Al-Baqarah 276: Allah destroys whatever comes with interest and increases the possessions from which spending for good was done. Allah does not like those who insist on denial and sins.

Surah Al-Baqarah, verse 276: Allah destroys what comes through interest and increases the goods given as charity. How beautifully He says it. Allah does not love anyone who persists in disbelief and sin. What did I say a moment ago? Ahmet Efendi told me, do this job, and I didn't do it. He told Doğan, you do this job, and Doğan did it. Now does he love Doğan, or does he love me?

This world is the likeness and shadow of the hereafter. So the laws are more or less the same. Yes.

So Allah destroys what comes through interest, it says. Look at the usurers today. The usurers. None of them has peace. That's one. Allah Almighty takes them away either by the knife or by the bullet. That is, they lose their lives. That's two. We see it, we hear it. We hear it, they kill them.

A fire, a disaster, a flood comes. They get the slap. That's three. Allah gives them a child, gives them offspring. He goes from doctor to doctor. Even his money isn't enough to have that child treated. Or to save his own life.

This is how Allah destroys what comes through interest. Allah Almighty has unknown doors. He surrounds people slowly from every side. You get into such a swamp, such a dead end, that between two mills, even if you were (?) in the wheel, you wouldn't suffer that much torment.

Allah, who created the universe, gave people their desires and wishes as their destiny. What does He say? Surah Al-A'raf, verse 172 - in that verse, what does Allah Almighty say? We made a covenant with those who would emerge from the offspring of the children of Adam, and said: We are your Lord.

Had We willed, We would have created you as a single community, He says.

He would have. What does this single community mean? Apart from man, and also the jinn - apart from these two, Allah Almighty, the whole universe, what He created according to the duty they would do, according to the duties they would do, He programmed. He left people and jinn free in their own will. In this case, had We willed, We would have made you too submit to Us, to Ourselves. We would have created a single community. But to see which of you, He says, will do better deeds, to test you against one another, We sent you to the world of dominion. That is, to put partial will into your hands, partial will.

And with your own desires and wishes, what kind of person you are you yourselves will prove to Us, He says.

Why does He do it this way? Because He gives man great value. He gives very great value.

Hodja, do you have proof in hand? That He gives value? Of course there is. I gave man from My spirit, He says. From My spirit. As that ignorance, as those superstitious people say, they put a spirit into the animal, the donkey, the mule, the ox, the bee, nature. Even the jinn have no spirit. In the universe, created as the noblest of creatures, only man has a spirit. My Beloved, they ask you about the spirit; say, it is a command of my Lord, He says. If it is a command of his Lord, his Lord does not honour His created beings, His created beings, by giving them from His spirit and holding them as addressees of His essence - He does not honour them that way.

Had He honoured the beings He created so - here is a verse for you. They are like four-legged animals roaming the earth, He says. To whom (?) - He says this to people. So sometimes they are not even above animals, (?), it says. So look at the spirit in that man. Look at the value of the spirit. We created Adam from clay and breathed into him from Our spirit. We said to the angels and Iblis: prostrate.

Look, He doesn't have them prostrate before giving the spirit. What superstition? Into all creatures in nature besides man, Allah's spirit it comes and puts. On which verse does it base this? What does it base this on?

Poor people. Claiming to be scholars, they've set up sites and written these on sites: in animals, in birds, in known things, in nature, in all of them there is a spirit. A spirit. Yes. So man is such an honourable being. To his Lord, among the created beings of the universe, the only being held as an addressee.

Is there proof of that too? Of course there is.

From the light of the Prophet (peace be upon him), and then from His spirit He gives him. From His spirit. Before the universe was created, the light of the Prophet (peace be upon him) Allah Almighty created first, and from his light He creates this universe. So in this universe, created from the light of the Prophet (peace be upon him), you can't find a spirit. You can't find a spirit. Then He gives him from His spirit, from His spirit. From his spirit He creates the spirits of the prophets, and from the spirits of the prophets the spirits of the peoples; thus, in all people, as bearer of his Lord's spirit, man becomes an addressee of his Lord.

Yes, Allah Almighty, because He knows what people will do within their destinies, warns people. At that moment of the covenant He knows what character that spirit has. And because He left people free in their own desires and wishes, people - what passes through their hearts, in the most hidden corner, though the person himself is unaware of it - Allah Almighty knows the secret in the most hidden corner of his heart too. Because He gave the spirit from Himself. He knows what it is. Accordingly He works out people's destinies. He works out their characters. And those characters become the person's destiny.

The person's own desire and wish. That's why no one - you made him like this, you made him like that, this happened like this and that like that - will ever be able to say it. Everyone lives his own wish, by his own desire and wish, his own destiny. Yes.

With His verses He holds a light before people. He declares that interest will do people no good, and that what comes through interest Allah will seize like a public prosecution, and that those who gain through interest He will destroy. What is a public prosecution? I came and stabbed Ahmet. May Allah protect us.

Ahmet said in court: I'm not pressing charges, I'm not pressing charges - will the court let me go, will the judge let me go? You attacked a person with intent to take his life and wounded him; that is called a public prosecution. He may forgive me as much as he likes, but the laws of the state don't forgive. So Allah too brings such a public prosecution against the one dealing in interest; whatever he does, He wastes his goods and property. He destroys what comes through interest. We'll even come now to the verse: he declares war on Allah and His Messenger, it says. We've covered that verse, haven't we?

We probably have. It hasn't come yet. Huh? That verse hasn't come yet. It hasn't? Then it will come. He has declared war on Allah and His Messenger, it says. Who can stand up to Allah Almighty, who created the universe, God forbid? What does He say in His verse? Even if mankind and jinn gathered, they could not harm Allah. Yes. So if you do not abide by Allah's verses, if you go against them, and what He forbade you carry on calling halal, surely Allah Almighty will catch you. Because what does Allah Almighty say? Who is truer to his word than Allah?

How beautifully the verses repeat one another anyway. Sit down.

Those who take interest and those who deal in these things have no good end. In the end, a fire, a flood disaster, an earthquake or an illness and going from doctor to doctor, things unimagined. With Allah's calamities on such people, Allah Almighty destroys their earnings. Allah does not want the land to fall into corruption and the strong to crush the weak.

Allah, who tests people with one another, gave some goods and property, and others difficulties in making a living. While these are tested by these states within their destinies, leaving the field to the usurer - on top of the calamities that come from Allah for testing, He does not also let the usurer slap people who are in that hardship. For this reason Allah Himself is against interest. Just as, although the reward of everything belongs to Allah - although giving the judgement on everything, let us rather say, belongs to Allah - of the one fasting He says, its reward is personally with Me, He says. Yet all of it is with Him, but here He singles out the one fasting.

For example, although Allah Almighty is present and watching in every particle of the universe, He says the House of Allah is personally in My presence.

Interest is like this too. He is that hostile to it. If He were not so hostile, He would not have said of that person, they are eternally people of hell.

For this reason Allah Himself is against interest. Whoever continues in it, Allah and His Messenger have declared war on them. Who, what power and might can stand against Allah and His Messenger?

In return, Allah increases the goods of the one who gives charity. Charity is goods or money given to the poor, orphans and the needy for Allah's sake. Whoever helps Allah's servants for Allah's sake - Allah declares to people that He will increase that person's goods. In one verse He says: Who is truer to His promise than Allah? So if you truly believe in Allah and the Last Day, know that Allah's promise is true, we say.