My Dear, Loyal Brother, Re'fet Bey!
Firstly: I received an acute warning in my spirit that I should explain a matter in connection with a number of minor incidents that have slightly affected us. It is like this:
Of course, you select Risale‑i Nur students know that the Risale-i Nur can be made the tool of nothing, nor be made the means of anything other than God's pleasure, and that before everything it teaches the truths of belief and saves the belief of the weak and unfortunate, and those who have fallen to doubt.
Secondly: The Risale‑i Nur's most powerful force in the face of so many opponents is sincerity, and just as it can be made the tool of nothing in the world, so it cannot be concerned with any currents based on feelings of partisanship, particularly currents connected to politics. For partisanship destroys sincerity and distorts the truth. In fact, the reason I have given up politics these last thirty years is this: because of his feelings of bias towards the political current he supported, a revered scholar of religion insulted another prominent, sound scholar to the extent of calling him a depraved sinner because he held opposing views, while at the same time he praised and applauded a famous and aggressive dissembler who agreed with his ideas. It caused me to shudder to the very depths of my being. Thinking, when involvement in politics is combined with feelings of bias, it gives rise to quite extraordinary mistakes, I declared: I seek refuge with God from Satan and from politics, and from that time I gave up politics.
In consequence of that state of mind, brothers like yourself know that for the last twenty‑five years I have neither read a newspaper, nor listened to one being read, nor have I been curious. And for the past ten years, I have evinced no interest or curiosity in the World War, nor have I known about it. You know too that, apart from my court defences, in the twenty- two years of this distressing captivity, so as to avoid having any contact with politics and partisanship and to prevent marring the sincerity of the Risale-i Nur, I have never applied to the government for my own wellbeing.
You also know that, as I wrote and told you while in prison, if those who condemn me to death and torment and maltreat me save their belief through the Risale‑i Nur, bear witness that I forgive them. And so that no harm should come to sincerity due to feelings of bias, I have had nothing to do with the stormy political currents that have emerged from home and abroad these last two or three years, and I have also warned my brothers about them, to an extent.
Thirdly: You know that I do not accept alms or charity, nor can I be an intermediary for such benefactions, Due to this, I am selling my clothes and other necessities, and buying with the money my own books from the brothers who wrote them out. In this way, no worldly benefits will impair the Risale‑i Nur's sincerity and it will be an exemplary lesson for our other brothers so that they will avoid making it the tool of anything.
Fourthly: The Risale‑i Nur suffices for its true students. They should be content with it and not set their sights on other honours or benefits, material or spiritual.
Also, so as not to make people hostile and resentful towards the Risale‑i Nur, one should not enter into arguments, disputes, or biased discussions on religious questions that are going to upset them. In fact, I had a premonition at exactly the same time that our brother Mustafa Oruç was disputing with someone in a fashion contrary to the Risale-i Nur's way, and I felt an intense anger and indignation at him my heart. I felt truly saddened and wanted to demote him from the high rank he had won from the Risale-i Nur. But he was an Abdurrahman for me, so why did I feel such anger towards him? Then he visited me this festival; thanks be to God, he had heeded a crucial lesson and understood that serious mistake of his; he had confessed to his error at the very time I was angry with him here. God willing, it was atonement for him and he was saved, completely purified.
Fifthly: For the past four or five months, a person has evidently been sending me a newspaper here. I have only just learned that it was being sent to me. My friends here know my habits, and they were scared and did not tell me, since apart from the Risale‑i Nur I accept no book or magazine, let alone newspapers, and anyway I don't know a single letter of the new alphabet. Now, someone showed me a journalist's letter, who is friendly and from the same region, which contained a one-page interview with me. They told me that he had been sending a paper to me, but they were frightened to show it to me.
So I told them: “Send that friend many greetings from me. The Old Said, who he knew, has changed and cut all ties with this world. He is also ill and cannot write a personal letter to that brother, so he should not be offended.”
I send greetings to all the friends there, especially brothers like Hâfız Emin and Hâfız Fahreddin, and I again congratulate them on the festival‥