. Where? To hell, of which He says, what an evil place of return. Yes.

How have we opened the verse? O people! Your God is One God. There is no god but Him. Do not oppose the blessing of reason I gave you to know Me and deny Me out of the grandeur of your nafs. Do not take what I created and worship what you shaped with your hands. How beautifully we say it, don't we? Do not bring other gods, things that would associate partners with Allah.

Do not associate partners with Him; your salvation lies only in returning to Allah, your Lord who created the worlds, and bowing to Him. O people! If there were another god besides Allah — with the verse our Lord declared — that one would take what he created, the other would take what he created, and everything would drown in corruption. So since there is no god but Allah, since this universe has an absolute Creator, will you still not return to your Lord who created you?

Will you not gather under His commands? Will you not use your reason? Will you never reflect? Allah is Most Gracious and Most Merciful. Allah's mercy is in the universe for everyone; in the hereafter it is for the believer alone. Let not the mercy of a transient world of possession deceive you.

(?) a transient world of possession? The world. Within this life of ours, the world appearing to us rosy. Envying people's state, envying their lifestyle, without regard for lawful and unlawful, turning one's back on Allah's command. While every person should use his reason, abandoning his reason and, decked in carnal feelings, living in envy of people's un-Islamic lifestyles is, of course, for a person who knows himself, a disgrace. For a person who knows himself. And people outside Allah's commands say this.

Who has gone to the hereafter and come back? Who knows that place exists?

I hear these. Who has gone and come back? Who has been raised after dying?

That being raised after death is true, Allah Almighty shows you all the time within the 24 hours of the day, but you can't understand.

When night comes and you go to sleep, what are you if not dead?

You are half dead.

Why half dead? You are unaware of yourself.

Allah Almighty takes our spirits. He sends back the spirits of those who will live.

So, just as every day when you wake from sleep you are raised as the result of that death, in the hereafter too you will be raised exactly like this.

No, but my body doesn't decay. I am alive. When I go under the earth, even my bones rot. So how will I be raised again?

What does it say in Surah Yasin? E ve lem yera'l-insânu ennâ halaknâhu min nutfetin fe izâ huve hasîmun mubîn. We created them, He says, from a lowly water. Today they have suddenly become open rebels, He says. Ve darabe lenâ meselen ve nesiye halkah, kâle men yuhyi'l-izâme ve hiye ramîm. They say, He says: our rotten bones will be raised again? Say to them: for the One who created you first, the final raising is not hard. So Allah Almighty placed in the world the seeds of all beings. Their seeds. Just as He placed the seeds of pears, apples, cherries, all fruits, vegetables, plants, so also for living creatures He placed their seeds in their loins.

And He has them reproduce from one another. Always coming from the same kind, the same lineage.

And look what else He says. We revealed to the earth what it may consume of the human body and what it may not consume. So in the body of this creature there is a particle, exactly like those seeds.

At the first resurrection, when these seeds are watered from that sea called the sea of mystery on the sixth layer, your very same form will come out, down to your fingertips. And you will appear again. Look, you sow a grain of wheat, the wheat forms an ear, and from it you get wheat. Don't you take a lesson from these? You plant the seed of a tree's fruit, and you get the seed of the same kind of fruit as that tree. If apple, apple; pear and the like, cherry and the like; if lemon, lemon; if orange, orange, whatever it may be. Do you not fear Allah, who from that undying cell in your body will create you down to your fingertips?

Can't you think about this?

So every person will use his reason.

He will know that he was created by a God and that besides Allah there is no god at all, and that other than giving himself and his heart to Allah there is no way out — this he will know.

If there is any other way out, tell me too.

Even if the world's wealth were yours, you will die into the hereafter. If one person had stayed alive until now, perhaps I would have hope too that I would stay alive. According to the verse: every soul shall taste death. According to the verse: in the end you will be returned to your Lord. All people, all creatures and living things will die, and finally the Day of Judgment will come.

Besides Allah we will have no branch to hold on to and no security left. If worldly life gave a person lasting life, it would have given lasting life to Korah. He perished with his wealth and was gone. And in the verse, what does He say to the Prophet (peace be upon him)? Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. Fe in tevellev fe kul hasbiyallâhu lâ ilâhe illâ hû, aleyhi tevekkeltu ve huve rabbu'l- arşi'l-azîm. Even if, He says, all people in the universe turned their backs on you and were not with you, say (?): Allah, the Owner of the heavens and the earth, is enough for me, He says. So even if the world were yours, even if worlds like this world were yours, even if these heavens and the earth were yours, in the end you will turn and hand it over to its Owner and go stark naked before Allah Almighty.

So, as we said earlier, if we have any salvation other than Allah, tell us too, and we will go there too. Accordingly, it is evident that we have no salvation other than Allah. What shall we do, Hodja? Shall we not work for the world? Oh, you will work. You will work for the world as if you would never die. And for the hereafter as if you would die right away. And so you will reform your nafs. Allah Almighty sustains you with food and drink and has granted you responsibility; you will feel your responsibility toward people. And while doing these, you will prove to Allah what kind of person you are.

Within this responsibility, if (?) and you (?) Allah, turn away, then we must know that our end is not good, and that after the final reckoning, on the journey to that world from which there is no return, we will remain subjected to eternal punishment. So what will we do so as not to see that eternal punishment? In the world we will be obliged to bow to our Lord's command. We are obliged to it, that is. Now I ask you, I ask these people of sound reason.

If you had a difficult moment,

and someone came to you, helped you, took your hand, lifted you up and kept helping you, kept helping you for nothing in return, as a human being, wouldn't you say, he does me so much good — if only I found a chance to do him some good too. Wouldn't you say that? You would. But there are also those who, the more help is given, become enemies of the helper. Our Lord gives to us continually, for nothing in return. If they are Muslims, with bowed neck, in carrying out their Lord's command, they try to taste that peace in their heart, even a little. But the other, despite receiving so much help, just as the other did to the person who helped him, toward Allah, with feelings of hatred and resentment, he keeps on being ungrateful to Him.

Now compare the two people.

In whichever one's ranks you want to take your place, go there. Yes.

Let not the mercy of a transient world of possession deceive you. Seek to earn the mercy of the eternal and everlasting hereafter. That is earned by returning to the One Allah, obeying Him in surrender, living as a Muslim. May Allah Almighty make us all His servants and the community of His Beloved.