My Last Word
I say this to the Judges of the Court:
I have understood from both the indictment and from my long solitary confinement that in this matter it is mostly my person that is under consideration, and it has been seen fit to destroy my character, as though my person were harmful to the government, public security, and the country, and making religion a screen, I harboured worldly aims, and was pursuing some sort of politics. In the face of this, I tell you the following with complete certitude:
Because of these unfounded suspicions, do not injure the Risale‑i Nur students by slandering my person, for they are devoted to the Risale‑i Nur and to this country and nation, and are of great value for them. For if you do, it could be the cause of considerable immaterial harm for this country and nation, indeed, the cause of their being exposed to danger.
I tell you this certainly too: whatever is visited on my person in the way of insult, humiliating treatment, slander, torture, and prison sentences, on account of the way I now follow I have decided to accept it – on condition no harm comes to the Risale‑i Nur and its students because of me. There is also reward in this for me in the hereafter. While weeping, I am also pleased since in this way I may be saved from the sins of my evil‑commanding soul. If these wretched innocent people had not been sent to prison along with me, I would have spoken out with great vehemence in your court. You have seen too that the person who wrote the indictment wants to destroy my character with his misrepresentations and exaggerations, and partly misinterpreting what is written, by showing that all my books and letters, confidential and otherwise, written over these twenty to thirty years of my life were written this year, and had never been seen by any court, or been pardoned, or been subject to the passage of time. I have said a hundred times that my person is faulty, and the reason that although they have defamed me on every occasion it has had no effect on public regard for me, which is enough to perturb the politicians, is this: there is an intense and overwhelming need here at this time for a number of people to teach religion and strengthen belief, people who will sacrifice the truth for nothing, make it a tool of nothing, and take no share for their own souls. Only in this way may what they teach about faith be profited from and come to be believed in with complete certainty.
Yes, it seems that at no time or place was the need so great, for the danger has come in full force from outside. Although I have admitted and proclaimed that I myself have not met this need, they have supposed that I have met it to an extent not because of any virtue of mine, but because of the severity of the need and others not being in the forefront. For a long time I have looked on in astonishment and wonder, but only now understood the wisdom in this public regard, of which I am in no way worthy – despite my fearsome faults. The wisdom in it is this:
Here at this time, the Risale‑i Nur and the collective personality of its students have directed that severe need to themselves. They have supposed my person to be a representative of the Risale‑i Nur’s wondrous reality and its sincere and pure personality – despite my share of its work and service being only a thousandth – and they have given me the attention. But this is both harmful for me, and a burden. It is also not my right. But I have remained silent and have accepted the harm for the sake of the Risale‑i Nur and its collective personality. Also, because of my service to it, they have considered my unimportant person to be included in the predictions about the Risale‑i Nur, which is a mirror reflecting the All‑Wise Qur’an’s miraculousness at this time, and the collective personality of its sincere students, made through divine inspiration by some of the saints such as Imam ‘Ali (May Allah be pleased with him) and Gawth al-A‘zam (May his mystery be sanctified). It seems I was mistaken, for in some places I attributed some of their kind attention to my person, and did not direct it towards the Risale‑i Nur. The reason for this was my weakness; I apparently accepted part of it for myself to prevent the things that might scare away those who help me multiplying and to increase their confidence in what I said.
I warn you! There is no need to defame my transitory person, which is at the door of the grave; there is no necessity to give it so much importance. In any event you cannot combat the Risale‑i Nur, so do not combat it! You cannot defeat it. You will cause great harm to this nation and country by combating it. Anyway you cannot scatter its students. For the defender of the Qur’an at this time and its heroic actions – which in the view of the Islamic world are like the heroes of former times – will not allow the sons of this land’s forefathers, who gave forty to fifty million martyrs on the way of defending the Qur’an, to abandon it. Even if they apparently withdraw, those sincere students are still bound to it with all their lives and spirits. They will not abandon the Risale‑i Nur, which is a mirror of that reality, thereby harming this nation, country, and public security.
My last word is: But if they turn away, say: “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!”