We are sending this for your information, to refute the libellous statements that have appeared in some newspapers.
We have seen that a number of opposition newspapers are again accusing the Risale‑i Nur students of founding a Sufi order. This accusation does not contain even a grain of truth as has been established by the ratified decisions of the nearly ten criminal courts that have tried cases involving the Risale-i Nur.
Also, not the slightest sign of Sufism has been found in the books and letters of the Risale‑i Nur when they have previously been seized and then unconditionally returned to their owners. In fact, it states explicitly in our Master Said Nursi's letters and defence speeches that “the present is not the time of the Sufi orders, but the time to save belief. There are many who enter Paradise without Sufism, but none who enter it without belief.”
Despite this open and explicit statement and the fact that not a shred of evidence has been found concerning Sufi practices, a clandestine group which is religiously lax or anti‑religious, and wanting to extirpate religion is unable to abide the present flowering of Islam, calls true Islam “Sufism” in its attempts to prepare the ground in this country to sow its own ideas. Certainly, as always happens, the present campaign, instigated by the covert atheists and their intrigues, will finally be to the advantage of the country and nation. And following their predecessors, the courts of Aydın and Nazilli will exonerate the Nur students.
At present there are numerous positive and relieving developments: the Risale‑i Nur being very favourably received everywhere in this country and also in the Islamic world and Europe, and the Turks' moves towards rebuilding unity with the Islamic world successfully producing worldly results unintended by the Nur students, and the government according a high value to Islam, religion, and freedom of conscience and its endeavouring to repair the destruction caused by the former government, and to pass a law dismissing those who aggress against sacred matters. We have absolutely no doubt that this baseless matter, which has appeared at the same time as the above, has been instigated by persons opposed to the government and to Islam.
The evidence refuting some of their lies:
Those unprincipled persons clearly calumniated our Master Said Nursi by saying that he “lives like a king on charity and donations.” Whereas he is someone who refused his uncle's soup even, has never become indebted to anyone, and attaching no importance to the five thousand liras he was given, refused it and returned it, and has never in his life broken his rule of independence even when suffering the severest oppression and deprivation, in this way intending to preserve the dignity of Islam and honour of religion.
Yes, our Master's rule of not accepting gifts has been established by both his eighty‑year lifetime, and the documents presented in numerous courts of law over thirty years. It has been clearly observable by friend and foe alike, We leave it to everyone with conscience to judge just how malicious and ill-willed are those who make such accusations at a time everyone has become aware of this clear fact.
Thanks to the justice of the Ankara Court, our Master Said Nursi's Risale‑i Nur is now being printed. He gives as subsistence to those Nur students who have dedicated their lives to the Risale-i Nur and are unable to support themselves, a share of the profits gained from the sale of its books. As everyone now knows, he himself lives with the maximum frugality and contentment. We put forward his eighty-year lifetime as truthful evidence that he has always lived extraordinarily thriftily and frugally.
Another obvious lie given out by those newspapers which pursue plans to turn the people against the Democrat government is their distortion of a conversation between two innocent men in Nazilli about Ramadan and their twisting it into something political like “establishing an Islamic state.” It was a naive calumny cooked up by those political imposters that could not deceive a child even. Everyone knows what they are trying to achieve by employing such fictions.
It is lacking in conscience a hundred times over to put in the public eye with politicking fabrications an Islamic author who has never been to Nazilli and knows no one there, and for forty years has declared: I seek refuge with God from Satan and politics and has severed all relations with politics; has dedicated his life to the cause of saving belief through the Qur'an and the truths of belief and is quite unconcerned with any worldly affairs outside that; and who is eighty‑seven years old and virtually bedridden, and having been poisoned on numerous occasions has come close to death and declares himself to be at the door of the grave, and is in great need of rest and peace of mind. It is terrible cruelty to invent such lies, and a low-minded iniquity.
To impute prophethood to any religious scholar on false pretexts is a direct attack on Islam and treachery towards the Qur'an.
Throughout his life, our Master Said Nursi has adhered to the Prophet's (UWBP) practices (Sunna) and has defied the death sentence so as not to act contrarily to it and has composed a work of one hundred and thirty parts in order to revive the Sunna and preserve belief. Risking his life, he engaged in the struggle against the vicious enemies of religion, and was finally victorious.
Yes, thousands of copies have been published of a work he wrote about following the Prophet's (UWBP) practices. And his book, The Miracles of Muhammad (UWBP), is an outstanding work about the Most Noble Messenger (UWBP), the Glory of the Universe, and his being the true and final prophet. While that is the truth, it is understood just how far from truth and right, and fairness and conscience are those who level such accusations at Said Nursi.
There is a strong possibility that another reason for this affair was that because the Risale‑i Nur gives great importance to family life and ensures that women pass their lives chastely, honourably, modestly, and happily, it is very popular with them, For example, some people hostile to religion saw a few articles for women that had been published and they launched an attack on account of communism on some cooked up pretexts. But they will in no way succeed. For contrary to their expectations, the Risale-i Nur is spreading wondrously among both men and women.
His students who are in attendance on him due to his illness,Tahirî, Zübeyir, Ceylân, Bayram, Sungur, Rüştü