REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- Badiuzzaman Said Nursi is a great scholar and thinker of Turkish origin. Based on the thoughts resulting from his experiences, he reveals that the nation's most dangerous disease is a sense of hopelessness.

“Despair is the most dangerous disease. It has flowed and spread in the heart of the Islamic world,” Nursi was quoted as saying in his book “Khutbah Syamiyah: A Manifesto of the Awakening of the Muslims” published by Risalah Nur Press.

According to Nursi, the sense of despair left the Islamic world helpless like the dead, so that a Western country with only two million inhabitants managed to take control of a Muslim country in the East with a population of 20 million, and the West colonized the Eastern country and made it their servant.

“It is this sense of despair that has turned off our noble morals, has taken our eyes off the interests of the crowd and shackled in the interests of the private,” Nursi said.

According to him, it is this sense of despair that has destroyed the spiritual power of Muslims. With little power, the spiritual power that comes from faith has taken hold of the Eastern and Western parts of the earth. However, when that tremendous spiritual power is crushed by a sense of despair, a despotic foreign nation has managed to control and shackle 300 million Muslims since four centuries ago.

It is because of this sense of hopelessness, Nursi continues, to the point that one looks for reasons to justify his laziness for the sake of seeing the apathy and indifference of others. Then the guy says, “What's wrong with me, everyone is also lazy like me. “The man was also reluctant to participate in the worship of Islam and renounce the glory of the faith.

Nursi explained that as long as this disease runs so smoothly in us and kills us with our knowledge, then we must be determined to carry out revenge. We will decapitate this sense of despair with the sword:

 لَا تَقْنَطُوْا مِنْ رَّحْمَةِ اللّٰهِ ۗ

“Do not despair of God's mercy.” (Az-Zumar [39]: 53)

We will destroy it with the truth of the Prophet (SAW), which reads:

“I'm going to have to say, I'm not going to be a good guy.”

“Something that cannot be reached by all, is not abandoned in its entirety.

“Nursi said that the sense of hopelessness is the nation's most dangerous disease, it can be said to be the “cancer of the nation”. This disease becomes a barrier to perfection and contradicts the spirit of the qudsi hadith which reads,

“I (treat my servant) according to his prejudices against me.”

It is the nature and pretext of cowards, fools, weak and contemptible people, not characteristic of the glory of Islam, especially the Arabs who have the characteristics of praiseworthy traits of which mankind is proud.

Nursi added that the Islamic world has learned a lot from the steadfastness and stubbornness of the Arabs, and God willing the Arabs will throw off their despair so that they can join hands with the Turks, the mighty pillars of Islam so that they jointly raise the banners of the Quran in all corners of the world.