In His Name, be He glorified!
[This is written To Thank the Experts’ Committee of the Directorate of Religious Affairs. I shall explain three points in order to assist in amending their minor criticisms, the answer of which is clear.]
The First:
I thank those scholars in three ways. For myself I am grateful to them.
Firstly: Apart from the Fifth Ray, their summarizing appreciatively the other thirteen parts of The Illuminating Lamp Collection.
Secondly: Their refuting the allegations made against us of founding a Sufi order, setting up a political society, and breaching security.
Thirdly: Their corroborating my case in court. That is, I told the court: If there is any fault, it is mine. The Risale‑i Nur students are sincere and innocent, and work at the Risale‑i Nur for their faith. Thus, their committee of experts also exonerates the Risale‑i Nur students, and ascribes all the fault to me. So I say to its members: May Allah be pleased with you! Only, they made partners in my crime the late Hasan Feyzi and the late Hafız Ali, and two or three others who are the heirs of those two blessed martyrs and work according to their system. But they were wrong in one way. For they were ahead of me not in faults but in the service of belief, and were given to me by divine grace as assistants, out of mercy for my weakness, and were free of my faults.
Second Point:
The committee of experts said that some of the narrations in the Fifth Ray are “dubious” and others are “false,” and that some were misinterpreted. This was written in the same way as the indictment in Afyon, which was against us. But I proved in a table fifteen pages long that it contained eighty‑one mistakes. The respected committee of experts should see the table. An example of one of the mistakes is as follows:
The Prosecutor Said: “All the interpretations are wrong, and the narrations are either false (mawḍū‘) or dubious.”
And I Say: To interpret a Hadith means saying that such‑and-such a meaning is possibly or probably intended by the Hadith. According to logic, it is possible to refute the possibility of that meaning only by proving its impossibility. But just as the meaning has been seen this century and has been realized, so one aspect of the universality of the Hadith’s allusive level of meaning has observedly shown one flash of its miraculous predictions to be true at this time, and can therefore in no way be denied or objected to. It has also been proved in the table that the prosecutor’s saying that “all the narrations are either false or dubious” is wrong in three respects.
The First: It is wrong in ten respects to deny such narrations in their entirety, for Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, who memorized a million Hadiths, and Imam Bukhari, who memorized five hundred thousand, did not have the courage to deny them, and anyway such a denial is not possible; and the prosecutor has not seen all the books of Hadiths; and most of the Umma every century have awaited the appearance of what those narrations signify or to witness one aspect of their general meanings; and they have just about been accepted by the Umma; and a number of aspects and samples of them which are completely true have appeared and been seen.
The Second Respect: The meaning of mawḍū^ is that a narration is not a Hadith with an authenticated chain of authorities. It does not mean that its meaning is wrong. Since among the Umma, especially the people of reality and those who have had uncovered to them the realities, and some of the Hadith scholars and those qualified to interpret the law, have accepted them and awaited the appearance of what they indicate, surely those narrations contain truths which look to everyone, like proverbs.
The Third Respect: What question or narration is there that in one of their books the scholars, whose ways and schools are all different, have not objected to it? For example, one of the narrations about the appearance of several Dajjals (Antichrists) within Islam is the following Hadith, which foretells explicitly the dissension of Hulagu and Jenghiz:
“The ‘Abbasid Caliphate will long continue, until it falls into the hands of the Dajjal.” Like this Hadith, which states that after five hundred years a Dajjal will appear in Islam, numerous narrations give news of the figures that will appear at the end of time. Nevertheless, some of the mujtahids who were of different schools, or whose ideas were extreme, did not accept them, saying they were either unauthenticated or dubious. Anyway, the reason I have cut this long story short is related to the Risale‑i Nur, for just as four severe earthquakes coincided with the Risale‑i Nur being attacked, demonstrating the earth’s wrath, so during the hours I was writing this reply, two severe earthquakes occurred here. It was like this:
It was two earthquakes coinciding with the suffering I was experiencing from the wounds caused by the surgical operation of the experts’ report, which had been given me that evening, and from my pitiful difficulties at having no contact with others and having to write myself with my wretched pen. Yes, I received that evening the report from the Directorate of Religious Affairs, on which I had placed most trust during my eight months of distress in solitary confinement, and had expected would come to our assistance. This morning I understood that with the most trivial matters they had helped not me but the public prosecutor. I saw that they said: “Said said that the last four earthquakes were instances of the Risale‑i Nur’s wonderworking.” Then, when intending to write, as I had written in the table of errors: “Like acceptable almsgiving, the Risale‑i Nur is a means of calamities being repulsed. Whenever it is attacked, calamities seize the opportunity and occur. Sometimes too the earth rages,” two severe earthquakes occurred here, which made me give up writing the piece, so I am leaving it and passing on to the third Point.
Third Point:
Exacting, veracious, and fair‑minded scholars of the experts’ committee! A long-standing and acceptable practice among scholars is their writing eulogies and praises, sometimes exaggerated, sometimes the opposite, at the ends of fine works written by others, and publishing them, and the authors in question being grateful and pleased at the writers of such eulogies, and their rivals also not accusing them of boasting. So I have been unable to equate it with careful study, precise knowledge, kind assistance, and fairness, that you should have considered it self-advertisement that I did not altogether reject the eulogies written by some special and sincere students of the Risale‑i Nur in the style of the late Hasan Feyzi and the martyr Hafız Ali, which they wrote with the idea of assisting me in my helplessness, weakness, aloneness, and exile in the face of so many unfair people attacking and objecting to me savagely, and to encourage the needy to embrace the Risale‑i Nur. I was sorry at this. Those pure‑hearted friends of mine never thought of politics, but verified by mathematical reckoning said: “One aspect and minor meaning of the Hadith’s universal allusive meaning at this time is the Risale‑i Nur," which cannot be said to be wrong. For time is proving it right. In any event, even if it was very exaggerated or even wrong, it would still only be a scholarly mistake. And everyone can write his own opinions. You know how many various views and opinions are written in the works of the twelve schools of the Shari‘a, and particularly in the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi‘i, and Hanbali Schools, and of the nearly seventy authorities of the sciences of theology (kalām/) and the principles of religion. However, never at any time has the need for agreement between the scholars of religion been as great as it is at present, and for them to avoid dispute. Now we are compelled to leave aside conflict in secondary matters and not to make them the subject of dispute.
I Have Three Questions to Ask of the Equitable Hodjas of the Committee of Experts:
The First: Is a person guilty of an offence if someone praises him with a good intention? Especially if he does not want it – could it be thought self‑love if as far as he can he either rejects such praise or directs it towards someone else, but in order not to lose his sincere friend, does not scold him, and responds with silence and saying that the praise is a hundred times greater than his due?
The Second Question: At this time of terrible attacks on religion and momentous religious questions, should a lover of the truth from among the Risale‑i Nur students be deserving of such blame and insult because of a harmless, minor scholarly error and a mistaken view? Is it permissible that while awaiting from masters like yourselves a gentle warning, the student who wrote the eulogy should be dealt a blow in this way with the hand of the judiciary?
The Third Question: Are these criticisms of yours, related to only one or two matters, fitting for the Risale‑i Nur, which these twenty years has never been shaken by its innumerable opponents and has strengthened the belief of thousands of needy people? Also I remind those exact scholars of the following: because they saw a letter of mine at the top of Ahmed Feyzi’s eulogy, they criticize me in their report as though I had written the eulogy to myself. But the letter was written in order not to accept the praises for myself, and to have them cut out of the eulogy, and I did cut out a part of them. Others I was going to modify, but being forced to hurry, I sent the letter to one of my brothers without completing it. He then put the letter at the beginning of the eulogy. Then when it was being sent to a private person, it was seized by the government. Is such a private eulogy, which was purely scholarly and a personal view, and was sent from friend to friend with the idea of consulting about modifying it, deserving of such vehement objections? Moreover, the two small collections bound in red and black consisted of a number of confidential letters written privately to friends in order to congratulate, encourage, and gratify them. Anyway, one or two people had been interested in them, and had gathered them together in a book so they should not get lost. In the searches it fell into the hands of the police. Is there any need to put forward absurd suppositions about such letters, make them the subject of interrogation, and try to relate them to politics? Is it not like being blind to the terrible dragons assaulting the Qur’an, and not even looking at them, and trying to combat pestilential mosquitoes?
Does it not infer by ignoring Saraçoğlu, who calls religion and the training of Muhammad “poison”, and by disputing The Illuminating Lamp, which demonstrates the Qur’anic reality as clearly as the sun and proves it to be the perfect cure for mankind’s wounds, assisting in the confiscation of that collection? We await from persons like yourselves balm for our wounds, and your insight and assistance, and we are not offended at your minor criticisms.
Prisoner,Said Nursi