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Yes, we are a society and we are a society that every century has had three hundred and fifty million [now one and a half thousand million] members. Every day by the five obligatory prayers, its members demonstrate with complete veneration their attachment to the principles of that sacred society. Through the sacred programme of The believers are but a single brotherhood, they hasten to assist one another with their prayers and spiritual gains. We are members of that sacred, vast society,
and our particular duty is to teach the believers in certain, realized fashion the Qur’anic truths of belief, and save them and ourselves from eternal extinction and everlasting solitary confinement in the Intermediate Realm.
We have absolutely no connection with any worldly, political, scheming society or clandestine group, or the covert organizations concerning which on no grounds whatsover we have been charged; we do not condescend to such things.
If we had had any desire to interfere in worldly affairs, it would not have been with the buzzing of a fly, it would have exploded like the firing of a cannon.
To accuse someone who defended himself vehemently in the Military Court and in the office of the Speaker of the National Assembly in the presence of an angry Mustafa Kemal, of hatching plots for eighteen years without allowing anyone to be aware of it, is certainly due to some grudge or hatred. The Risale‑i Nur should not be attacked in this question 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 Sublime Throne, so who could dare to stretch out his hand there and unfasten those strong ropes?
Moreover, the Risale‑i Nur, whose blessings – material and spiritual – for this country, and its exceptional service, are alluded to by thirty‑three of the Qur’an’s verses, by three predictions of Imam ‘Ali (May Allah be pleased with him), and the certain news of Gawth al-A‘zam (May his mystery be sanctified), may not be held responsible for our petty, personal faults; it cannot be and should not be. Irreparable harm will otherwise come to this country, both material and spiritual.
Allah willing, the aggression and plots against the Risale‑i Nur of some evil‑minded atheists will be foiled, for its students cannot be compared with other people; they cannot be scattered or made to give it up; through Allah’s grace, they will not be defeated. They have won the regard of this nation, as though they were vital for it, and are found everywhere; even if the Qur’an had not prevented them from physical defence, they still would not get involved in minor, fruitless incidents like those of Shaykh Said and Menemen. If, Allah forbid, they were persecuted and the Risale‑i Nur was attacked to the extext they felt compelled, those atheists and dissemblers who hoodwink the government would certainly come to regret it a thousand times over.
In Short: We do not interfere in the world of the worldly, so they should not interfere in our service of belief and in our lives of the hereafter.
PrisonerSaid Nursi
In His Name, be He glorified!
Sirs!
I tell you with certainty that apart from the people here who have no connection or little connection with us and the Risale‑i Nur, I have as many true brothers and loyal friends on the way of truth as you could wish. By reason of the certain discoveries of the Risale‑i Nur, we know with the unshakeable certainty of twice two equalling four that through the mystery of the Qur’an for us death has been transformed from eternal extinction into a discharge from duties, and that for those who oppose us and follow misguidance certain death is either eternal annihilation (if they do not have certain belief in the hereafter), or everlasting, dark solitary confinement (if they believe in the hereafter and take the way of vice and misguidance).
Is there a greater or more important question for humanity in this world than this that it can be a tool for it? I ask you! Since there is not and cannot be, why do you strive against us? In the face of your greatest penalty, we receive our discharge papers to go to the world of light, so we await it with complete fortitude.
But we know as clearly as seeing it, like we see you in this court, that those who reject us and condemn us on behalf of misguidance will in a very short time be condemned to eternal annihilation and solitary confinement and will suffer that awesome punishment, and with our feelings of humanity we earnestly pity them.
I am ready to prove this certain and important fact and also to silence the most stubborn of them. If I was unable to prove it as clearly as daylight, not to that unscholarly, prejuiced committee of scholars who knew nothing of spiritual and moral matters, but to the greatest scholars and philosophers, I would be content with any punishment!
Just as an example, I offer the treatise The Fruits of Belief, which was written for the prisoners on two Fridays and since it explains the principles and bases of the Risale‑i Nur, is like a defence of it. We are working secretly under great difficulties to have this written out in the new letters so as to give it to the departments of government in Ankara. Read it and study it carefully; if your heart (I cannot speak for your soul) does not affirm me, I shall remain silent in the face of whatever insults and torment you inflict on me in the solitary confinement in which I am now held!
In Short: Either leave the Risale‑i Nur completely free, or smash this powerful and irrefutable truth if you can! Up to now, I have not thought of you and your world. And I was not going to think of it, but you forced me, and perhaps even divine determining sent us on this way in order to warn you. As for us, we have resolved to take as our guide the sacred rule, Whoever believes in divine determining is saved from grief, and to meet all our difficulties with patience.
PrisonerSaid Nursi
In His Name, be He glorified!
Saying that we are “corrupting religion,” they have censured us for compiling a Hizb al‑Qur’ani, like a large An‘am, out of hundreds of well‑known verses which are the particular sources of the Risale‑i Nur, although this is an Islamic custom that has been practised since the time of the Prophet (UWBP).
They also want to convict us in connection with the Treatise on Islamic Dress, for which I have already served a year’s sentence, and which was being treated as confidential, and as recorded in the police report, was pulled out from under the firewood – they want to show that it was written and published this year.
Also, I said strong words to the person (Mustafa Kemal) who was leader of the government in Ankara; I criticized him to his face and he did not respond but remained silent; yet the natural, necessary, and confidential criticisms I made of him after his death while explaining the meaning of a Hadith that indicated his error, were held to be a crime. But compared with the sake of the nation and government and the laws of justice, which are a manifestation of divine sovereignty, what importance has the sake of someone who is dead and no longer has any connection with the government?
Moreover, freedom of conscience, which is one of the principles of the government of the republic that we have most relied on and defended ourselves with, has been made the basis of charges against us; as though we oppose the principle of freedom of conscience.
Another thing is attributed to me in the police report which has never ever occurred to me, that since I criticize the evils and faults of modern civilization, I do not accept the use of the radio, aeroplanes, and the railway; I am accused of opposing modern progress.
Allah willing, the fair‑minded, just Denizli public prosecutor and court will make analogies with the above examples and show how unjust are these proceedings, and attach no importance to the unfounded suspicions in those reports.
The most extraordinary of them is this, that the public prosecutor in another trial asked me: “You said in the confidential Fifth Ray that the army would save itself from the leadership of that fearsome person. Your intention was to incite the army to rebel against the government.”
I replied: “What I meant was that the commander would either die or would be transferred, and the army would be saved from his domination.” How can a treatise that is both extremely confidential, and copies of which have come into my possession only twice in eight years and then been lost, and expounds a universal meaning of a Hadith about the end of time, and was originally written long ago, and moreover one single soldier has not seen – how can such a treatise be the reason for such charges?
The strangest of all was this, that I said in one place that Allah the Most High’s great bounties of the aeroplane, railway, and radio should be responded to with great thanks, yet mankind had not done this and had rained down bombs on men’s heads with the planes. While thanks for the vast bounty of the radio would be shown by making it a universal million‑tongued reciter of the Qur’an which would allow people all over the earth to listen to the Qur’an. And in the explanations in the Twentieth Word of Qur’anic predictions about the wonders of civilization, I said concerning the allusions of one verse that the unbelievers would defeat the Islamic world by means of the railway. Although I urged Muslims to work towards these wonders, I am accused at the end of the indictment because of the previous public prosecutor’s malice, of “opposing modern advances like the railway, aeroplane, and radio.”
Also, although it has absolutely no connection, someone had said about the name Risaletü’n‑Nur, which is another name for the Risale‑i Nur, that “it is ‘a message’ (risalet) inspired from the light of the Qur’an;” and attaching a wrong meaning from another place in the indictment, they made it into another charge, as though I had said “the Risale‑i Nur is a divine messenger.”
Also, I have proved decisively in twenty places in my defence that we would not make religion, the Qur’an, and the Risale‑i Nur tools of anything, even in the face of the whole world, and we could not, and that we would not change a single of their truths for all the world, and that is how we are in fact. Over these last twenty years there are thousands of evidences of this. Since it is thus, we declare with all our strength: "For us Allah suffices, and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs.
Said Nursi