My Dear Brother!
Convey our heartfelt thanks and congratulations to Ziya, the Risale‑i Nur's lawyer! For a long time now it has been imparted to my spirit that someone called Ziya would perform a great service for the Risale-i Nur, and the present matter has shown that it was him. He has won our everlasting gratitude. We thank also fair-minded people like the court's secretary and member Hesna Hanım and the examining magistrate, I shall never forget them. And especially convey our greetings and thanks to our leading brothers, foremost the Mufti Osman and Hasan Feyzi. And tell the just judge that I have decided to have most of the parts of the Risale-i Nur written out as a gift for him. Also, I intend to have a large part of it written to give to its honorary lawyer, Ziya.
Will the five hundred printed copies of The Supreme Sign be given to the people who had it printed? I'm curious.
Also, however many copies of the Risale‑i Nur were confiscated in Istanbul, they all belong to me. The collection consisting of twenty treatises is especially important for me.
Also, when leaving Denizli I left The Miracles of Muhammad (UWBP) (Mu'cizat‑i Ahmediye Risalesi) with some of the people there as a trust. I need it now. Perhaps Hoja Mûsa Efendi knows about this.
Also, I say the following to save some wavering or new Risale‑i Nur students from succumbing to doubts: Due to the intrigues of a secret society, certain ingenuous hojas and opponents who support the innovations publicize my personal faults and errors, for I admit that I am indeed faulty, in order to oppose some of the Risale-i Nur's incontestable truths, and they want to refute them by attacking me. They try to harm the Risale-i Nur in some way. These last twenty years there have been twenty such significant incidents. In fact, it led to our imprisonment on two occasions. So I say this to my friends and to the Risale-i Nur students:
I offer thanks to Almighty God that He has not allowed me to like myself and has informed me of my faults. I have not sought to sell myself boastingly, but overwhelmed by shame, through the sincerity and pure heartedness of the blessed Risale‑i Nur students, to seek forgiveness and atonement for my sins through their intercession.
The people who oppose me do not know my secret faults; they just make a pretext of some apparent failings and wrongly supposing the Risale‑i Nur to be mine, criticize me saying that I do not attend the Friday Prayers and do not have a beard. In this way, they hope to obscure the Risale-i Nur's lights and compete against its spreading.
The Answer: Together with accepting my numerous faults, I have to say that in these two matters I have powerful excuses.
Firstly: I follow the Shafi'i school of law, according to which a congregation of forty people is obligatory to perform the Friday Prayer. There are other requisites as well. For which reason, here, attendance of the Friday Prayer is not obligatory. Sometimes following the Hanafi School, I attend it as a Sunna (practice of the Prophet UWBP).
Secondly: I do not feel at ease in crowded places because for twenty years I have been unjustly prevented from mixing with people, and also recently, four months ago, I received an official warning not to have contact with people; for twenty‑five years I have lived all alone. According to my school of law, I cannot perform the prayers behind everyone, because I cannot recite the Fātiḥa quickly enough and the Imam bows (rukū') when I am only half way through it, and it is obligatory for us to recite it.
As for the Beard, to have one is a Sunna; it is not particular to hojas. Since my youth I have been one of the ninety per cent of this country who do not have beards. Since in the course of official offensives these last twenty years some of our friends have had to shave theirs, my not having one has proved to be an instance of divine providence and wisdom. If I had had one and it had been shaved off, it would have caused enormous harm to the Risale‑i Nur because I would have died; I could not have borne it.
Some authorities have said that it is not permissible to shave off one's beard, but what they meant was that it is prohibited (ḥarām) to cut it off after you have grown one. So if one has never had one, one has only given up one Sunna. But in the face of that, through the Risale‑i Nur's guidance at this time in order to avoid committing numerous serious sins, I have passed a torturous life in what has been twenty years of virtual solitary confinement. God willing, it will be atonement for giving up that Sunna.
I also say openly and with complete certainty that the Risale‑i Nur belongs to the Qur'an; how could I claim ownership of it so that my faults should pass to it? I am one of its faulty servants and a salesman of that store of diamonds and jewels. My confused circumstances cannot pass to it and harm it. Anyway, the Risale-i Nur has taught us true sincerity and renunciation of the ego, and always knowing oneself to be faulty, and not being boastful. We show the believers the Risale-i Nur's collective personality, not ourselves. We are grateful to those who point out our faults to us and tell us of them, on condition that is indeed the case, and we utter a prayer for them. We are thankful if a scorpion is brushed off our neck before it stings us. Similarly, we accept our faults and are grateful, but on condition we are not told out of ill will and obduracy, and it does not assist innovations and misguidance.