executed by firing squad on the way of the Risale-i Nur, which protects our young people from abandoning their religion and being swept away by communism to eternal perdition, and from crimes for which they would be shot as traitors to their country, without flinching I shall bare my chest to the bullets. And I beseech my Sustainer that if I am cut to pieces by knives for my Master Bediuzzaman, with my blood spurting in all directions I shall write: “The Risale-i Nur! The Risale-i Nur!”
Respected Judges of the Court!
The education the Risale-i Nur gives is truly marvellous and original; it is without equal. The purpose of other sorts of education is to gain material benefits and to attain various positions. People study mostly for materialist ends and to be able to become famous, or sometimes merely because they have to study. However, those who by reading its treatises, receive the Risale-i Nur education, which resembles an unorganized free university, nurture no worldly aims, only to serve the Qur’an and belief.
Nevertheless, the Risale-i Nur, which consists of serious, scholarly treatises about the truths of belief, is read with such enthusiasm, passion, and pleasure, that it awakens in those who read it faithfully the desire to read it over and over again. Even though those who read and write out the Risale-i Nur may find their lives in danger at the doors of the courtroom, they state openly that they read these wonderful works, and that they shall read them. Even if they know that the decision will be given for their execution, they do not hesitate to display this constancy. This characteristic of the Risale-i Nur, one of its many wonders, makes one ask: “Did those who admit this, find their lives by the wayside?”
This means that contained in the Risale-i Nur and Bediuzzaman is a truth so elevated that as well as not being harmful they did not deny it.
Normally students are made to study under the constraints of discipline and authority. However, Bediuzzaman compelled no one to study the Risale-i Nur, and hundreds of thousands of readers study it devotedly and resolutely, the majority of them without ever seeing him. Such a wondrous method of education was never seen in any medrese, either recently or previously, and was never encountered in any university.
The prosecutor said that “The respect in which Bediuzzaman is held has not been afforded to any other Qur’anic commentator.”
That is correct. Seeing that respect and reverence are awarded in relation to greatness and achievement, and gratitude and thanks are offered to the degree one has profited, Bediuzzaman’s works are profited from to an enormous degree so that respect for him and gratitude to him are unprecedented.