Part of a Petition Written During the Eskişehir Trial Fifteen Years Ago and Sent to the Cabinet.]
You who “bind and loose”!
I have suffered an injustice the like of which has rarely been seen in the world. To remain silent before such an injustice is disrespect for right. I am compelled therefore to divulge a most important fact. Demonstrate the fault I have committed so that the law demands either my execution or a hundred and one year’s imprisonment, or prove that I am completely mad, or else give complete freedom to myself, my treatises, and my friends, and collect our losses from those who caused them!
Yes, every government has a law and a principle according to which penalties are given. If there is nothing in the laws of the government of the republic to necessitate the heaviest penalty for myself and my friends, we should be given our complete freedom, as well as recompense and appreciation and an apology. For if my important service of the Qur’an, which is clear and open, is against the government, I should receive not a year’s sentence in this way and a number of my friends, six months each, I should be given the death sentence or a hundred and one year’s imprisonment and those earnestly attached to me and my work should be given the heaviest penalties. But if our service is not against the government, we should receive not penalties, charges and imprisonment, but appreciation and recompense. For it is service the nature of which may be understood through its one hundred and twenty treatises, and its challenging the great philosophers of Europe and overthrowing their principles.
Certainly, such effective service will either produce ghastly results inside the country, or it will yield most advantageous, elevated, and scholarly fruits. In which case, I cannot be given a year’s sentence for playing a childish prank of hoodwinking, and deceiving public opinion, and concealing the intrigues of tyrants and their lies about us. Those like me either receive capital punishment, proudly climbing the gallows, or they remain free in the position of which they are worthy.
Yes, a clever thief can steal diamonds worth thousands, so he would not sentence himself to the same penalty for stealing a fragment of glass worth virtually nothing. No thief would do that, indeed, no conscious creature. Such a thief is cunning, not utterly stupid in that way.
Sirs! According to your delusions, I am like that thief. Rather than living in seclusion in a poor village in one of the districts of Isparta for nine years and putting in danger myself and my treatises which are the aim of my life by turning against the government the ideas of five to ten ingenuous unfortunates, who have been given very light sentences along with me, I could have held a high position in either Ankara or Istanbul like formerly and manipulated thousands of people towards the aim I was following. Then I would not have been convicted so abjectly, but would have been involved in the world with the pride and dignity befitting my way and duty.
I do not say this out of pride or to boast, but ashamedly, to point out the errors of those who, recalling some of my old self‑advertisement and hypocrisy, want to abase me so that the position I hold lacks all importance and cannot be profited from. So I say to them:
As someone who, as confirmed by his old defence, which was published under the name of The Testimonial of Two Schools of Misfortune, reduced to obedience with a speech eight rebelling regiments during the Thirty‑First of March Incident; and as was reported in the newspapers of the time, with an article called The Six Steps performed the important service of turning the ideas of the Istanbul ulema against the British and in favour of the National Movement; and delivered an address to thousands in Aya Sophia, making them listen to him; and was greeted with tumultuous applause by the Assembly and deputies in Ankara, and had one hundred and sixty‑three deputies assign one hundred and fifty thousand liras for his religious school and university; and without quailing responded completely firmly to the angry President in the Speaker’s office and invited him to perform the obligatory prayers; and while in the Darü’l‑Hikmeti’l-İslamiye was unanimously considered worthy by the Union and Progress government of the duty of effectively inviting the philosophers of Europe to accept Islamic wisdom; and Signs of Miraculousness (Isharat al‑I‘jaz), the work he wrote on the front during the War and has now been seized, appeared so valuable to Enver Pasha, who was commander‑in-chief at the time, that with respect shown by no one else and the idea of sharing in the good and glory of that memento of the War, which was racing to the future, he contributed the paper to have the work printed so that the exploits of its author during the War would be remembered – such a man would not descend to disgracing the dignity of his learning, the sacredness of his service, and his thousands of valuable friends by tainting himself with a petty crime like a horse-thief, abductor of girls, or pickpocket so that you could sentence him to a year’s imprisonment and treat him like a stealer of goats or sheep. He would prefer execution to suffering under the arbitrary persecution of a malicious detective or common policeman the year’s sentence now given him together with being held under supervision for a year, after having been tormented for ten years without reason with oppressive surveillance – although he could not endure to be dominated by the Sultan. If such a man had been involved in the world and if he had harboured such a wish and if his sacred service had permitted, he would have interfered in it to an extent ten times greater than the Menemen Affair and Shaykh Said Revolt. The booming sound of a cannon heard by all the world would not have subsided to the buzz of a fly.
Yes, I make the following point for the attention of the government of the republic: this situation has been brought about through the intrigues, machinations and propaganda of the covert organization which drove me to this misfortune. The evidence that widespread propaganda and terror and a conspiracy have been orchestrated against us in a way never before seen in any event is this, that although I have a hundred thousand friends, not one of them has been able to write me any letter for six months, or to send any greetings, and the fact that due to the informing of plotters who are trying to deceive the government, interrogations and searches have been continually carried out from the eastern provinces to those in the west.
The plan these intriguers hatched was evidently to organize an incident that would be the cause of thousands like me receiving the heaviest penalties. However, the result was a penalty that recalled an incident of petty pilfering perpetrated by the commonest person. Of one hundred and fifteen people, fifteen innocent men were given sentences of five or six months. Would any rational creature in the world prick the tail of a fierce lion or terrible dragon with his brilliantly sharp diamond sword, and make it turn on him? If his intention was self‑defence or combat, he would use his sword somewhere else.
With your deluded view, you conceive of me as such a man, for that is the way you have charged me and sentenced me. If I act in a manner so contrary to intelligence and reason, this great country should not be terrorized and public opinion turned against me with propaganda, I should be sent to a lunatic asylum like a common madman. But if I am someone of the importance you afford me, my keen sword would not be pointed at the tails of the lion or the dragon to make them attack him, he would rather defend himself as far as he could. Just as I have indeed voluntarily chosen seclusion these last ten years, and tolerating difficulties beyond human endurance, have interfered in no way whatsoever in matters of government, nor have I wanted to interfere. Because my sacred duty prohibits me.
O you who bind and loose! Is it at all possible that in the one hundred and twenty treatises of a person who, as was written in the newspapers twenty‑five years ago, with one newspaper article caused thirty thousand people to accept his ideas, and drew the attention of the huge Operation Army on himself, and replied with six words to the questions of the chief cleric of the English, who wanted six hundred, and gave a speech after the Constitutional Revolution as though he were a leading diplomat, – would only fifteen words related to politics and the world be found in the one hundred and twenty treatises of such a man? Is it at all reasonable to accept that this man follows politics and his aim is this world and he is troubling the government? If his mind was set on meddling in politics and the government, such a person would have made it clear in a single of his treatises, and indicated it in a thousand places. If his purpose had been criticism with political intent, would he not have found anything to criticize other than one or two rules about the veiling of women and inheritance, which have long been in force?
Yes, the politically‑minded opponent of a ruling regime which had enacted far-reaching reforms would have found not those one or two matters to object to but thousands. As though the reforms of the government of the republic consisted only of one or two minor matters. Although I had no intention to criticize it whatsoever, because of one or two words in one or two of my books which I had written long previously, it was said: “He is attacking the ruling regime and its reforms.” So I ask: Should the whole country be busied with a scholarly matter which demands not the smallest penalty, in a way to cause anxiety?
Thus, myself and five to ten of my friends being given the most minor, trivial sentences; and the whole country being intimidated by powerful propaganda against us and being made to hate us; and Şükrü Kaya, the Interior Minister, being called to Isparta with a significant force of soldiers in order to perform a task a single private soldier could perform, that is, to arrest me; and Ismet, the head of the Cabinet, going to the eastern provinces in that connection; and for two months in prison my being prohibited from speaking with anyone; and no one asking after me or sending me greetings while alone in this exile; – all these show that it is a meaningless, pointless, illegal situation like a tree as huge as a mountain producing a fruit the size of a pea. Seeing that government means to govern with wisdom, it is not something any government would be involved in, especially a legal government like the government of the republic, which adheres more closely to the law than any other.
I want my rights within the bounds of the law. I accuse of being criminals those who act against the law in the name of the law. The laws of the government of the republic certainly reject the arbitrary acts of such criminals. I am hopeful that my rights will be restored to me.
Said Nursi