My Dear, Loyal Brothers and Companions in Disaster!
There being blessed scholars, good organizers, and sincerely devoted students among you, I felt firmly confident that you would preserve your unity and solidarity in the face of our powerful, cunning, and numerous enemies. I felt easy and was not preoccupied with you. But it has now become necessary to explain a number of matters.
The First: I was not going to send anything to Ankara, lest it delay your release. But since the court mixed up the treatises that are confidential and those that are not and the old letters and the new, and sent them to Ankara, it was essential to send to those departments The Defences (Müdafaat Risalesi), which supplies extremely powerful replies concerning the confidential treatises, especially the Sufyan and Islamic Dajjal (Antichrist) in the Fifth Ray, and The Fruits of Belief, which smashes the arrogant disbelief arising from naturalist philosophy and its insolent attacks on belief, so that the committee of experts there would not base their judgements on those confidential treatises and rule against us like the first committee.
The Second Point: My Dear Brothers! While writing the reply to your important letter, they gave me the same letter. I had begun the Second Point and it remained unfinished. Now I am completing it, so take note of it.
If this idea is given currency by your useless lawyer, it is doubtless a plan of those who are seeking our conviction, so that like the committee of experts here, the committe in Ankara will take as basic the unpublished confidential treatises, and especially the Fifth Ray, extend them to the whole Risale‑i Nur then confiscate it, and inferring that the matters discussed in the Fifth Ray are what all the wretched students study who read the Risale‑i Nur, have them all convicted due to my crime. The prison governor and assistant prosecutor’s making difficulties for me by preventing me from speaking and confiscating what I have written is a powerful sign that the intention is for Ankara to make the ruling against us before the irrefutable replies of the defences reach there.
The Third Point: In fact, the Chairman of the Court said that day that he was going to send the books, documents, and defences of importance, which would prolong the case, to Ankara. These have certainly arrived by now. If my two well‑set-out and explicatory defence speeches are sent, they may solve the case quickly; it would not be prolonged but expedited, and those with families released. But myself and those like me who have no one, we should not be released but remain in prison, for it is the best place to defend the truths of belief against the atheists and apostates.
Fourth Point: If the Risale‑i Nur is not acquitted and my defence is not taken into consideration, your apparent denial will not save you; we are all bound together because it is all the same question. Only a very few of our friends with a slight connection with us might be saved. Eskişehir Court demonstrated this in fact.
For the past year they have planted spies among us who carefully record the disclosures of simple‑minded and rash students, and have employed every means to wreck us and make us regret our way, and have even mobilized Shaykh Abdülhakim against us. But they have ruined him the same as they have ruined us and Shaykh Abdülbaki and Shaykh Süleyman, who has objected to me from time to time, so your denials to them and your running away will make absolutely no difference to what they think and what they call “discretionary conviction,” just as it made no difference in Eskişehir.
Fifth Point: We have understood certainly through our experiences of both here and Eskişehir that due to it all being the same case, our greatest need is for complete solidarity. Taking offence and being irritable and critical due to the hardships doubles the wretchedness of our plight. Regretably, it was you that I had the most confidence in and trusted most. Sometimes when I feel a twinge of anxiety, I think of Kamil Hodja and Sıddık Hodja from Istanbul and the people in the province of Kastamonu who have displayed an extraordinary loyalty, and my anxiety evaporates. Be careful that the secret organization that promotes absolute disbelief does not infiltrate you. It infiltrated the ward next to me and caused me indescribable torment.
Discuss this among yourselves now without argument; I shall accept your decision. But if in your discussions you take into consideration the possibility that if my defence goes to Ankara and is studied there, the court here may come to a decision about those whose release is possible. Consider too the possibility that those who struggle against us, and who exiled Abdülbaki, Abdülhakim, and Haji Süleyman and made Yeşil Şemsi remain here after he had been officially released, will not release people like Hafız Mehmed and Seyyid Şefik, with their firm adherence to religion and refusal to bow before the dead leader and his picture, and their demonstrating their lack of support for atheism and innovations. You should also take into consideration that it is of the greatest importance that the Risale‑i Nur should emerge from obscurity and in a momentous general question at a time they are contesting themselves in their centres, the hesitant and bewildered people of belief should find the students behind them and should be shown that by not running away the students are bound to an unshakeable and invincible truth. Beware! Take no notice of each other’s faults; have respect instead of feeling angry, and help each other rather than being critical.