In His Name, be He glorified!
A Supplement to My Objections to the Indictment
[Those addressed by these objections are not Denizli Court and the public prosecutor, but the malicious, suspicious officials, chiefly the Isparta and ‹nebolu prosecutors, who with their false and inaccurate records, were the cause of the extraordinary indictment against us here.]
Firstly: The Risale‑i Nur students, who are innocent and not in any way involved in politics, have unimaginably and on no grounds whatsoever been called a political society, and the unfortunates who have joined that circle and have no aim other than belief and the hereafter, have been considered guilty of being disseminators of that society, or active officers or members of it, or of reading the Risale‑i Nur or teaching it or writing it out, and have been sent to trial. A certain proof of how far this is from the essence of justice is that
although according to the principles of freedom of thought and freedom of study it is not considered a crime to read the harmful works of Doctor Dozy and other atheists hostile to Islam, it is counted a crime for those people needy for the truths of the Qur’an and belief to read and write out the Risale‑i Nur, which teaches those truths as brilliantly as the sun. In addition, only a few sentences from two or three treatises out of hundreds, which we had held to be confidential so that no wrong meaning should be ascribed to them and had not permitted to be published, were made the pretext for our indictment. Whereas with one exception, Eskişehir Court had scrutinized those treatises and seen what they necessitated. As for the exception, I gave an extremely decisive answer to it in both my petition, and my objections to Eskişehir Court, and it was proved in twenty respects that “we hold light, not the club of politics.” Nevertheless, those unfair prosecutors inferred that the three or four sentences in three confidential and unpublished treatises could be extended to the whole Risale‑i Nur, and accused myself and those who read and write the Risale‑i Nur of contesting the government.
I call to witness my close friends and those who meet with me, and I swear that apart from two Presidents, one deputy, and the governor of Kastamonu, for more than ten years, I have not known who the members and ministers of the government are, or its leaders, officials and deputies, and I have not felt the slightest curiosity to find out. Is it at all possible for a person not to know the people he is contesting and not to be curious about them, for him not to know if they are friend or foe, and to attach no importance to finding out? It is clearly understood from this that they are concocting completely baseless pretexts to convict me whatever happens.
Since that is how it is, I say not to the court here, but to those unjust people: I don’t give tuppence for the severest penalty you can inflict on me; it has no importance. For I am seventy years old and at the door of the grave. It is great good fortune for me to exchange one or two years of persecuted, innocent life for the rank of martyrdom. Thanks to the thousands of proofs of the Risale‑i Nur, I believe absolutely certainly that for us death consists of discharge papers. If we are to be executed, one hour’s distress will be the key to eternal happiness and mercy.
But you unjust people who confuse the judiciary on account of atheism and preoccupy the government with us for no reason! Know certainly that you will be condemned to eternal annihilation and everlasting solitary confinement, and tremble! I see you will be made to pay for it many times over. I pity you even.
Yes, death, which has emptied this city a hundred times into the graveyard, certainly has greater demands than life. And people being saved from being executed by it is the most pressing and most important question they face and their most essential and certain need. Even lunatics, therefore, would understand that in the eyes of reality and justice those who accuse on petty pretexts the Risale‑i Nur students, who have found this solution for themselves, and the Risale‑i Nur, which provides it supported by thousands of proofs, themselves become the target of accusation.
There are three matters which deceive these unjust people, leading them to suspect the Risale‑i Nur students are a political society, with which they have absolutely no connection:
The First: Ever since early days, my students have been passionately attached to me, like brothers, and this has given rise to suspicions of a political society.
The Second: Some of the Risale‑i Nur students have acted like the groups within the Islamic community, the same as everywhere and as is permitted by the laws of the republic, and this has been supposed to be a society. But the intention of those three or four students was not some sort of political society, it was purely sincere brotherhood in the service of belief and a solidarity which looks to the hereafter.
The Third: Since those unjust people know themselves to be misguided and lovers of the life of this world, and since they find some of the laws of the land convenient for themselves, they say to themselves: “Doubtless, Said and his friends are opposed to us and to the laws of the government which are favourable to our civilized illicit passions. They must therefore have a political society which is antagonistic to us.” So I say to them:
You unfortunates! If the world had been eternal and human beings were going to remain in it for ever, and if their duties had consisted only of politics, there might possibly have been some meaning in these slanders of yours. And if I had embarked on this matter for political ends, you would have found not ten sentences in a hundred treatises, but a thousand, to be combative and connected with politics. And if to suppose the impossible, like you we were working with all our strength for worldly aims, pleasures, and politics – which even Satan could not make anyone believe and accept – even if it was thus, since there is nothing these twenty years to suggest this, and the government looks to the hand and not the heart, and all governments have fierce opponents; then still there is nothing with which we can be charged according the laws of justice. My final word is: 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!
Said Nursi