the occurrences of the present time - speaking with people and being shown excessive respect - affect him adversely and severely, because in this age of egotism they are signs of self-worship, hypocrisy, and artificiality. For he says, if those who want to meet with him, want to do so for the Risale-i Nur and for the hereafter, the Risale-i Nur leaves no need for him; each of its millions of copies is as beneficial as ten Said's. If they want to meet with him in respect of this world and worldly matters, then since he has earnestly given up the world, he suffers serious discomfort, because things concerning it are trivial and a waste of time. And if it is concerning the service and publication of the Risale-i Nur, it is sufficient for them to meet with his true, self-sacrificing students who serve him, his spiritual sons and brothers, in his place. He says that no need remains for him..."
In a letter Bediuzzaman himself wrote, even, he interprets his thirty years or so of exile, imprisonment and oppression as continual Divine warnings not to make his service to religion the means to personal benefits of any kind, and so preserve this absolute sincerity. The oppression and tyranny he suffered due to the entirely false and unjust accusations of "exploiting religion for political ends" acted as a sort of "obstacle" preventing him from succumbing to "the great danger in the service of belief in this egotistical age" , which was to make that service the means to his own progress and advancement, and to salvation from Hell and earning Paradise. Bediuzzaman had been aware that something had prevented him and it was only now that he understood the real cause. For although to work for these things was perfectly licit, at the present time in the face of the `collective personality' of misguidance and irreligion, the truths of the Qur'an and belief had to be taught in an effective and convincing way in order to refute and smash unbelief. And that was through such teaching being the tool of nothing. "So that those needy for belief would understand that it is only the truth and reality which speaks, and the doubts of the soul and wiles of Satan would be silenced."
Bediuzzaman wrote that the secret of the Risale-i Nur's success in halting and defeating absolute unbelief in those difficult conditions in Turkey at that time where others had failed lay in this fact. And