To the Judges of the Court of Appeal
Again they did not permit me to speak in the session held to discuss the possible quashing by the Appeal Court of Afyon Court’s unjust decision concerning us. They made us listen to a third severe indictment. They also did not allow anyone to come to help me with writing. Despite my poor handwriting and my being ill, I am presenting this complaint to your court – which has acted justly towards us twice previously – as a supplement to my petition concerning the appeal.
In His Name, be He glorified!
A petition to the supreme tribunal of the resurrection; and a complaint to the divine court; the Appeal Court of the present should also listen as well as coming generations and the enlightened future teachers and students of the universities. Of the hundreds of torments and calamities I have suffered these twenty‑three years, I am setting ten before the court of justice of the All-Glorious Sovereign together with my complaints.
The First:
Despite my faults, I have dedicated my life to this nation’s happiness and the saving of its religious belief. Saying, let my head too be sacrificed for a truth, that is, the truth of the Qur’an, for which millions of heroic heads have been sacrificed, I worked with the Risale‑i Nur with all my strength. Through divine assistance, I persisted in the face of all the cruel torments. I did not withdraw.
For Example: One instance of the exceedingly cruel treatment I have received during my trial and imprisonment in Afyon: although three times, and every time for nearly two hours, they forced myself and the innocent Risale‑i Nur students, who were awaiting solace from justice, to listen to the slanderous, malicious indictments, they did not allow us more than one or two minutes to defend our rights, despite my repeated requests for five or ten minutes.
I have been kept for twenty months in total isolation, with only one or two of my friends being permitted to visit me for three or four hours. For only a small part of my defence speeches did I have anyone to help me with the writing. Then they were forbidden as well, and punished exceedingly brutally. They compelled us to listen to the prosecutor’s biased indictment, which was like water gathered from a thousand streams, and which I proved contained eighty‑one errors in fifteen pages arising from twisted meanings and slander and lies. They did not permit me to speak. If they had permitted me, I would have said:
Although as required by freedom of thought and freedom of conscience, you do not interfere with Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians, and particularly now with anarchists, apostates, and dissemblers, hiding behind the screen of communism, who both deny your religion, and insult your forefathers accusing them of misguidance, and accept neither your Prophet (UWBP) nor the laws of the Qur’an; and although through the Qur’an’s instruction millions of Muslims in the lands and under the rule of an imperious, bigoted Christian state like Britain, reject all the false beliefs and infidel rules of the English, their courts do not interfere with them; and although opponents of all governments openly publish their ideas without those governments bothering them; and although both the Isparta authorities, and Denizli Court, and Ankara Criminal Court, and the Directorate of Religious Affairs, and the Appeal Court twice, no, three times, have all scrutinized these forty years of my life, and my one hundred and thirty treatises, and my most private treatises and letters, and they had in their possession for two or three years all the copies of the Risale‑i Nur, confidential and otherwise, yet they could not show a single matter necessitating the smallest penalty; and although despite the fact I am extremely weak, oppressed, defeated, and am enduring the harshest conditions, our innocence has been proved by the Risale‑i Nur collections you hold as well as our four‑hundred-page defence, which have been shown to be a most powerful, sound, and veracious guide for two hundred thousand true and devoted students benefiting this country, nation, and public security; – in spite of all these, under which law, what conscience, what good, what crime do you convict us, contemptuously giving us the harshest sentences and severest solitary confinement? Certainly you shall be questioned about this at the Last Judgement.
The Second:
One reason they put forward for punishing me was my expounding the Qur’an’s explicit verses about veiling, inheritance, recitation of the divine names, and polygamy, written to silence those who object to them in the name of civilization.
Fifteen years ago I wrote the following piece to Eskişehir Court and the Appeal Court, which was also included in the court’s decision. I repeat the piece as a complaint to the supreme tribunal at the Last Judgement, and as a warning to the enlightened teachers of the future, and together with The Shining Proof (Elhüccetü’z‑Zehrâ) as a sort of addition to my petition to the Appeal Court, which twice has acted fairly in acquitting me and has listened to my cry for justice, and to the committee of judges who did not permit me to speak and due to the malicious indictment which I proved contained eighty errors, convicted me to two year’s hard labour and solitary confinement together with two year’s further exile elsewhere under close surveillance: I say this that if there is any justice on the face of the earth, the Appeal Court will quash this decision which convicts someone who expounded Qur’anic verses which in each century for one thousand three hundred and fifty years have acted as sacred, true divine principles in the social life of three hundred and fifty million Muslims, and expounded them relying on the consensus and affirmation of three hundred and fifty thousand Qur’anic commentaries and following the beliefs of our forefathers for one thousand three hundred years.
Is it not a denial of Islam and a betrayal of our millions of religious and heroic forefathers to convict, because he expounded those verses, someone who according to reason and learning does not accept certain European laws applied temporarily due to certain requirements of the times and who has given up politics and withdrawn from social life, and is it not to insult millions of Qur’anic commentaries?
The Third:
One reason they cited for our conviction was breaching security and disturbing public order. Putting forward the remotest possibility, one in a hundred or even a thousand, in place of actual events, and attaching the wrong meanings to forty to fifty words from some confidential treatises and private letters out of the hundred thousand words and sentences of the Risale‑i Nur, they present these as evidence, and accusing us want to have us punished.
Calling to witness those who have known my life these thirty to forty years and the thousands of select (hâs) students of the Risale‑i Nur, I say: to accuse of disturbing public order someone who, – at a time the commander of the British occupation forces in Istanbul was sowing discord among Muslims, even deceiving the Şeyhülislam and some leading men of religion and inciting the Committee of Union and Progress and the Freedom and Accord Party to struggle against each other, thus paving the way for the Greek victory and defeat of the National Movement, – foiled that insidious plan of the commander by printing and publishing through the efforts of Eşref Edib his work The Six Steps (Hutuvat‑ı Sitte) against the British and Greeks, not retreating even in the face of threat of execution; who did not flee to Ankara even when summoned because of the above service by the leaders there; who attached no importance when a prisoner‑of-war to the Russian commander-in-chief’s order for his execution; who with a speech during the Thirty-First of March Incident induced eight regiments to obey their officers; and in the Military Court, disregarding the threat of execution said in reply to the presiding pashas’ questions of: “You too are a reactionary, you too wanted the Shari‘a?”, “If constitutionalism consists of one party’s despotism, then let all men and jinn witness that I am a reactionary and ready to sacrifice my very soul for a single matter of the Shari‘a,” causing those high‑ranking officers to appreciate and admire him, and while expecting his execution, they decided on his acquittal, then on being released, he did not thank them but went on his way shouting: “Long live Hell for all tyrants!”; and as is written in the decision of Afyon Court, when Mustafa Kemal angrily said to him in the office of the Speaker of the Assembly: “We summoned you here so you would tell us of your elevated ideas, but you came and wrote some things about the five daily prayers and sowed conflict among us,” he replied:
“After belief, the obligatory prayers are the most elevated question. Those who do not perform the prayers are traitors, and the pronouncements of traitors are to be rejected;” who said this in the presence of forty to fifty deputies, and forced that fearsome commander to swallow his anger and make a sort of apology; and in connection with whom not one matter has been recorded by the police and authorities of six provinces connected with the disturbance of public order; and among whose hundreds of thousands of students not the smallest incident has been witnessed (apart from one insignificant incident concerning a rightful defence in which one unimportant student was involved); in connection with none of whose students any crime has been heard; and whichever prison he has been sent to has there reformed the other prisoners; and as testified to by these twenty‑three years of his life and three provincial authorities and three courts acquitting him and a hundred thousand of his students, who know the value of the Risale‑i Nur, affirming it verbally and by action, despite hundreds of thousands of copies of it being distributed throughout the country, the Risale‑i Nur has produced only benefits and caused no harm; and who is a recluse, single, a stranger, elderly, poor, and sees himself at the door of the grave; and who with all his strength has given up transitory things, and has sought ways of atoning for his former sins and making his life eternal, and attaches not the slightest importance to worldly rank, and who, so that no harm will come to the innocent and the elderly, out of his compassion does not curse those who torment and torture him; – those who say about such a man: “This old recluse disturbs the peace and breaches public security; his aims are the intrigues of this world, and his correspondence is for this world, in which case he is guilty” and who convict him under such severe conditions are surely themselves guilty from the ground to the heavens, and they shall give their account at the Last Judgement!
Can it be said about a man who with a speech induced eight mutinying regiments to obey their officers, and with a single article persuaded thousands of people to support him, and was not frightened before the three above‑mentioned formidable commanders, and did not fawn to them, and in courts of law declared: “If I had heads to the number of hairs on my head and every day one was cut off, I would not surrender to atheism and misguidance and betray my country and nation and Islam; I would not bow this head before tyrants, for it has been dedicated to the Qur’an,” and was concerned with no one in Emirdağ apart from five or ten brothers of the hereafter and three or four servants – could it be said about such a man, as it does in the indictment: “This Said was working secretly in Emirdağ; he poisoned the minds of some of the people giving them the idea of disturbing the peace; twenty men gathered round him and wrote private letters praising him, which shows that he was hatching a revolt and was involved in covert politics against the government”? I refer it to your consciences to understand just how far from right, justice, and fairness those who torment him have deviated by, with unprecedented animosity and hatred, throwing him into prison for two years, in solitary confinement, and by not allowing him to speak in court.
Is it at all possible that someone who has received public attention a hundred times greater than is his due, and brought thousands of men to obedience with one speech, and induced thousands of people to join the İttihad‑ı Muhammedî Society with one newspaper article, and made fifty thousand people listen admiringly to his address in Aya Sophia Mosque – that such a man should work at it for three years in Emirdağ and deceive only five or ten people, and fill his grave, which he is approaching, with unnecessary darkness rather than with light? Is it at all possible that he should do this? Satan himself could not make anyone accept it!
The Fourth
Is their citing my not wearing the brimmed hat as an important reason for my conviction. They did not allow me to speak, otherwise I would have said this to those who were trying to punish me:
I stayed as a guest for three months in the police station in Kastamonu. At no time did they say to me: “Wear the brimmed hat!” And although in three courts of law I did not wear the hat and did not remove my own headgear, they did not interfere with me. And on that pretext for twenty‑three years a number of irreligious tyrants have inflicted a very distressing and severe penalty on me unofficially. And children, women, villagers, officials in their offices, and those who wear the beret are not compelled to wear the hat. And there is no physical benefit in wearing it. Yet because of their fabrications and allegations a recluse like myself has paid a twenty-year penalty for not wearing headgear that all the mujtahids and Şeyhülislams have prohibited. Those people who are trying to have me punished again because of a meaningless custom related to dress, and with force, repetition, and insistence to have me found guilty because of my dress – despite, saying there is personal freedom, their comparing to themselves those who drink rakı in public in Ramadan during the day and do not perform the obligatory prayers, and not bothering them – surely after suffering the everlasting extinction of death and perpetual solitary confinement of the grave, at the Last Judgement they will be questioned concerning this error.
The Fifth:
Anyone who has heard this third indictment and seen the judgement that we published will confirm that on pretexts as flimsy as a fly’s wing, they are trying to confiscate some of the treatises of the Risale‑i Nur, which is alluded to favourably by thirty‑three Qur’anic verses, was applauded by such saints as Imam ‘Ali (May Allah exalt him) and Gawth al-A‘zam (May his mystery be sanctified), is affirmed by a hundred thousand believers, and in twenty years has won a highly beneficial rank for this nation and country without causing any harm. Even, making a pretext two pages about two correct explanations of two verses, which were written long ago and have been covered by pardons, it was even the cause of the four-hundred-page Zülfikâr and The Miracles of Muhammad (Mu’cizat‑ı Ahmediye) being seized, which has strengthened and saved the belief of a hundred thousand people and is extremely beneficial and valuable. And now, giving the wrong meaning to one or two words out of a thousand, they are trying to have that infinitely useful treatise seized. As for us, we say: For every calamity, we belong to Allah, and to Him is our return. ❋ For us Allah suffices, and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs.
The Sixth:
To those who deem me guilty of a crime because some of the Risale‑i Nur students have seen the wondrous proofs of the Risale‑i Nur and profited from its irrefutable teachings about belief, which are at the degree of knowledge of certainty, and as encouragement, congratulations, appreciation, and gratitude, praise me excessively and have an over‑favourable opinion of me, I say this:
At a time I was a powerless, weak, semi‑literate, lonely exile subject to derogatory propaganda designed to scare the people away from me, I found for myself some of the cures of the Qur’an and its sacred truths related to belief which were a perfect remedy for my ills. Then concluding that they were also just the medicine for this nation and the sons of this land, I wrote them down. Since I have very poor handwriting and was much in need of assistants, divine grace sent me loyal and staunch helpers.
If I had completely rejected their good opinion of me and sincere praise and offended them by rebuking them it would have been like contempt for and hostility towards those lights taken from the treasury of the Qur’an. Thinking too it would cause those diamond‑penned stout-hearted assitants to leave me, I directed their praise and applause for my bankrupt person to the Risale‑i Nur, a miracle of the Qur’an to which in truth the praise is due, and to the collective personality of its leading students. But I did offend them in a way by saying that they were affording me a share a hundred times greater than my due. Could any law impute guilt to a man because others praise him although he eschews it and is not happy at it? For this is what the officials are doing, who act in the name of the law.
It was written on page fifty‑four of the court’s judgement, which was written against us but which we published: “That great person of the end of time will be a descendant of the Prophet (UWBP), and we students of the Risale‑i Nur can be considered to be members of the Prophet’s Family only in meaning. Also, there can be no egotism of any sort in the way of the Risale‑i Nur, nor any wish for position and personal rank, or fame and renown. Even if I were offered high rank in the hereafter, I would feel myself compelled to refuse it in order not to damage the sincerity of the /Risale‑i Nur."
And on pages twenty‑two and three it is written: “Knowing one’s faults and realizing one’s poverty and impotence, and humbly seeking refuge at the divine court; with that personality I know myself to be more wretched, impotent, and faulty than everyone. So even if all the people praised and lauded me, they could not make me believe that I am someone good, of high spiritual and moral rank. Lest I frighten you off, I shall not tell you the many secret ills and bad characteristics of my third, true, personality. Out of His grace, Allah the Most High employs this personality in the mysteries of the Qur’an like a lowly private soldier. Endless thanks be to Allah. The soul is lower than everything, and the duty higher.” Despite all this being written in the court judgement, they find me guilty of being called a supreme guide due to the praises of others, which in fact refer to the Risale‑i Nur, and are thus deserving of paying an awesome penalty due to the error.
The Seventh:
Although Denizli Court and Ankara Criminal Court and the Appeal Courts unanimously acquitted us and all the treatises of the Risale‑i Nur and returned them and our letters to us, and they said “Even if the Appeal Court’s decision to quash the decision and Denizli’s acquittal were wrong, since they have been made final, the case cannot be retried,” I was sent to Emirdağ, where I spent three years as a recluse. There, so long as there was no necessity, I spoke only with the two or three tailor apprentices who were assisting me, and rarely, for five or ten minutes with certain religiously‑minded people. I wrote no letters other than once a week to one place as encouragement in the Risale‑i Nur, and wrote only three letters in three years to my Mufti brother. I gave up writing pieces, which I had been doing for twenty to thirty years, except for two points, twenty pages in length, which were useful for the people of the Qur’an and for belief. One was about the wisdom in the repetitions in the Qur’an, and the other, about the angels; I wrote no other treatise. Only, I gave permission for the treatises which the courts had returned to be made into large collections, and since five hundred copies of The Supreme Sign, which had been printed in the old letters, had been handed over to us by the court, and since duplicating machines were not officially banned, I gave permission to my brothers to duplicate them so they could be published for the benefit of the Islamic world, and I busied myself with correcting them. I was certainly not concerned with politics in any way. Moreover, although official permission had been given for us to return to our native region, contrary to all the other exiles I accepted the hardship of exile in order not to become involved in politics and the world, and did not return. The treatment I have received these last twenty months proves that the person who is trying in this third indictment to find such a man guilty by means of the baseless accusations, lies, and misinterpretations is ruled by two fearsome meanings. But I shall not utter them for now. What I do say is this: the grave and Hell are sufficient, and I refer it to the Last Judgement.
The Eighth:
Since the Fifth Ray was returned to us after remaining for two years in the hands of Denizli and Ankara Courts, it was added at the end of the large collection called The Illuminating Lamp together with my defence, which had led to our acquittal in Denizli Court. For sure, previously we had held it to be confidential, but since the courts had advertised it and returned it after acquitting us, I permitted its duplication seeing that it was thus harmless. The original of the Fifth Ray was about allegorical Hadiths and was written thirty to forty years ago. For sure some Hadith scholars stated that some of the Hadiths that were well‑known by the Umma were dubious, but since it was their apparent meanings that had been objected to, the piece was written solely to save the believers from doubting them. Then since some time later some of its wondrous interpretations became clear for all to see, I held it to be confidential so that it should not be given the wrong meaning. Then numerous courts studied it minutely, and together with publicizing it, returned it to us. So I refer it to the consciences of those who have convicted us arbitrarily to see just how far it is from justice, right, and fairness to now again find us guilty because of it. And saying, For us Allah suffices, and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs, I refer them to the Last Judgement.
The Ninth:
This is very important, but since those who have convicted us have studied the Risale‑i Nur, I have not written it so as not to upset them.
The Tenth:
This is powerful and important, but again so as not to offend them, I have not written it for now.
Said Nursi,who is being held in absolute solitary confinement