To the Afyon Public Prosecutor and the Chairman and Members of the Court
I am presenting to you in order to protect my rights, exactly the same nine principles which I presented to the Denizli judicial authorities.
Twenty years ago I abandoned social life, and especially official, refined, political life such as this. I do not know what position should be taken in such situations, and I do not think of it, and to think of it causes me acute distress. But I am compelled to present this disorganized defence and petition, which is the conclusion and summary of the answers I gave to the numerous, repetitious, and haphazard questions of an unfair member of another court of law. Perhaps it lacks order and contains irrelevant and unnecessary repetitions, vehement expressions which may act against me, and sentences opposed to the new laws, which I do not know. But since it proceeds on the truth, for the sake of the truth the faults should be disregarded. This petition and defence speech is based on nine principles.
The First:
Since in accordance with the republic’s principle of freedom of conscience, the government of the republic does not interfere with the irreligious and dissipated, it certainly should not interfere with the religious and righteous; and since no irreligious nation can continue in existence, and with regard to religion Asia does not conform to Europe, and an irreligious Muslim does not resemble any other person without religion; and since no sort of progress or civilization can take the place of religion, or righteousness, or the learning of the truths of belief in particular, which are the innate need of the people of this country, who for a thousand years have illumined the world with their religion and heroically preserved their firmness of faith in the face of the assaults of the whole world, and cannot be made to forget that need; surely no government of this nation in this country can intervene in the Risale‑i Nur in respect of justice and the law and public order.
Second Principle:
Since it is one thing to reject something and something quite different not to act in accordance with it; and all governments have fierce opponents; and there were Muslims under Zoroastrian rule and Jews and Christians under the Islamic government of the Caliph ‘Umar; and all those who do not cause trouble to the government or disturb public order have personal freedom, and this may not be curtailed, and governments look to the hand and not to the heart; and since those who want to upset public order and the administration and interfere in politics will doubtless concern themselves with the newspapers and current affairs in order to learn about the movements, situations, and events that will assist them so they make no false moves; and since the Risale‑i Nur so restrains its students that as my close friends know, for twenty‑five years it has made me give up reading the newspapers and even asking about them or being curious and thinking about them; and since for ten years now I have withdrawn from social life to such an extent that apart from the German defeat and the spread of communism I have heard no news about what is happening in the world and the current situation; certainly and without doubt no one can attack me and my brothers like me on grounds of governmental wisdom, the laws of politics, and principles of justice; and if they do, it is bound to be due to delusions, or out of hatred or obduracy.
Third Principle:
I am obliged to give the following lengthy details because of the meaningless and unnecessary objections of the public prosecutor of the former court, which he made due to a misunderstanding concerning not the law, but his bigoted love of a certain dead person.
Firstly: Before it fell into the hands of the government, I treated the Fifth Ray as confidential. Moreover, it was not found in any of the searches. Also, its purpose was only to save the ordinary people from doubts concerning their beliefs and from denying allegorical Hadiths. It looks to worldly aspects of the Hadiths only indirectly, in third or fourth place. The predictions it makes are true. Moreover, it does not contest the politicians and worldly; it only makes predictions. Also, it does not specify anyone. It explains in general fashion a true meaning of a Hadith. But they applied that general truth to a fearsome person living in this century. They therefore objected to it, supposing it had been written in recent years. In fact, the original of the treatise was previous to the Darü’l‑Hikmet. But it was set in order some time later, and included in the Risale‑i Nur. It was like this:
Forty years ago, the year before the Proclamation of the Constitution, I came to Istanbul. The Commander‑in-Chief of the Japanese army had asked some questions of the Istanbul ulema at that time. The Istanbul hodjas asked me about them. They asked me many things in that connection.
For instance, they asked me about a Hadith which says: “At the end of time, a fearsome person will rise in the morning and on his forehead will be written: ‘This is an infidel.’” I told them: “This extraordinary person will come to lead this nation; he will rise in the morning, put a [brimmed] hat on his head, and make others wear it.”
After receiving this answer, they asked me: “Won’t those who wear it be infidels?” I said: “They will be made to wear the brimmed hat and be forbidden to prostrate in prayer. But the belief in the heads of those wearing the brimmed hat will make the hat prostrate, and Allah willing, will make it Muslim.”
They then said: “This person will drink water and his hand will be pierced, and it will be known through this that he is the Sufyan.” I said to them in reply: “It is commonly said about someone who is very extravagant that he has a hole in his hand. That is, he cannot hold onto anything; it flows from him and is lost. Thus, this fearsome man will be addicted to rakı, it will make him ill, he will become excessively extravagant and accustom others to being the same.”
Then someone asked: “When he dies, Satan will proclaim loudly to the world from Dikilitaş in Istanbul that so‑and-so has died.” So I said: “The news will be broadcast by telegraph.” However, I heard shortly afterwards that the radio had been invented, and I realized that my answer had not been completely accurate. Eight years later while in the Darü’l-Hikmet, I said: “Satan will broadcast it to the world by radio.”
They then asked me questions about the Barrier of Dhu’l‑Qarnayn, Gog and Magog, the Beast (dābbat al‑arḍ), the Antichrist (Dajjal), and the second coming of Jesus (Upon whom be peace), and I replied to them. In fact the answers are written in part in my old treatises. Some time later, Mustafa Kemal twice summoned me to Ankara by code by means of the former governor of the province of Van, my old friend, Tahsin Bey, in recognition of my published work The Six Steps (Hutuvât‑ı Sitte). I went. Since Shaykh Sanusi did not know Kurdish, it was proposed I should take his place as general preacher of the Eastern Provinces on a salary of three hundred liras. I was also offered a position as a deputy, and my former post together with the other members of the Darü’l‑Hikmet within the Directorate of Religious Affairs. Moreover, being endorsed by one hundred and sixty-three out of two hundred deputies, one hundred and fifty thousand liras were allotted for the Medresetü’z-Zehra, my university in the East, the foundations of which I had laid in Van, and this was accepted. However, since I saw that the predictions of the original of the Fifth Ray were in part realized in a person there, I was compelled to forgo those most important duties. Telling myself that the person could not be opposed or confronted, I gave up the world and politics and the life of society, and dedicated all my time to saving religious belief. However, a number of tyrannical and unjust officials forced me to write two or three treatises which looked to the world.
Later, in connection with some questions asked by some persons about allegorical Hadiths which give news of the events at the end of time, I rearranged that old treatise. It received the name of the Fifth Ray. The Risale‑i Nur is not numbered chronologically. For example, the Thirty‑Third Letter was written before the First Letter, and the original of the Fifth Ray and some other parts were written previously to the Risale‑i Nur itself. Anyway, the illegal, unnecessary, and inaccurate objections and questions of a public prosecutor, asked out of bigoted love of Mustafa Kemal, forced me to provide these explanations outside the subject. I am giving here as an example some of the entirely personal and unlawful things he said in the name of the law.
He said: “Aren’t you sincerely sorry that you insulted him in the Fifth Ray with expressions like ‘swilling down rakı and wine like a water pump’?” I say in reply to the completely meaningless and mistaken bigotry arising from his love: “The victory and honour of the heroic army cannot be ascribed to him; he can have only a share of it; like it would be tyrannical and an awesome injustice if the booty, possessions, and rations of an army were all given to its commander.
Yes, just as he accused me of not loving that unjust and extremely faulty man, quite simply accusing me of being a traitor, so I accuse him of not loving the army, for he ascribes all its honour and moral booty to the man he loves, depriving the army of all glory. The reality is that positive things, and instances of good and virtue, should be distributed among the community and army, and the negative things, destruction, and faults ascribed to the chief. For the existence of something is dependent on the existence of all its conditions and elements, and the commander is only one of the conditions. While the non‑existence of the thing and its falling apart, occurs through the non-existence of one of its conditions and one of its elements being spoilt and destroyed. Instances of good and virtues for the most part are positive and pertain to existence. The leaders cannot lay claim to them. Instances of bad and faults are destructive and pertain to non-existence, and the leaders are answerable for them. While the reality is thus, just as if a tribe is mocked if, when it wins victories Hasan Ağa is applauded, and when it is defeated it is blamed, and this is judged to be the reverse of the truth; in just the same way, in the name of the court the public prosecutor imputed a fault to me that was completely the reverse of the truth and reality.
Similarly to his mistake, a little previously to the Great War while I was in Van, a number of religious, Allah‑fearing persons came to me. They told me: “Some of the military commanders act contrarily to religion. Come and join us, we are going to rebel against them.”
I told them: “Bad conduct and irreligion like that is particular to commanders like them; the army cannot be held responsible for it. There are perhaps a hundred thousand saints in the Ottoman Army; I shall not draw my sword against it. I will not join you.”
They left me, drew their swords, and the fruitless Bitlis Incident occurred. A short time later war broke out. The army took part in it in the name of religion; it entered the jihad, and a hundred thousand martyrs from it rose to the degree of sainthood. They confirmed what I had said, signing the decrees for their sainthood with their blood.
Anyway, I was compelled to relate this at some length. The extraordinary attitude of a public prosecutor who acted derisively towards myself and the Risale‑i Nur due to unimportant, mistaken feelings and partiality, in the name of justice, one incontrovertible mark of which is imperviousness to all feelings and outside influences, drove me to make this long statement.
Fourth Principle:
After scrutinizing for four months hundreds of copies of treatises and letters, Eskişehir Court could only give sentences of six months to fifteen men out of one hundred and twenty, and one year to myself for fifteen words in one or two treatises out of a hundred. They acquitted us of founding a Sufi order and organizing a political society and in the hat question. We anyway had served the sentence. Then in Kastamonu they found nothing in numerous searches. And a number of years ago in Isparta all the parts of the Risale‑i Nur without exception, both confidential and otherwise, fell into the hands of the authorities. They were all returned to their owners after three months of scrutiny. A few years later, all the parts of the Risale‑i Nur remained for two years in the courts of Denizli and Ankara, then they were all returned to us. Since that is the fact, those who accuse myself and the Risale‑i Nur students emotionally, maliciously, and unlawfully in the name of the law like him, are accusing before us both Eskişehir Court, and Denizli Court, and Ankara Criminal Court, making them partners in our crime, if there is one. For if we had been guilty, those three or four authorities did not see it despite their close scrutiny or they disregarded it, and two courts did not see it having studied it minutely for two years, or they disregarded it, which makes them more guilty than us. However, if we had had any desire to interfere in the world, it would not have been with the buzzing of a fly, it would have exploded and boomed like a cannon.
Yes, anyone who accuses of political intrigue a person who defended himself vehemently and without restraint in the military court after the Thirty‑First of March Incident and in the Speaker’s office in the face of Mustafa Kemal’s anger, saying he was hatching his schemes for eighteen years without allowing anyone to detect it, surely does so for some malicious purpose. We are hopeful that like the Denizli public prosecutor, the Afyon public prosecutor will save us from the malice and accusations of such people and demonstrate true justice.
Fifth Principle:
A fundamental principle of the Risale‑i Nur students is that as far as is possible they do not interfere in politics, or matters of administration, or government activities, because for them, working seriously for the Qur’an is worth everything, and is sufficient.
Also, no one who enters politics, among the overwhelming currents that now prevail, can preserve his independence and sincerity. He is bound to become subject to one of the currents, and it will exploit him for worldly ends. It will corrupt the sacredness of his duty. Also, in the material struggle, due to the utter tyranny and despotism that is the rule this century, he would have to crush numerous innocent supporters of a person because of the error that person had made. He would otherwise be defeated. It would also seem in the view of those who had given up their religion for the world, or who exploited it, that the Qur’an’s sacred truths, which can be the tool of nothing, were being exploited for political propaganda. Also, every class of people, supporters and opposers, officials and common people, should have a share of those truths and all are in need of them. The Risale‑i Nur students have therefore to avoid politics and the material struggle completely, and not be in any way involved in them, so that they may remain completely impartial.
Sixth Principle:
The Risale‑i Nur should not be attacked in this matter because of my personal faults or those of some of my brothers. It is bound directly to the Qur’an, and the Qur’an is bound to the supreme throne. Who has the ability to stretch out his hand and unfasten it? Also, as is indicated by thirty‑three Qur’anic verses, Imam ‘Ali’s (May Allah be pleased with him) three miraculous prophecies and the certain pronouncements of Gawth al-A‘zam (May his mystery be sanctified), the Risale‑i Nur has performed an extraordinary service for this country and is a source of material plenty and spiritual effulgence for it, and cannot therefore be held responsible for our petty, personal faults, and it should not be held responsible. Otherwise both material and spiritual loss will be caused to this country which it will impossible to repair.
Allah willing, the assaults and diabolical machinations against the Risale‑i Nur of the atheists hostile to us will be foiled, for its students cannot be compared with others, they cannot be scattered nor be made to give it up; through Allah’s grace, they will not be defeated. If the Qur’an had not prohibited them from physical defence… those students, who are everywhere and have won public favour, which is like the life‑blood of this nation, would never get involved in petty, fruitless incidents like the Shaykh Said and Menemen incidents. If, Allah forbid, they were persecuted to the point they were compelled and the Risale‑i Nur attacked, the atheists and dissemblers who deceive the government would regret it a thousand times over.
In Short: Since we do not interfere in the worlds of the worldly, they should not interfere in our work for the hereafter and our service of religious belief.
I am relating here by way of defence an old memory and Pleasant Anecdote that was neither divulged in Eskişehir Court, nor written in the official records, nor included in my defence speeches.
They asked me there: “What do you think about the republic?” I replied: “As my biography which you have in your hands proves, I was a religious republican before any of you, with the exception of the chairman of the court, was born. A summary is this: like now, I was living at that time in seclusion in a remote tomb. They used to bring me soup and I would give breadcrumbs to the ants. I used to eat my bread having dipped it in the soup. They asked me about it and I told them: the ant and bee nations are republicans. I give the breadcrumbs to the ants out of respect for their republicanism.”
Then they said to me: “You are opposing the righteous early generations of Islam.”
I told them in reply: “The four Rightly‑Guided Caliphs were both caliphs and presidents of the republic. For sure, Abu Bakr the Veracious (May Allah be pleased with him) was like a president of the republic for the Ten Promised Paradise, and the Companions of the Prophet (UWBP). But it was not jusut an empty name and title, they were heads of a religious republic which bore the meaning of true justice and freedom in accordance with the Shari‘a.”
I told them: Mr. Prosecutor and Members of the Court! You are accusing me of holding an idea opposite to that which I have held for fifty years. If you ask me about the secular republic, what I understand by it is that secular (laic) means to be impartial; that is, a government which, in accordance with the principle of freedom of conscience, does not interfere with the religiously‑minded and pious, the same as it does not interfere with the irreligious and dissipated. I withdrew from political and social life twenty-five years ago, and what form the government of the republic has taken, I do not know. If, I seek refuge with Allah the Most High, it has assumed a fearsome form whereby, on account of irreligion, it passes and accepts laws to incriminate those who work for their belief and lives in the hereafter, then I announce to you fearlessly and warn you that:
If I had a thousand lives, I would be ready to sacrifice all of them for belief and life in the hereafter. Do whatever you will! My last word is For us Allah suffices, and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs! In response to your wrongfully condemning me to capital punishment or hard labour, I say: as the Risale‑i Nur has discovered and shown with absolute certainty, I am not being executed; I am being discharged and departing for the world of light and happiness. As for you, our covert enemies, wretches who oppress us on account of misguidance! Since I know you are condemned to eternal extinction and everlasting solitary confinement, and I have seen this, I have taken my revenge on you totally, and am ready to surrender up my spirit with a perfectly easy mind!
Seventh Principle:
In consequence of superficial investigations held in other places, Afyon Court looked on us as a political society. My reply is this:
Firstly: As is testified to by all those who have befriended me, I have read no newspaper for nineteen years, nor listened to one, nor asked about one, and for the past ten years five months have received no news except about the German defeat and the terror of communism, and I have not been curious, and have not known. Such a person surely has no connection whatsoever with politics, and no relations with any political society.
Secondly: The one hundred and thirty parts of the Risale‑i Nur are there for all to see. Understanding that they contained no worldly goal and no aim other than the truths of belief, Eskişehir Court did not object to them with the exception of one or two of the parts, and Denizli Court objected to none at all, and despite being under constant surveillance for eight years the large Kastamonu police force could find no one to charge apart from my two assistants and three others, and those charges were merely pretexts. This is a decisive proof that the students of the Risale‑i Nur are in no way a political society.
If what is intended by “society” in the indictment is a community concerned with religious belief and the hereafter, in reply we say this: If the name community is given to university students and tradesmen, it may also be applied to us.
But if you call us a community that is going to breach internal security by exploiting religious feelings, in response we say: In no place over a period of twenty years in these stormy times Risale‑i Nur students have breached internal security or disturbed public order, and no such incident has been recorded by either the government or any court; this fact refutes this accusation. If the name community is given meaning it might breach internal security in the future through strengthening religious feelings, we say this:
Firstly, foremost the Directorate of Religious Affairs, and all preachers, perform the same service.
Secondly, it is not disturbing the peace and breaching security, the students of the Risale‑i Nur protect the nation from anarchy with all their strength and conviction, and maintain public order and guard security. The evidence for this has been cited in the First Principle.
Yes, we are a community, and our aim and programme is to save firstly ourselves and then our nation from eternal annihilation and everlasting solitary confinement in the Intermediate Realm, and to protect our compatriots from anarchy and lawlessness, and to protect ourselves with the firm truths of the Risale‑i Nur against atheism, which is the means to destroying our lives in this world and in the next.
Eighth Principle:
Saying its treatises contain some sharp expressions, they accuse us as a result of deficient and superficial study of the Risale‑i Nur carried out in other places. In reply I say this:
since our aim is belief and the hereafter, it is not confrontation with the worldly. And since the sharpness particular to these very insignificant one or two treatises was not intentional – we bumped against the worldly while advancing towards our goal – it certainly does not infer political prejudice. And since possibilities are one thing and occurrences are something else, and what we have been accused of is “possibly” disturbing public order, not having disturbed it, it is meaningless, for anyone may kill someone else. And since over a period of twenty years in their scrupulous investigations into twenty thousand people and thousands of copies and letters, and in their searches, neither Eskişehir, nor Kastamonu, nor Isparta, nor Denizli could find anything constituting a real crime, Eskişehir Court was compelled to find us guilty because of one short treatise under one article of an elastic law, and could only give six‑month sentences to fifteen people out of a hundred in such a way that they should have sentenced all who teach religion. I wonder if the twenty confidential letters one of your people had written over a year were scrutinized, wouldn’t they contain twenty incriminating sentences which would shame him? But the fact that in twenty thousand copies of the treatises and letters from twenty thousand people they could not find twenty truly incriminating sentences shows that the Risale‑i Nur’s aim is solely the hereafter. It has no business with this world.
Ninth Principle:
As with the matters which Denizli Court’s just prosecutor included in the indictment because of the unfair and superficial records of other places, so with Afyon Court – as indicated by what we experienced while being questioned – pretexts have been made so that we have been charged concerning the same matters, and undated letters, and correspondence over twenty, fifteen, and ten years, and the Fifth Ray – decisive answers about which are found in the Third Principle above and in the Second Question of my petition above – and four or five treatises out of the hundred and thirty of the Risale‑i Nur, and a number of letters and treatises which were scrutinized by Eskişehir Court and for which the sentences were served, were later covered by the pardon and were acquitted by Denizli Court. Can it be said about someone who with a speech outside the War Ministry during the Thirty‑First of March Incident brought to order eight battalions which had not heeded the Şeyhülislam and ulema, that he strove for eight years – as stated by the police report – and only succeeded in deceiving twenty or thirty people? For instance, in the large town of Kastamonu he was able to hoodwink only five people? For during the Denizli affair, in Kastamonu they pulled out all my papers and books, both confidential and otherwise, from under the firewood, and after studying them for three months could find no one in that large town other than Feyzi, Emin, Hilmi, Tevfik, and Sâdık. Because Feyzi and the others had performed some personal services for me for Allah’s sake, they sent them to prison, together with the three brothers and three or four others they found in Emirdağ, who had assisted me for three and a half years. If I had done what that superficial report stated, I would have deceived not five or ten people but five hundred or perhaps five thousand, or even five hundred thousand. As in Denizli Court I pointed out the many errors in the police reports, so too here I am pointing out one or two examples:
They accused us of “corrupting religion” because, following an Islamic custom practised since the age of the Prophet, I had compiled a Hizb al‑Qur’ani like a large An‘am out of the hundreds of well‑known verses which form the sources of the Risale‑i Nur.
Also, they want to incriminate us by showing that the Treatise on Islamic Dress (Tesettür Risalesi) was written and published this year, whereas I have already served a year’s sentence for it, and I treated it as confidential, and as noted in the police report, it was pulled out from under piles of firewood. Also, although the well‑known person did not respond and was silent in the face of the objections and harsh words I said to him in the Speaker’s office in the Assembly in Ankara, with gross exaggeration the prosecution applied to him literally the natural, necessary, general, and confidential criticisms in my explanations of forty years previously concerning a Hadith which describes his errors, after his death, making it into an indictable offence for us. Can there be any comparison between the sake or memory of someone who is dead and gone and who no longer has any connection with the government, and Allah the Most High’s laws of justice, which are a manifestation of His sovereignty?
Also, freedom of conscience which, of the principles adopted by the government of the republic, is the one we have most relied on and defended ourselves with, has been made something we have transgressed against, as though we are opposed to it.
Also, because I criticised the evils and faults of civilization, unimaginable things are ascribed to me in the police reports: as though I do not accept the use of the radio, aeroplane and railway, they accuse me of being opposed to modern progress.
Making a comparison with these examples, Allah willing, like the just and fair Denizli public prosecutor, Afyon Court will show how contrary to justice this treatment is, and will attach no importance to the delusions in those police reports.
The strangest error is this: in one place I said: although humankind should have responded with endless thanks to Allah the Most High’s supreme bounties of the aeroplane, railway, and radio, they did not, so He rained down bombs on their heads from the ’planes. The radio is also a supreme bounty, and thanks for it may be shown by making it a universal reciter of the Qur’an with millions of tongues, allowing all the people on the face of the earth to listen to it. Also, I said when explaining in the Twentieth Word that the Qur’an makes predictions about the future wonders of civilization, that one of its verses indicates that the infidels will defeat the Islamic world with the railway. Although I had urged Islam to lay hold of these wonders, some of the prosecutors in previous courts, accused us of being against modern progress, and made the aeroplane, railway, and radio the basis of charges against us.
Also, although it is completely unrelated, someone said about the name Risaletü’n‑Nur, which is a second name of the Risale‑i Nur, that “it is a message (risalet) from the light of the Qur’an, that is, it is inspired by it, and is an heir performing the function of divine messengership, of the Shari‘a.” In another place in the indictment, it was given the wrong meaning and made the basis of other charges, as though I had said: “the Risale‑i Nur is a divine messenger (resûl)."
I have also proved with decisive arguments in twenty places in my defence speeches that even if it were for the whole world, we would not exploit either religion, or the Qur’an, or the Risale‑i Nur, and they may not be exploited, and that we would not change one of their truths for rule over the whole world, and that is how we are in fact. There have been thousands of indications of what I claim over the last twenty years. But from the way the interrogations at Afyon are going, and its indictment, we are being accused due to other police reports of expending all our efforts on worldly intrigues, and hastening to the hateful games of this world, and making religion the tool of lowly things and degrading its sacredness, and making these our aim. Since it is thus, with all my strength I say: For us Allah suffices, and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs!
Said Nursi