Legally, they should have taken my statement but they neglected to do so, so I am now presenting my statement to the collective personality of the judiciary and for the information of the Interior Minister.
By reason of your job and duty, you are obliged and compelled to heed a person who has caused no harm to this country and nation this last forty years; indeed, has been most beneficial for them. In short, during the Thirty‑First of March Incident, with one speech this person induced eight mutinying regiments to obey their officers and he saved many of those officers; and with his pamphlet The Six Steps in the midst of the national movement he turned the ulema, Şeyhülislam, and Istanbul away from supporting the foreign occupation forces; and performed courageous services during the First World War that were praised and applauded by the late Enver Pasha; and whom three awesome commanders did not dare to touch, although they were angry with him; and before the truth which he had followed, three courts of law were confounded and did not have the courage to condemn him, although he could have been legally charged due to the calumnies of covert atheists; and whose treatises have been praised and commended by scholars of religion and science, and who speaks on account of those treatises.
I begin. Truth and right are with us! May Almighty God not compel us to seek our rights by force or in any other way. Amen!
These twenty years, hundreds of experiences have shown that divine providence has protected us and saved us from ghastly oppression; we should therefore feel quite certain that it will save us from this new, completely illegal and cruel injustice. We nourish powerful hopes from divine mercy that even if we suffer some minor difficulties, troubles, and harms, we shall receive divine mercy and grace and rewards far greater than the troubles, which will be transformed into another form of the sacred service of saving the wretched believers' belief.
I declare that the incident in question was illegal in ten ways:
The First: For two years the Risale‑i Nur was in the possession of the judiciary, and was scrutinized and investigated by three courts and three committees of experts, and was passed around seven government offices in Ankara; and all the treatises of the Risale-i Nur were unanimously and without objection acquitted together with Said and his seventy-five friends, with not even a single day's penalty being given; so anyone the tiniest bit fair-minded would know just how contrary to the law it is to again seize them as though they were dangerous documents.
The Second: Accusing him of involvement in politics, detectives smashed the lock on the door of a man who, after his acquittal has lived for three and a half years as a recluse and stranger in Emirdağ, with his door locked on both the outside and the inside, who has received only one person in a hundred to perform his necessary tasks, and has even given up composing works, which he had previously done for twenty years, but they could find nothing except a poster with some words about belief. Surely anyone with even a grain of intelligence would understand how contrary to the law this torment was.
The Third: To raid a man's house as though he were a monstrous politician or political conspirator, although as testified to by seventy witnesses in court he has neither known about the World War, nor asked about it or been curious about it — and now the same situation has continued for ten years, and for twenty years has neither read a newspaper nor listened to one being read, and for thirty years, exclaiming I seek refuge with God from Satan and politics, has fled from politics with all his might, and despite suffering torturous distress has not applied once to the government for his own comfort so as not to attract attention to himself or interfere in politics; with which law does it accord to raid his retreat and cause unimaginable distress to his spirit while he lies ill? Anyone with an atom's conscience would pity him.
The Fourth: Although a number of judicial authorities were prompted against him due to groundless fears concerning the founding of a Sufi order and political society, and due to the personal grudges of a great leader, he was acquitted of the charges after six months of investigations by Eskişehir Court and of charges connected with the Risale‑i Nur. Only, on the pretext of a short part of the Risale-i Nur about the veiling of women, the court imposed a sentence of six months on five or ten students out of a hundred, not as dictated by the law, but at its discretion. They had already been under arrest for four months by the time the investigation commenced; that is, they had been held in prison for one-and-a-half months; then ten years later Denizli Court scrutinized all the letters and writings of twenty years, and they remained in prison during the investigations conducted by Ankara and Denizli. Then the courts passed down a unanimous decision for their acquittal regarding the Sufi order and political society and the other pretexts, and they acquitted Said and his friends and returned that book and all the letters to their owners. So to now look on them as a political society and accuse him of being a political intriguer, and to incite the officers of the law against them as though they were members of a political society and Sufi order, is totally opposed to the law, as anyone who has not lost his humanity would know.
The Fifth: It is like this: owing to the compassion which is the basis of the Risale‑i Nur's way and has been a guiding principle of my life for thirty years, so that no harm should come to any innocent, I do not vex the criminals who persecute me, let alone curse them. I feel anger at the depraved sinners who oppress me with terrible hatred, indeed, irreligious tyrants, yet that compassion prevents me from responding physically, or even with curses. For those cruel evildoers have wretched elderly parents or innocent children; lest they suffer any blows, I refrain from annoying them for the sake of those innocents, and sometimes I even forgive them.
It is owing to this compassion that just as we have done nothing to infringe public order and security, so too, I have advised all our friends to such an extent that some fair‑minded police in three provinces have admitted that the Nur students are moral police and preserve public order and security. This fact has been corroborated by the students' lives over twenty years by thousands of witnesses, and by no incident at all being recorded by the police despite there being thousands of students. So which law would permit the house of that person to be raided as though he were a lawless revolutionary, and for unscrupulous men to insult him, and although they were unable to find anything incriminating, to seize his Qur'an and the posters on his wall as though they were dangerous papers and he was a multiple lawbreaker?
The Sixth: Thirty years ago, that person realized through the grace of God and the effusions of the Qur'an just how harmful, just how profitless, just how meaningless are fleeting honour and renown in this world, and egotistical self‑advertisement and love of fame. From that time he has struggled with all his strength with his evil-commanding soul and has striven as far as he possibly can to abnegate himself and renounce egotism and to act without artificiality and hypocrisy. Although his companions and those who serve him know this; and although contrarily to everyone else, for the past twenty years he has fled with all his strength from the excessively good opinions of people and their regard and praise for his person, which everyone wants for themselves, and from looking on himself as a holder of high spiritual rank; and although he has rejected the favourable opinions of his select brothers and offended them, and in his replies to their letters has rebuffed their praises for him and broken their excessively high opinions, and has shown himself to be bereft of virtue, and has ascribed all virtue to the Risale-i Nur, which is a commentary on the Qur'an, and thus indirectly to the collective personality of the Nur students, and that he considers himself to be a common servant; and although this proves decisively that he has not tried to make himself liked, and has not wanted this, and has rejected it; and although without his consent, some of his friends a long way off evinced an excessively favourable opinion of him and applauded him and accorded him a high rank; according to which law could he be indicted due to some things a preacher in the region of Kütahya said and due to a letter bearing my forged signature, although I have never sent a letter to Kütahya, and due to an inflamatory book being found in Balıkesir whose author is unknown? Is there any law in the world, any policy, that would permit the smashing of the lock on the door of a wretched, ill, very elderly recluse who is a stranger as though he had committed some crime, and for detectives to search it but then could find nothing but a book of invocations and some posters?
The Seventh: What law would permit such an assault on a person who, at this time when there are so many lively internal and external political currents in this country and the time is ripe to profit from them; — that is, to win to his side many high‑ranking politicians instead of his few friends, he wrote and warned his friends not to get carried away on any of the political currents or enter politics or disturb public order, solely not to interfere in politics or harm sincerity or attract the government's attention to himself or to busy himself with this world; and although the two main currents caused him trouble and difficulties due to his avoidance of them, the former one out of their groundless fears, the new one because he does not assist it, he does not meddle in the world of the worldly at all but is busy with his life in the next world, and in twenty-two years has not written a single letter to his own brother in his home region and the village of Nurs, and in twenty years has not written ten letters to his friends in those provinces. So which law would permit such harassment of so wretched a man and his preoccupation with the hereafter?
Although the law allowing freedom of speech and ideas does not intervene in the dissemination of the books of the irreligious and the communists' publications, which are most damaging to this country, nation, and morality, would any law, any conscience, any fair‑mindedness permit the seizure as though they were dangerous documents of such parts of the Risale-i Nur as Zülfikar and The Staff of Moses, which contain nothing indictable as has been proven by three courts, and for twenty years has been striving to hold together society for this nation and country and to maintain its morality and security, and to restore the Islamic world's brotherhood and friendship for this nation, which is its true source of support, and to strengthen it effectively, and the value of which was recognized by the scholars of the Directorate of Religious Affairs on their scrutinizing them for three months on the orders of the Interior Minister, although their intention had been to find fault with it; what law and conscience would permit their being handed over to the courts?
The Eighth: This person has not departed for his native region where he has thousands of relations and friends, although he has been given his complete freedom after twenty years of distressing exile without cause; he has preferred to remain alone and in exile so that he should have no contact with this world, and the life of society, and politics; he has eschewed the rewards of performing the prayers in congregation in the mosque, and pre‑ ferred to perform them alone in his room, that is, his state of mind causes him to shrink from the people's esteem; and as testified to by his life of twenty years and affirmed by hundreds of thousands of valuable Turkish people, prefers one religious and pious Turk to numerous negligent Kurds; in fact, has proved in court that he would not change his sincere Turkish brothers whose belief is as powerful as that of Hâfız Ali for hundreds of Kurds; and if not obliged to, does not meet with people or go to the mosque so as not to be acclaimed and be treated with reverence; and for forty years has striven with all his strength and his works for the brother- hood of Islam and to strengthen love between Muslims; and who does not act negatively towards fierce enemies and does not even busy himself with them or curse them; and who loves the Turkish nation since it is the Qur'an's standard-bearer and has been praised by the Qur'an, and has passed his life among them. Which law would permit such a person to be insulted in officialese saying: “He's a Kurd, you're Turks; he's a Shafi'i, you're Ḥanafis!” just for propaganda and to scare his friends and to make the people avoid him; and permit a brimmed hat to be forced on the head of that recluse, although in twenty-two years and two courts he has not been compelled to change his dress, and the peaked cap for soldiers even has been partially modified?
The Ninth: This is very important and very powerful, but I am remaining silent since it touches on politics.
The Tenth: This was an assault that would be permitted by no law and in which there were no benefits; it was covered by no law and resulted from making mountains out of a molehill due to unfounded suspicions. So keeping silent so as not to look to politics as is demanded by our way, we merely say in the face of such treatment that was illegal in ten respects: God suffices us, and He is the best Disposer of Affairs!
Saîd Nursî