56وَما خَلَقتُ الجِنَّ وَالإِنسَ إِلّا لِيَعبُدونِAli UnalI have not created the jinn and humankind but to (know and) worship Me (exclusively).1This verse expresses the Divine purpose for creation. While all other beings and things worship and obey God willy-nilly, only the jinn and humankind, endowed with free will, have the capacity to worship and obey or not to worship and obey Him. Yet, as it is God Who creates and maintains, He alone deserves worship. It is also He Who will ask conscious beings to account for their lives, and this is why God alone must be worshipped. Worshipping and obeying the One God will also secure justice and accord in the lives of the jinn and humankind. Worshipping God entails knowledge and love of Him. Bediüzzaman Said Nursi writes: Belief in God is creation’s highest aim and most sublime result, and humanity’s most exalted rank is knowledge of Him that is contained in this belief. The most radiant happiness and sweetest bounty for the jinn and humanity is love of God contained within knowledge of God. The purest joy of the human spirit and the sheerest delight of the human heart is spiritual ecstasy contained within the love of God. All true happiness, pure joy, sweet bounties, and unclouded pleasures are contained within knowledge and love of God. Those who truly know and love God can receive infinite happiness, bounties, enlightenment, and understand infinite mysteries. Those who do not are afflicted with infinite spiritual and material misery, pain, and fear. If any person were allowed to rule this world, despite his or her being powerless, miserable, and unprotected amid other purposeless people in this world, what would the true worth of this be? People who do not recognize their Owner and discover their Master are miserable and bewildered. But those who do, taking refuge in His Mercy and relying on His Power, see this desolate world transformed into a place of rest and felicity, a place of exchange for the Hereafter. (The Letters, “The 20th Letter,” 2: 2)