Emirdağ Letters I — 144. If I Had Been in Mecca, I Would Have Had to Come Here in Order to Save Belief and Serve the Qur'an. for the Need Is Greatest Here — Emirdag Letters

My Dear, Loyal Brother and Zealous, Earnest Friend in This Transitory World!

Firstly: Out of all my friends and compatriots, I am truly most grateful to yourself and to certain people from Erzurum for your serious and kindly concern for me in these torturous and oppressive circumstances, and for your hastening mentally to my assistance. I shall never forget this till my dying day and I beseech God's grace and blessings for you.

Secondly: Completely contrarily to my way and the lessons I have taken from the Risale‑i Nur, and contrarily to the rule of my life for the past ten years, which is not to concern myself with the passing, inconsequential matters of this fleeting world, just for your sake and your long letter and the questions you asked about, I am going to explain a few matters related to my situation and the oppressors' torments.

The First: One day thirty years ago while I was a member of the Darü'l‑Hikmet, Seyyid Sadeddin Pasha, who was a friend of mine and also a member, told me:

“I have received through means that are certain that an atheistic secret society which is present here but the roots of which are abroad has read one of your works and declared that if its author remains in this world, it shall be unable to persuade this nation to accept its doctrine, that is, atheism and irreligion, so has decided to eliminate him. That is, it has given the order for your execution. You must look to protect yourself.”

I replied: I place my trust in God! The appointed hour is fixed and won't change!

These last thirty or forty years that secret society has both spread, and has employed every device to struggle against me, It has tried to eliminate me twice with imprisonment, and eleven times by poison (now it is nineteen times). Its worst plans were its using the full force of official government influence against me through the former Interior Minister, the former governor of Afyon, and the former deputy kaymakam of Emirdağ. Those three officials so intimidated everyone and conducted such propaganda against me, a weak, elderly, solitary, impoverished stranger in need of assistance, that except to spy on me no official would come near me, for if any greeted me he would be posted elsewhere, and out of their fear some of my neighbours would not greet me at all. But divine protection and providence bestowed patience and forbearance on me, and their unparalleled torments and oppression did not compel me to have recourse to them.

The Second: Perhaps you recall that in the president's office in Ankara when disputing with Mustafa Kemal, I responded fiercely to what he said, declaring to his face: “Those who neglect the obligatory prayers are traitors, and the words of traitors are to be rejected!” He did not find the courage to respond to that insult and disparagement, but here, a low‑ranking officer and a sergeant heaped similar abuse and insult on me. Their intention was to infuriate me and provoke an incident, but divine protection and providence bestowed patience and forbearance on me.

The Third: In their investigations of two years two courts could find nothing legally reprehensible in any part of the Risale‑i Nur, but on their acquitting us and the Risale-i Nur, the secret atheistic society made use of certain dissembling officials, and hatching an official plan in the centre of government, isolated me from all my friends and students completely illegally, and calling it exile, sent me to the place most detrimental to my health, to a life of solitary confinement in Emirdağ. It has now emerged that they did this for two reasons:

The First: I have never ever accepted insults. So they wanted to infuriate me by humiliating me and to incite an incident and pave the way to finish me off. Then because they didn't manage that, they tried to put an end to me by poisoning me. But through divine providence, the panacea‑like prayers of the Nur students and the remedial properties of patience and endurance foiled that plan of theirs and drove off the dangers of the poison, both physical and spiritual. Certainly at no time in history has any government perpetrated such torments and oppression in the name of law and order. Indeed their constant surveillance vexed me and their scaring everyone away from me made me angry, but it suddenly occurred to my heart that I should pity these tyrants, not be angry at them, as follows: Soon each one of them will be subject to everlasting agony in place of the temporary sufferings they have inflicted on you and to hellish torments, physical and mental, a thousandfold greater. Revenge will be taken on them a thousand times more severely. And some of them, if they have any sense, will suffer the anguish of guilty consciences and fear of eternal death so long as they remain in this world till they meet their end. So I ceased feeling angry at them and pitied them, saying: May God reform them!

Moreover, I was earning great reward from their torments and ill‑treatment, and since they were busying themselves with and tyrannizing me instead of the Nur students, it was of great benefit for the Nurjus and served their well-being and I therefore offered thanks to Almighty God and felt joy within all the distress I was suffering.

The Fourth: Concerning the matter in your letter about my living condi‑ tions and if I was capable of it, to go to the Hijaz and Damascus, and your applying to the present government for me:

Firstly: If I had been in Mecca, I would have had to come here in order to save belief and serve the Qur'an. For the need is greatest here, If I had a thousand spirits and suffered from a thousand sickness and was afflicted with that many difficulties, I would again decide due to the lessons I have received from the Qur'an, to stay here to serve this nation's belief and happiness, and I have so decided.

Secondly: Concerning being treated with respect rather than insultingly, you say in your letter: If you had been in Egypt or America, you would have been cited in the histories with honour and esteem.

My dear, attentive brother!

In accordance with our way, we are strongly averse to respect and reverence, and acclaim, gifts, and tributes for my person. Especially the desire for fame, which is extraordinary hypocrisy, and to be mentioned in histories and to appear fine to people, which is alluring self‑advertisement, are the opposite of sincerity, which is a basic principle of the Risale-i Nur and its way, and are opposed to it. I seek none of these things; indeed, I flee from them. But since the Risale-i Nur proceeds from the abounding light of the Qur'an, and is a flash of its miraculousness, and expounds its truths and discloses its mysteries, we want the Risale-i Nur to be sought after, and for everyone to feel the need for it and to appreciate its high value, and to make known its perfectly clear wonder-working, and that it has defeated the irreligion of the atheists in respect of belief and that it will continue to do so, and we await this from divine mercy,

As a postscript, I am adding a trifling and unimportant paragraph about my person:

Receb Bey and Kara Kâzım are friends of yours and I reckon they had some relations with the Old Said; I don't want any favours from them, but like their predecessors they shouldn't permit the meaningless, unnecessary persecution and ill‑treatment of my person. I can't abide the physical and spiritual atmosphere here. My distress is excessive. I lock the place I stay on both the outside and the inside. I am completely alone. I have no neighbours really, and pass my life in an oppressive room, all alone and ill. Sometimes one day's anguish here is greater than a month of travails in Denizli prison. Enough now of these twenty years of infringements on my liberty and the terrible distress. In any event, with the two-year scrutinies of two courts and the failure of the dissemblers' plots against me, it has become absolutely clear that they can no longer deceive anyone with the groundless suspicious allegations that I and the Risale-i Nur cause harm to this country and nation. It would be appropriate if like everyone else I had my freedom and there was permission for me to visit some of the villages around here with a more temperate climate. I send many greetings to you and to my Nur friends there, and I offer prayers for you.