In His Name, be He glorified!
An Addendum to My Written Objections to the Charges Made Against Us by Afyon Court
[Those I address in this objection are not the Afyon prosecutor and Court, but the spiteful and suspicious officials who due to the false and defective reports of public prosecutors in other places and informers and detectives, have turned against us the extraordinary situation here and in the office of the examining magistrate.]
Firstly: Just how far from justice it is to call the Risale‑i Nur students, who are innocent and have no connection with politics, a political society, which is completely baseless and never even occurred to us, and to accuse the unfortunates who embraced the Risale‑i Nur and have no aim other than belief and the hereafter, of publishing works for that society, or being active officers or members of it, or of reading the Risale‑i Nur or teaching it to others, or of writing it out, thus deeming them guilty of some crime, and to send them to court – a proof of how far this is from justice is as follows:
In accordance with the principles of freedom of thought and freedom of scholarship, those who read the harmful works written to oppose the Qur’an by Doctor Dozy and other atheists are not considered to have committed crimes, yet those who have great need to learn the truths of the Qur’an and belief and long to do so, and read and write out the Risale‑i Nur, which teaches those truths as clearly as daylight, are considered guilty of crimes. Also, they based their allegations on a few sentences in one or two treatises which we had treated as confidential before they were exhibited in court so that among a hundred other treatises a wrong meaning should not be given them, and accusations were made concerning them. However, with the exception of one of those treatises, Eskişehir Court scrutinized them and objected to only one or two matters in the Treatise on Islamic Dress, and the exception is replied to extremely decisively in both my petition and my objections to the indictment; and the fact that “we have light in our hands, not the club of politics” was proved conclusively from twenty angles in Eskişehir Court; and Denizli Court scrutinized all the treatises of the Risale‑i Nur without exception and did not object to any of them. Nevertheless, those unfair prosecutors extended those three or four sentences to the whole Risale‑i Nur, and just as they confiscated the four‑hundred-page Zülfikâr because of two pages, so they stated those who read and write out the Risale‑i Nur were guilty of a crime and accused myself of contesting the government.
I call on those close to me and the friends who meet with me to testify that for more than ten years, apart from two leaders, one deputy, and the governor of Kastamonu, I have have not known who the leaders of the government were, or who its ministers, commanders, officials, and deputies were, and I have shown no curiosity to find out. However, one or two years ago, one or two persons displayed an interest in me and I learnt of five or six of the leading members of the government. Is it in any way possible for someone not to know the people he is contesting, and to have no wish to know them, to attach no importance to learning whether they are friend or foe? It is understood from this that they dream up totally baseless pretexts to ruin me whatever happens.
Since that is the case, I say not to the court here but to those unjust people: I don’t give tuppence for your severest penalty; it has no importance whatsoever. For I am seventy‑five years old and have one foot in the grave. To exchange one or two years of innocent life of persecution for the rank of martyrdom would be the greatest happiness for me. Thanks to the thousands of proofs of the Risale‑i Nur, I believe with the utmost certainty that for us death is our discharge papers. Even if outwardly it is execution, for us one hour’s distress would be the key to eternal happiness and mercy. But as for you, covert, cruel enemies who confuse the judiciary on account of atheism and preoccupy the government with us for no reason! Be certain of this and tremble! For you are being condemned to eternal annihilation and everlasting solitary confinement. We see that our revenge is being taken on you in compounded fashion. We pity you even. Yes, surely the reality of death, which has emptied this town a hundred times into the graveyard has demands greater than life. To find a way of being delivered from its certain execution is the greatest human need, more important than anything. Those who on trite pretexts impute guilt to the Risale‑i Nur students, who have found this way for themselves, and to the Risale‑i Nur, which provides that way with thousands of proofs, – how guilty they are themselves in the eyes of truth and justice even lunatics would understand.
There are three matters which deceive these unjust people and give rise to the delusion of a political society, which is completely irrelevant:
The First: The fact that since early days my students have been fervently attached to me like brothers, has given rise to the erroneous impression of a society.
The Second: Some of the Risale‑i Nur students have acted as though they were an Islamic group, such as is found everywhere and is permitted by the laws of the republic and is not harassed by it, and this has been imagined to be a society. But those limited three or four students have not intended any sort of political society, only to serve belief together sincerely as brothers and to support each other in working for the hereafter.
The Third: Because those unfair people know themselves to be misguided and overcome by love of this world, and because they find some of the government’s laws convenient for themselves, they say to themselves: “Most probably Said and his friends oppose the government’s laws, which suit our caprices, although such caprices are illicit, as they are in the eyes of civilization. In which case, they are a political society which opposes the government.” So I say:
You wretches! If the world was eternal, and human beings were going to remain in it permanently, and their only duty was politics, perhaps there would be some meaning in your slander. But if I had undertaken this work with a view to politics, you would have found not ten sentences in a hundred treatises, but a thousand, to be political and combative. If to suppose the impossible, like you we had been working with all our strength for worldly aims and pleasures and politics, which not even Satan could make anyone accept, even if it had been thus, since these twenty years there has been no incident in which we were involved, and the government looks not to the heart but to the hand, and all governments have fierce opponents, you cannot deem us guilty in the name of the law. My last word is Allah suffices me, there is no god but He; in Him do I place my trust – He the Sustainer of the Throne [of Glory] Supreme!
Said Nursi
After our acquittal in Denizli Court I lived alone and did not concern myself with politics. This new affair, which has resulted in our being sent to Afyon Prison, is therefore unlawful in ten ways, as I shall explain.
The First: Although the Risale‑i Nur has been scrutinized by three courts and three committees of experts, and seven departments of government in Ankara and their legal bodies, and although all the treatises were unanimously acquitted without opposition, and Said and his seventy‑five companions were all acquitted without being sentenced to a single day’s imprisonment, to again seize those treatises as though they were pernicious writings is totally contrary to the law, as anyone the slightest bit reasonable would understand.
The Second: A man who lived for three and a half years all alone and a stranger in Emirdağ after having been acquitted, with his door locked from the outside and bolted on the inside, who accepted only one out of a hundred people on essential business, and even gave up the work of writing he had pursued for twenty years and wrote no more – he had the lock on his door smashed by detectives for political purposes and they broke in on him, but they could find nothing other than an Arabic prayerbook and a wall‑hanging. Anyone with even a grain of fairness would understand how illegal it was to harass him in this way.
The Third: As he said in court: if there is someone who, as is confirmed by seventy witnesses, for seven years knew nothing of the Second World War and was not curious about it nor asked about it, and now for ten years has been in the same state of mind, and for twenty‑five years has read no newspaper nor listened to one, and for thirty years has said: I seek refuge with Allah from Satan and politics and has avoided politics with all his strength, and if in twenty‑two years of the most torturous distress, in order not to attract the attention of politicians or become involved in politics, has not once applied to the government to alleviate his conditions – if there is such a person, is it in conformity with any law to raid his place of seclusion as though he were plotting political intrigues, and cause him unheard of suffering while he was ill? Anyone with an iota of conscience would pity him in that state!
The Fourth: Eskişehir Court studied the Risale‑i Nur for six months because we had been charged with organizing a political society and founding a Sufi order, and due to that suspicion and because of the personal hatred towards us of the great leader it urged certain members of the judiciary to act against us, yet that court acquitted us of founding a political society and Sufi order and the Risale‑i Nur charges, and only making a pretext of a short piece called Treatise on Islamic Dress, gave sentences of six months to fifteen out of a hundred students, not in accordance with the law but arbitrarily. And although until the investigations had been completed they remained in prison for four and a half months, that is, they served prison sentences of one and a half months, and ten years later Denizli Court again on a number of pretexts like organizing a political society and founding a Sufi order, and after scrutinizing closely twenty years’ worth of letters and writings, sent five boxes of books to Ankara Criminal Court, and although those books and letters were the subject of two years’ close scrutiny by Ankara and Denizli Courts, they passed a unanimous decision for their acquittal concerning the political society and Sufi order and other pretexts, and returned all the books to their owners. They also acquitted Said and his companions. So anyone who has not lost his humanity will understand just how illegal it is to look on him as a political activist and accuse him of being a plotter, and to provoke the officers of the court against him.
The Fifth: Because of the compassion which is the basis of my way and that of the Risale‑i Nur and for thirty years has been a principle by which I have lived, I do not censure the tyrants who persecute me so that no harm comes to the innocent, let alone cursing them. Even when angry at some of those depraved wretches who oppress me out of vicious hatred, or even the irreligious tyrants, my compassion prevents me from responding with a curse, let alone physically. For those cruel tyrants have parents and children; I do nothing to them so that no material harm comes to those four or five elderly unfortunates and innocents. Sometimes I even forgive them.
It is because of this compassion that I absolutely never interfere in government or disturb public order. Moreover, I have recommended this so strongly to all my friends that some of the fair‑minded police of three provinces have admitted that “the Risale‑i Nur students are police of a sort; they preserve order and maintain public security.” There are thousands of witnesses to this fact, and they have confirmed it through twenty years’ experience and thousands of students have corroborated it by never having been involved in any incident recorded by the police, so which law permits that unhappy man’s house to be raided as though he were a revolutionary and komitadji, and for pitiless men to insult him, and despite not finding anything in his house, as though he were a multiple criminal gather up his most precious, miraculous Qur’an and the inscriptions hanging on his wall as though they were pernicious writings? What benefit demands turning thousands of religious people who thus serve public order with their good morals against government and public order because of some baseless suspicion?
The Sixth: Endless thanks be to Allah the Most High that thirty years ago, through His grace and the effulgence of the Qur’an, a person realized just how valueless and meaningless are the fleeting fame and glory of this world, and its egotistical self‑admiration and celebrity, and since that time has struggled with all his strength against his evil-commanding soul, and to be self-effacing and give up egotism, and not to be artificial and hypocritical. Those who have served him or befriended him are perfectly certain of this and testify to it. For twenty years he has fled with all his might from people’s good opinions and their attention, which everyone takes too much pleasure in, and contrary to everyone else has rejected praise and acclaim and being accorded a spiritual rank. He has also rejected the excessively good opinions of him of his closest brothers, and has wounded their feelings by not accepting the praise and commendation expressed in their letters. He has shown himself to be devoid of virtue, and has ascribed all virtue to the Risale‑i Nur, a Qur’anic commentary, and hence to the collective personality of the Risale‑i Nur students, thinking of himself as only a lowly servant. This proves that he has not tried to make himself liked, and he has not wanted to and has rejected it. So under what law has he been deemed guilty because without his consent some of his friends in a distant place had an excessively good opinion of him and eulogized him and awarded him a high spiritual rank; and because of what a preacher said in the region of Kütahya whom he does not know; and because of a letter with a forged signature which had been sent to Kütahya, where I have never sent any letter; and because of an offensive book in Balıkesir, the author of which is unknown? Would any law in the world permit sending officials to break the lock of a wretched, aged, ill stranger’s room as though he had committed a serious crime, and allow them to justify this by finding only a book of supplications and a wall‑hanging? Would any politics allow such aggression?
The Seventh: Would any law permit for an unfortunate who, although at this time inside the country when there are so many lively political parties and currents, internal and external, and the ground is ready to take advantage of this, that is, to win numerous diplomats and politicians as supporters in place of his handful of friends, told all his friends, solely in order not to get involved in politics, nor damage his sincerity, nor attract the government’s attention to himself, nor to become preoccupied with the world: “Beware! Don’t get carried away by those political currents! Don’t get involved in politics! Don’t disturb public order!”; and although two currents caused him harm and distress because he withdrew in this way, the old one because of its groundless fears, and the new, because it says he does not help it – despite all this he never interfered in the worldly’s world and was busy with his life of the hereafter, and wrote not even one letter in twenty‑two years to his own brother in the village of Nurs in his native region, nor ten letters in twenty years to his friends in those provinces – so which law permits that anyone intervenes to this extent with his preoccupation with the hereafter?
Would any law permit collecting up copies of the Risale‑i Nur, in which three courts of law have found nothing indictable, although under the liberty laws the publications of those without religion and the communists are not interfered with despite being extremely harmful for the country and nation and morality. For the Risale‑i Nur has been striving for twenty years to maintain the country and nation’s social life and morality and security; and has been effectively struggling to regain for this nation its true support, the Islamic world’s brotherhood and its friendship, and to strengthen these; and such parts of the Risale‑i Nur as Zülfikâr and The Staff of Moses (Âsâ‑yı Mûsa), which having been studied for three months by the Directorate of Religious Affairs on the orders of the Minister for Internal Affairs for the purpose of having it criticized, fully appreciated its value and had it put in the department library as “an important work;” and The Staff of Moses, which was placed on the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad (Upon whom be blessings and peace), as a sign of its acceptance was seen there by the Hajjis. Would any law, conscience, or justice permit these to be collected up as though they were injurious papers and sent to court?
The Eighth: Then a person who although he was given complete freedom after twenty‑two years of distressing and unjustified exile, did not return to his native region where he had thousands of friends and relations, but preferred solitude and exile so that he should have no contact with social life and politics; and who gave up the very meritorious congregation of the mosque in preferance to performing the prayers on his own and remaining in his room; that is, his state of mind made him avoid the people’s adulation; and as is testified to by twenty years of his life and confirmed by thousands of valuable Turks, preferred one pious Turk to numerous negligent Kurds, and who even proved in court that he would not exchange a hundred negligent Kurds for one Turkish brother with powerful belief like Hafız Ali; and who in order not to be the object of their respect and veneration, never met with people so long as it was not essential and did not go to the mosque; and for forty years has worked with all his strength and all his works for Islamic brotherhood and so that Muslims would love one another; and who, since the Turkish nation is the Qur’an’s standard-bearer and is praised by the Qur’an, has great love for that nation and has passed his life among its people – in order to insult this person with the tongue of officialdom and make propaganda and scare away his friends, the former governor said: “He is a Kurd and you are Turks. He is a Shafi‘i and you are Hanafi’s,” trying to frighten everyone into abandoning him. And although over twenty years and in two courts he was not forced to change his manner of dress, and the army peaked cap was modified, a brimmed hat was forcibly placed on the head of that recluse – what benefit is there is all this? What law permits it?
The Ninth: is very important, and very powerful, but it touches on politics so I am remaining silent.
The Tenth: This is an attack, which no law permits, and is without advantage, and is only making mountains out of molehills due to some meaningless delusion, and is no part of any law. Concerning this too I am remaining silent so as not to touch on politics, which according to our way we are unconcerned with. In the face of treatment which is thus illegal in ten ways, all we say is: For us Allah suffices, and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs!
Said Nursi