[The objections presented in 1952 to the court in Istanbul conducting the A Guide for Youth trial, in reply to the experts' committee.]
To the First Criminal Court
In connection with the printing and publication of A Guide for Youth, which is a part of the Risale‑i Nur and due to which court proceedings have been opened against its author, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, we have studied the report of the experts' committee set up to investigate the work and seen that it completely distorts the facts and reflects the irreligious views of the Islam's enemies.
A Guide for Youth is one part of the Risale‑i Nur, which consists of one hundred and thirty parts and is a mine of belief, knowledge, and virtue. Because we know and can prove that this nation is bound with all its life and spirit to the elevated truths that the Risale-i Nur contains and is a treasury and guide leading the nation to both material and spiritual happiness, we reject the accusations of the experts' committee and with all our strength throw it back at it. We submit the following to the judges of the court:
The report submitted by the experts' committee is an example of the conspiracy to cast aspersions on the life, history, customs, and laws of this country and nation, and on all they hold sacred. It is totally foreign, contemptuous of the present laws, belittles the government, denigrates the thousand‑year history of this nation and insults all its forefathers, and attacks the beliefs of our twenty million brothers who live in this country today. It is not possible for a court of justice to consider it to be creditable.
We ask those who assumed the name of experts and put their signatures to this treacherous document,
is this nation irreligious? Has this nation been depraved for centuries, without religion or belief? Did those forefathers who gilded the shining history of this nation spend all their lives tramping the roads of disbelief and scattering vice and misguidance to the world? Is it a lie that the great conquerors whose heroism fills history and the nation to which they belonged, which opened a new age on conquering Istanbul, and with its being the standard‑bearer of the Qur'an, brought the light of guidance, knowledge, and virtue to East and West and instructed Europe in true civilization, and illuminated humanity with the light of Islamic civilization?
Or is it a lie that with the instruction it received from Islam, this nation adorned its women and girls with behaviour inspired by the Qur'an, protecting their honour and dignity and preventing them being treated as common chattels. Could it be the case that our forefathers, male and female, who were famous as the Turkish champions of Islam and we know to have been at the pinnacle of good morals, honour, and rectitude, and whom we take pride in, on the contrary, did not follow the Qur'an or conduct themselves in accordance with its mores, but displayed themselves naked to the world?
We address the fair‑minded and the present generation who take pride in their history and heroic ancestors and all they held sacred. Come and see! Express your regret and condemnation of these slanderers, who have written and signed this treacherous documents which insults your history and your religion of Islam, and disparages and affronts the name of Islam, which you know to be the very spirit of your spirit, and the Qur'an, which has lit up the universe for fourteen centuries and with its sacred, divine rules, illuminated the millions of your forefathers for a thousand years and guided them to Paradise, and belittles your mothers, grandmothers, and sisters, who have received the light of its training and preserved their fine morals and honour, and through their dress, conduct, and lives have demonstrated the true meaning of womanhood and true beauty. Declare that you reject such a document!
And now, those slanderers have seized the work of a champion of Islam who is eighty years old, suffering severe illness due to poison, and has been subjected to torments in prison because of his services to religion the work called A Guide for Youth, which teaches belief, high morals, and virtue to the youth in order to protect them from the immorality and vice that all the intellectuals and many educationalists and patriots are now complaining of, and makes them into useful members of the country and nation, and as the most powerful force for securing public order and security, serves this nation's happiness. They have seized this work and so as to convict its esteemed author, they are saying this:
“Bediuzzaman supports women wearing Islamic dress. He depicts those women who parade the streets half naked as troops under Satan's command in the war against Islam. He considers it a sin for women to participate in social life with bare legs. He believes that the immodest dress of the present is an obstacle to marriage and encourages immorality. According to him, what beautifies women and is their true adornment in social life, is not to exhibit their bodies but to conduct themselves in accordance with the norms and training of the Qur'an and Islam. He favours religious instruction. He says that thanks to the instruction given by the Risale‑i Nur, convicts in prison are reformed in a space of two weeks, as is testified to by the prisons of Denizli and Afyon and their directors, guards, and judicial authorities. It is Bediuzzaman's opinion that youth who fall victim to alluring temptations can be saved through religious truths and the Risale-i Nur's teachings about belief.”
They condemn him because of these ideas and say he should be convicted. And they are the professors and lecturers in law given the name of the experts' committee who teach the young people of this country justice, right, and freedom.
Judges! You, as the representatives of true justice, defend public law and national honour! If it is accepted that the instruction in belief and fine morals contained in A Guide for Youth constitutes an indictable offence, as asserted by the experts' committee's report, and its author is deemed guilty before the law, you have to concur with their insulting disparagement of this nation and its thousand‑year history and its traditions and laws, and the sacred truths of Islam and teachings of the Qur'an, which are the cause of its pride, and of its noble forefathers, who embracing those sacred truths proclaimed Islamic civilization in all its glory to the world; and with their trampling their honour and rights, Only by condoning this serious moral crime, can the crime the so-called experts' committee impute to A Guide for Youth be deemed a crime. Only in that way can its author be convicted and his students who published it be condemned. For the principles of legal justice and freedom of thought and of conscience would not permit their conviction and trial. Such a course of action is not conformable with the laws of the republican government ensuring democracy, for it implements the principles of freedom of thought and of conscience in the broadest sense.
If the accusation is made that the religious instruction given with the publication of A Guide for Youth is contrary to secularism, what is the meaning of secularism? We ask this. Is secularism hostility to Islam? Is secularism the freedom of irreligion to attack the religion of those who embrace a religion? Is secularism the absolute despotism which fastens locks on the mouths of those who pronounce religious truths and disseminate the truths of belief, and snap handcuffs on their wrists?
Since secularism is freedom of conscience and thought, can the irreligious and enemies of religion make every sort of assault on Islam, and on the pretext of those freedoms publish their anarchic ideas, while a scholar of Islam who teaches religion in accordance with those principles within a nation which for a thousand years has been a commander of Islam and following its traditions and laws, for its happiness and on the way of preserving its morality and honour — can such a scholar be shown to be guilty of a crime because to do so is opposed to secularism? Can he be defamed and accused of wanting to make the laws of the land conform to religious beliefs? We do not consider it possible that such an impossibility be possible. We know without doubting that justice would not permit such a thing.
A Guide for Youth is one part of the one hundred and thirty parts of the Risale‑i Nur which courts of law have acquitted and returned to their owners in their entirety, and is in truth the chief means whereby this country and nation may win happiness. Hundreds of Nur students have told the courts how they have read these works and through its lessons have been saved from the pitfalls of vice and misguidance. Thousands of Turkish youths have proved through their lives and the services they have performed that through these works they have become useful members of the country and nation. So we, those youths, throw back their baseless accusations in those slanderers' faces.
How regretable it is that a work that has assisted in maintaining public order and preserving morality and has proved enormously beneficial for the judiciary and police is today shown to be harmful and contrary to the law in a way totally opposed to the truth. In the face of such an obvious contradiction, we refer it to fair‑minded people of conscience, and about our Master say in reply to the experts' committee accusation of his exploiting religion for political ends that they are exploiting the judiciary for purposes of irreligion.
Another imputed crime in their report is that the author speaks in the name of the Risale‑i Nur's collective personality, and that he is attempting to secure personal influence by employing such expressions as “it was imparted to my heart” and “an important matter that was imparted to my heart on the Night of Power.”
One can only suppose in the face of such baseless and meaningless accusations that those persons who call themselves experts are far from deserving such an epithet; one is astonished at their ignorance and lack of discernment. If only the experts of the committe had studied this side of the question carefully and with respect, they would perhaps have saved themselves to a degree from casting themselves into the pits of ignorance. All the parts and letters of the Risale‑i Nur and the entirety of our Master's life form the clearest evidence that his whole endeavour and all his work and service are for truth and right alone and he speaks only for the sake of the truth. Those so-called experts displayed their bigotry in irreligion by reading only a tiny part of the Risale-i Nur Collection and wrote these calumnies in order to be able to indict it come what may. However, while explaining the Risale-i Nur's lessons, our esteemed Master says that the foremost of them are impotence, poverty, compassion, and reflection.
In truth, enduring the most vicious torments and persisting in his striving and work, our esteemed Master has smashed with his universal service and the Risale‑i Nur, which is derived from the All-Wise Qur'an's truths of belief, the disbelieving way of the materialists and naturalists, and has withstood their merciless assaults. With the assistance of his hundreds of thousands of eager students, who are indebted to him for the instruction in belief they have received, he has disseminated everywhere hundreds of thousands of copies of the one hundred and thirty parts of the Risale-i Nur. He has demonstrated with decisive proofs and arguments the truths of belief, which act as a barrier before the assaults in this country of irreligion and especially of communism, and with his proofs of belief in God and divine unity — the diamond swords of the Qur'an — he has routed the fallacious ways of unbelief and misguidance. The treatises of the Risale-i Nur are now being disseminated in the main centres of the Islamic world and are meeting with praise and appreciation. A deputy minister from Pakistan who visited Turkey last year told the forty to fifty university students he was addressing:
“My brothers! I have found in Turkey what I was searching for in the Islamic world. Bediuzzaman belongs not only to you, but to the whole world of Islam. It will soon come to know and understand him. You should take a close look at the Risale‑i Nur, for I am going to publish it among our ninety million Muslims. I had numerous worries about the world of Islam and numerous questions to ask the Master. I remained with him for only an hour, and just listening to him, I received answers to all my questions and all my anxieties evaporated. Now I am returning to Pakistan with good news concerning the Islamic world's future.
I have studied the history of the Turks and of Islam. Numerous heroes and champions of Islam and patriots have emerged from among them. They performed enormous sacrifices in the way of serving their country and nation, and they received the rewards and recompense they deserved. They were all awarded the honours due to them. But for the last twenty or so years, Bediuzzaman, the Master, has composed and published these works for this nation's happiness in this world and the next, suffering indescribable torments and ill‑treatment, to prevent the spread of anti-religious currents, and today in his house there is nothing, not even a lamp. He abandoned everything to serve religion and religion alone. Most certainly, the Islamic world will soon come to know this esteemed person and his works.” Yes, our Master is a person who is applauded and appreciated by an Islamic scholar and thinker like 'Ali Akbar Shah; and whose services are acknowledged by some of the Democrat deputies who say, “The Nur students who read Bediuzzaman's Risale-i Nur and receive instruction from it and publish it prevent the spread of communism in this country with their work. Seeing that our government is opposed to communism, we are grateful to the Nurjus for their services.” With all its thousands of words and sentences, every single copy of all the parts of the Risale-i Nur testifies and points to our Master's services and the universal benefits of his twenty-five years of composition and dissemination. He took as his way, instruction in impotence and poverty and he teaches it to his students. Thus, while this esteemed person whose universal services we have briefly outlined above is most deserving of the respect, love, and praise of all the believers and he should be accepted as such, he has consistently avoided the genuine respect and sincere applause of those coming to visit him, who reading the lessons of the Risale-i Nur have seen its knowledge and proofs to be superior in its instruction in belief to other works this age. In numerous letters he has rejected their respect and praise for his person, saying: “I am your companion in receiving instruction from the Qur'an. These sacred truths have been bestowed on me firstly because I am the most needy for them and the most indigent. I hold no rank. I am not fond of myself, and I don't like those who like me. My brothers, I don't advertise my secret faults so as not to lose you altogether.” He has made the dissemination of the truths of belief his sole aim in life. He has renounced all worldly advantages for that service.
Even the most unscrupulous would refrain from making the accusations the so‑called experts' committee levelled at our Master, whose whole life without exception testifies to the above facts. They even cited as evidence their suggestion that he was attempting to arrogate unwarranted power to himself by using the word “imparted (ihtar)” in the title “An Important Matter Imparted to Me on the Night of Power” in the work, A Guide for Youth, while completely disregarding the vital truth it was explaining. Whereas the comprehensiveness inferred by the word may be understood by reading and understanding that truth. The following is part of the piece:
“Because of the extreme tyranny and despotism of this last World War and its merciless destruction, and hundreds of innocents being scattered and ruined on account of a single enemy, and the awesome despair of the defeated, and the fearsome alarm of the victors and their ghastly pangs of conscience arising from the supremacy they are unable to maintain and the destruction they are unable to repair, and the utter transitoriness and ephemerality of the life of this world and the deceptive, opiate nature of the fantasies of civilization becoming apparent to all, and the exalted abilities lodged in human nature and the human essence being wounded in a universal and awesome manner, and man's innate love and desire for immortality being aroused and awakened, and heedlessness and misguidance and deaf, lifeless nature being smashed by the diamond sword of the Qur'an, and the exceedingly ugly, exceedingly cruel true face of world politics becoming apparent, which is the widest and most suffocating and deceptive cover for heedlessness and misguidance, most certainly and without any shadow of a doubt, since the life of this world — which is the metaphorical beloved of mankind — is thus ugly and transient, man's true nature will search with all its strength for eternal life, which it truly loves and yearns for … so long as humankind does not altogether lose its mind and a material or immaterial doomsday does not erupt over its head, the broad masses and great states in the world will search out the Qur'an of Miraculous Exposition, and having grasped its truths, will embrace it with all their lives and spirits, just as there are now famous preachers in Sweden, Norway, Finland and England working to have the Qur'an accepted, and the important community of America is searching for the true religion. In view of this fact, the Qur'an by no means has — nor can have — any equal. Absolutely nothing can take the place of this greatest miracle.”
Respected judges!
Could the use of the word ihtar at the head of this important piece, a short section of which we have included above, be an indictable offence? Could it have been used to secure personal influence? Or by showing that humanity has started to search out the Qur'an's truths, does it predict and prove that the Qur'an will prevail over humankind in the future? We refer this matter to your elevated judgement.
The Risale‑i Nur's author describes the purely true warnings he has received from the Qur'an's instruction, as proof of the veracity of the subjects he is explaining. Anyone who studies them attentively may see that they are pure truth. Anyone may perceive how this Marvel who rejoices in the oceans of belief and treasuries of divine unity and wisdom will live triumphantly in the millions of hearts of forthcoming generations, and will be applauded by them. He may discern that similarly to its thousand years of proud deeds, the Turkish nation will again embrace the truths of Islam in place of its heroic forefathers, who were an example to all the world, and assuming the duties of standard-bearer of the Qur'an, dominate the lands of the future.
To understand this most elevated and important truth, one has only to read the sermon Bediuzzaman delivered in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus forty years ago in 1327 (early 1911) to a congregation of ten thousand among which were one hundred religious scholars. He is at present translating the work into Turkish, for at that time when the Islamic world was wretched and captive, it gave the good news that in the future through the strength of Islam the virtues of civilization would prevail, although then its evils predominated, and the sun of Islam would shine over whole nations and continents. It predicted this, and explained and proved it.
Since the so‑called experts' committee were unable to penetrate to the meaning of the sentence “a matter imparted to my heart” and misinterpreted it, and the matter is related to the truths concerning the Islamic world's future which are explained in The Damascus Sermon, we present here to the court a translation of the work, including here only a few sentences from the end of the questions proved in the work:
In consequence of the lesson I have learnt on my own account, I say: O congregation of Muslims! I give you this good news: the first signs of the true dawn of Arab happiness are just appearing. This will occur through the kindling of the worldly happiness of all Muslims, in particular that of the Ottomans, and especially through the progress of Islam. The emergence of the sun of happiness has drawn close. In order to rub despair's nose in the dust, I say what is my firm conviction so that the world will hear: The future shall be Islam's and Islam's alone, and it shall be ruled by the truths of the Qur'an and belief. Therefore, we must submit to divine determining and our fate of the present, for ours is a brilliant future, while the Europeans' is a dubious past.
If we were to display through our actions the perfections of the morality of Islam and the truths of belief, without doubt the followers of other religions would enter Islam in whole communities; some entire regions and states, even, would take refuge in Islam.
O my brothers in this Umayyad Mosque as well as those in the vast mosque of the world of Islam! You too take warning. Take warning from the dreadful events of the last forty‑five years. Come to your senses right away! O you who are wise and thoughtful and consider yourselves to be enlightened! We Muslims, who are students of the Qur'an, follow proof; we approach the truths of belief through reason, thought, and our hearts. We do not abandon proof in favour of blind obedience and imitation of the clergy like some adherents of other religions. Therefore, in the future when reason, science and technology prevail, of a certainty that will be the time the Qur'an will gain ascendancy, which relies on rational proofs and invites the reason to confirm its pronouncements.
For sure, even if not now then in thirty to forty years' time, in order to fit out and equip to perfection the three forces of science, true knowledge, and the virtues of civilization, and to rout and put to flight those eight obstacles, the desire to search for the truth, equity, and love of humanity will be despatched to the eight fronts of those eight enemy squadrons.
They have already started to drive them back. God willing, in half a century they will scatter them completely.
So, supported by the fact that the clever fields of Europe and America have produced crops of brilliant and exacting scholars like Carlyle and Bismarck, I say with all assurance: Europe and America are pregnant with Islam; one day they will give birth to an Islamic state.
Just as the Ottomans were pregnant with Europe and gave birth to a European state.
Moreover, the veils that have eclipsed the sun of Islam, hindered its emergence and prevented it illuminating mankind have begun to disperse. Those things that were hindering it have begun to fall back. The signs of the dawn appeared forty‑five years ago. Then the true dawn broke in 1371/1951, or it will break.
Even if it is the false dawn, in thirty or forty years' time the true dawn will break.
O my brothers who are here in the Umayyad Mosque and those who are in the mosque of the world of Islam half a century later! Do the introductory remarks, that is, those made up to here, not point to the conclusion that it is Islam that will be the true, and spiritual, ruler over the future, and only Islam that will lead mankind to happiness in this world and the next; and that true Christianity, stripping off superstition and corrupted belief, will be transformed into Islam; following the Qur'an, it will unite with Islam?
Respected panel of judges!
The most decisive, legal reply to all the slanders and accusations against the Risale‑i Nur's author is the fact that three courts of law and three experts' committees have returned his works after scrutinizing them.
Moreover, although our Master's twenty‑seven years of exile and the one hundred and thirty treatises of his works and his letters have all been studied by three courts and by government officials, and although those officials were forced to convict him by the tryannical apostates and dissemblers opposing him, and secret orders had even been given for his execution, they could find not even the slightest sign that he had exploited religion for political ends, which proves categorically that he has not done so. We Nur students who know him closely are astonished at this extraordinary stance of his and consider it to be evidence of the true sincerity of the Risale-i Nur circle.
We await from justice and your consciences that with your just decision you will overturn the plans of the covert, cruel enemies who are opposed to his services to this country and nation's happiness, and seek to destroy him with slanders, and that you will throw back in their faces the false accusations of the calumniators. And we offer you our respects.
Nur students from Eskişehir,Yaşar, Osman Toprak, Ahmed, Osman, Şükrü, Bayram, Sungur, Hüsnü