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The_Savior_from_Spiritual_Error, page : 123
yourself in resolving these difficulties and attacking these obscurities,
seeing it is an age of slackness, in an era of futility? Even if you were to
summon men from their worthless ways to the truth, the people of this age
would be united in showing hostility against you. How will you stand up to
them? How will you live among them, seeing that such a project is only to
be executed with the aid of time and through a pious sovereign who is all-
powerful?‟
I believed that it was permissible for me in the sight of Allah to continue in
retirement on the ground of my inability to demonstrate the truth by
argument. But Allah Most High determined Himself to stir up the impulse of
the sovereign of the time, though not by any external means; the latter gave
me strict orders to hasten to Naysabur (Nishapur) to tackle the problem of
this indifference in religious matters. So strict was the injunction that, had I
persisted in disobeying it, I should at length have been cut off! I came to
realize too, that the grounds which had made retirement permissible had
lost their force. „It is not right that your motive for clinging to retirement
should be laziness and love of ease, the quest for spiritual power and
preservation from worldly contamination. It was not because of the difficulty
seeing it is an age of slackness, in an era of futility? Even if you were to
summon men from their worthless ways to the truth, the people of this age
would be united in showing hostility against you. How will you stand up to
them? How will you live among them, seeing that such a project is only to
be executed with the aid of time and through a pious sovereign who is all-
powerful?‟
I believed that it was permissible for me in the sight of Allah to continue in
retirement on the ground of my inability to demonstrate the truth by
argument. But Allah Most High determined Himself to stir up the impulse of
the sovereign of the time, though not by any external means; the latter gave
me strict orders to hasten to Naysabur (Nishapur) to tackle the problem of
this indifference in religious matters. So strict was the injunction that, had I
persisted in disobeying it, I should at length have been cut off! I came to
realize too, that the grounds which had made retirement permissible had
lost their force. „It is not right that your motive for clinging to retirement
should be laziness and love of ease, the quest for spiritual power and
preservation from worldly contamination. It was not because of the difficulty