Lofty resolve (himmah) can mean earnest striving and resolve (on the servant’s side), divine assistance and favor (when attributed to God), and—especially in the Hizmet context—a donation made to support the movement’s activities.

“Lofty resolve, when attributed to the servant, means: working, making effort, showing determination, turning toward a blessed cause with pure intention, and feeling the excitement of responsibility throughout one’s whole being. When attributed to God, it means His response to such efforts—His recompense and enabling grace.”¹⁾

“In the Sufi tradition, there are two principal paths that lead to the truth: one is conversation (sohbah), the other is service (khidmah in Arabic, hizmet in Turkish). Service is a means and road to being granted lofty resolve (himmah); and companionship is a state of sensing, feeling, and living the truth with one’s outward and inward faculties—long regarded as a major cause of deep spiritual assimilation.”²⁾

“Living within the community and among people is a crucial factor—and one of the greatest means to divine enabling grace. Yes, even if someone were to pray constantly alone in a retreat or on a mountaintop, fast, give away everything he had, go on pilgrimage, press his face to the Black Stone and weep, and strive in Mecca and at the Rawdah to multiply his worship—still, God’s favors to him would remain on the level of the individual.

But when he says, ‘My lofty resolve is my people,’ and expands his heart to the scale of a people—indeed, to the scale of all humanity—then the mercy that comes will come with that same breadth. Thus the Qur’an says of Abraham: ‘Abraham was a community (an ummah).’ (16:120) It recognizes Abraham—because of the loftiness of his aspiration—as a community by himself.

And the community formed by people of such lofty resolve will receive God’s favor in that measure. Believers’ aspirations are high—but people are not always successful in the trial of living with one another: personal agendas and small calculations can disturb the common balance, and petty matters no more than pebbles can be preferred over the tremendous causes of unity and solidarity, as sacred as the Ka’ba itself. This, in turn, results in being deprived of divine care that may arrive at any moment.”³⁾

“According to Bediüzzaman’s understanding, if there is a single heart in a town filled with faith, then the beauty of faith can be made to be felt in all hearts there. Yes—services carried out by those who say, ‘My lofty resolve is my people,’ are the very services awaited by both God and His Messenger, peace and blessings be upon him.”⁴⁾

“In this age—through Europe’s civilizational dominance, the pressure of naturalistic philosophy, and the growing burdens of worldly living—minds and hearts have scattered, and lofty resolve and divine care have been divided up. People’s minds have grown alien to spirituality.”⁵⁾

“A person’s worth and true stature are in proportion to his lofty resolve. And the level of lofty resolve is in proportion to one’s goal and what one occupies oneself with. A person, in what he directs himself toward and intends, is—as it were—‘annihilated in his aim.’ Therefore a base command or a trivial thing cannot be attributed to a great person: he would not stoop to it; he cannot fit his lofty resolve into something so small. His lofty resolve is weighty, that thing is light—so the balance is, as it were, disrupted.”⁶⁾

“A man’s worth is in proportion to his lofty resolve. Whoever’s lofty resolve is his community—he is, by himself, a small community.”⁷⁾

“Whoever’s lofty resolve is only his own self—he is not truly human. For human nature is social; it is obliged to take its own kind into consideration. Personal life can continue only through social life.”⁸⁾

“The one who gives careful attention to higher things has a lofty resolve; the one who busies himself with low pursuits has a low aspiration.”⁹⁾

“The disagreement among the people of truth is not due to cowardice, lack of aspiration, or lack of noble zeal. Likewise, the sincere unity of heedless worldly people and people of misguidance in worldly matters is not from manliness, noble zeal, or lofty resolve either. Rather, because the people of truth mostly think about otherworldly benefits, their noble zeal, aspiration, and manly energy is spread across many important and numerous concerns. Since they do not spend their precious capital—time—on a single issue, their unity with their colleagues does not become firm. For the issues are many, and the circle is wide.”¹⁰⁾

“With this corrupt civilization that has made the globe like a village, the veil of heedlessness has become very thick. To rectify it requires lofty resolve. Likewise, it has opened many windows from the human spirit onto the world; to close them is only possible for those granted God’s favor.”¹¹⁾

“The lofty resolve of the saints—their coming to aid, their bestowing spiritual effusions through their inward acts—is a kind of prayer, whether by state or by action. The true Guide, Rescuer, and Helper is only God. Yet within the human being there is such a subtle faculty and condition that whatever is asked through the tongue of that subtle faculty—even if the asking one is a sinner—God, in respect for that subtle faculty, fulfills the request.”¹²⁾

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