The Twelfth Ray (12.Sua, Englisch)

The Twelfth Ray

[Part of the Defence Speeches Given in Denizli Court]1

Yes, we are a society and we are a society which every century has had three hundred and fifty million [now one and a half thousand million] members. Every day through 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,2 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, verified 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 such buzzing like 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.

In this question, the Risale-i Nur should not be attacked 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 God 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.3

God 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 others; they cannot be scattered or made to give it up; through God’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.4 If, God 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.

Prisoner

S a i d N u r s i

* * *

In His Name, be He glorified!

Sirs!

I tell you with certainty that apart from those 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. Through 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 man 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 could not 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 should 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 explaining 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 letters5 so as to give it to the departments of government in Ankara. Read 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 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.

Prisoner

S a i d N u r s i

* * *

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,6 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.

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 which indicated his error, were held to be a crime. But what importance has the sake of someone who is dead and no longer has any connection with the Government besides the sake of the nation and government and the laws of justice, which are a manifestation of Divine sovereignty?

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,7 aeroplanes, and the railway; I am accused of opposing modern progress.

God 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 Almighty God’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 God suffices and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs.8

S a i d N u r s i

* * *

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 Inebolu prosecutors, who with their false and inaccurate records, were the cause of the extraordinary indictment against us here.]

F i r s t l y : 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 Dozy9 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 was ascribed to them and had not permitted to be published, were made the pretext for our indictment. Whereas with one exception, Eskishehir Court had scrutinized those treatises, seen what they necessitated. As for the exception, I gave an extremely decisive answer to it in both my petition, and my objections to Eskishehir Court, and it was proved in twenty respects that “we have 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 had the slightest curiosity to find out. Is it at all possible ffor 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. Through 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 would 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 the question of people being saved from being executed by it is the most pressing and most important 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 object 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 man was going to remain in it for ever, and if man’s 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:

God suffices me, there is no god but He; in Him do I place my trust — He the Sustainer of the Throne [of Glory] Supreme!10

* * *

In His Name, be He glorified!

[i quote exactly an old memory and subtle matter of defence which was not disclosed in Eskishehir Court, and not officially recorded, and was not even written in my defence.]

They asked me there: “What do you think about the Republic?” I replied: “My biography, which you have in your possession, proves that I was a religious republican before any of you, with the exception perhaps of the Chairman of Eskishehir Court, was born. A summary of it is this: like now, at that time I was living in seclusion in an uninhabited tomb. Someone would bring me soup and I used to give breadcrumbs to the ants. I used to eat my bread with the soup. Some people heard of this and asked me about it, and I told them: “The ant and bee nations are republicans; I give the ants the breadcrumbs out of respect for their republicanism.”

So they said: “You are opposing the early leaders of Islam.” I replied: “The Rightly-Guided Caliphs were both Caliph and presidents of the republic. Surely Abu Bakr the Veracious (May God be pleased with him), the Ten Promised Paradise, and the Companions of the Prophet were like presidents of the republic. But it was not some meaningless title; they were leaders of a religious republic the meaning of which was true justice and the freedom of the Shari‘a.”

Mr. Prosecutor and Members of the Court! You are accusing me of holding an idea the opposite of which I have held for fifty years. If you are asking about the secular republic, what I understand by it is that secularism means being unbiased; that is, in accordance with the principle of freedom of conscience, it refers to a government that does not interfere with religiously-minded and pious people, the same as it does not interfere with the irreligious and dissolute. I have withdrawn from political and social life for ten, and now its twenty, years. I do not know the state of the Government of the Republic. If, God forbid, it has taken on a fearsome form whereby, on account of irreligion, it promulgates laws indicting those who work for their belief and lives in the hereafter, I proclaim to you fearlessly and warn you: if I had a thousand lives, I would be ready to sacrifice all of them for belief and the hereafter. Do whatever you like, my last word is For us God suffices and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs. In the face of your sentencing me unjustly to capital punishment or life imprisonment I say: as the Risale-i Nur has discovered and proved certainly, I am not being executed but discharged from my duties; I am going to the world of light and abode of bliss. As for you, you unfortunates who persecute us on behalf of misguidance! Since I know that you are being sentenced to eternal annihilation and everlasting solitary confinement, I am prepared to surrender up my spirit with perfect ease of mind, having taken my revenge on you completely.

Prisoner

S a i d N u r s i

* * *

In His Name, be He glorified!

Sirs!

I have formed the certain opinion as a result of numerous indications that we have been attacked not for ‘breaching public security by exploiting religious feelings’ on behalf of the Government, but behind a tissue of lies, on behalf of atheism, because of our belief and our service to belief and public order. One proof of this out of many is that despite twenty thousand people reading and accepting the twenty thousand copies of the parts of the Risale-i Nur over twenty years, public security has not been breached by students of the Risale-i Nur on any occasion whatsover, and no such incident has been recorded by the Government, and neither the former nor the present courts have found such a incident. Whereas, had there been any such widespread, powerful propaganda, it would have become apparent within twenty days. That is to say, contrary to the principle of freedom of conscience, Article 163 of this ambiguous law,11 which embraces all who give religious counsel, is a bogus mask. Atheists deceive certain members of the Government, confuse the legal establishment, and want to crush us whatever happens.

Since the reality of the matter is this, we say with all our strength: o wretches who sell religion for the world and have fallen into absolute unbelief! Do whatever you can! Your world will be the end of you! Let our heads also be sacrificed for a truth that hundreds of millions of heads have been sacrificed for! We are ready for any penalty and for our execution! In this situation, being outside prison is a hundred times worse than being inside it. Since there is no freedom at all —neither religious freedom, nor freedom of conscience, nor scholarly freedom— under the absolute despotism that confronts us, for those with honour, the people of religion and supporters of freedom, there is no solution apart from death or entering prison. We say, To God do we belong, and to Him is our return,12 and we trust in our Sustainer.

Prisoner

S a i d N u r s i

* * *

In His Name, be He glorified!

Chairman of the Court, Ali Riza Bey!

I have an important request in order to defend my rights: I do not know the new letters, and my handwriting in the old is very inadequate. Also, they do not allow me to meet with anyone; I am kept in what is quite simply solitary confinement. The indictment was even taken off me after fifteen minutes. I also do not have the means to employ a lawyer. I was able to obtain only one copy of part of the defence I have presented to you, in the new letters, secretly. I also had written out one or two copies of The Fruits of Belief, which is a sort of defence of the Risale-i Nur and a summary of its way, to give to the public prosecutor and to send to the departments of government in Ankara. They suddenly took them off me and have not returned them. Whereas the judicial authorities in Eskishehir sent a typewriter to the prison for us. We wrote out one or two copies of our defences on it in the new letters, and the Court wrote them out as well. My urgent request, therefore, is either you supply us with a typewriter, or allow us to procure one outside so that we can type out in the new letters two or three copies of both our defences, and the treatise which is a sort of defence of the Risale-i Nur. We shall then send them to both the Ministry of Justice, and the Cabinet, and the National Assembly, and the Council of State. For it is the Risale-i Nur that is the basis of the indictment, and the charges against the Risale-i Nur and the objections to it are not some petty, personal matter so that no importance should be attached to them. On the contrary, it is a general matter of serious concern to the nation, country, and Government, and will therefore arouse significant attention in the Islamic world.

Yes, those who covertly attack the Risale-i Nur are those who in order to destroy the regard, love, and brotherhood of the Islamic world, which is the greatest strength of this country’s people, and arouse loathing, are covertly establishing absolute disbelief by making politics the tool of irreligion. They have deceived the Government and twice confused the legal establishment, saying: “The Risale-i Nur and its students exploit religion for politics and there is the possibility of their disturbing public order and security.

You unfortunates! The Risale-i Nur definitely has no connection with politics, but since it has smashed absolute disbelief, it destroys and repulses anarchy, which underlies absolute disbelief, and absolute despotism, which overlies it. One of the hundreds of proofs that it ensures public order, security, freedom, and justice is The Fruits of Belief (Meyve Risalesi), which is like its defence. It should be scrutinized by a committee of prominent scholars and sociologists; if they do not confirm what I say, I consent to any punishment or tortuous execution!

Prisoner

S a i d N u r s i

* * *

Chairman of the Court!

Three matters have been made the basis of the Indictment:

The First is a political society. I cite as witnesses all the Risale-i Nur students here and those who have met with me, and those who read or write out the Risale-i Nur; you may ask them. I have not said to anyone that we were going to set up a political society or a Naqshbandi association. I always told them that we were going to work to save belief. No society has been mentioned among us apart from the sacred community of Islam, which includes all believers and has more than three hundred million members. Through the brotherhood of all believers and because of our service of the Qur’an, we found ourselves in the ‘Party of the Qur’an’ (Hizb al-Qur’an), which in the Qur’an is called the Hizb Allah. If this is what is meant in the Indictment, we admit to it wholeheartedly and with pride. But if something else is meant, we know nothing of it!

The Second Matter: As is stated in the Indictment and confirmed by the report of the Kastamonu police, some books like the Treatise On Islamic Dress (Tesettür Risalesi) and The Six Attacks (Hücumat-i Sitte) and its addendum, were found in nailed boxes under piles of firewood and coal in a condition that would in no way allow them to be published. They had been scrutinized and criticized by Eskishehir Court, a light sentence had been served for them, and they had most certainly been treated as private. Now, reading false meanings into some of their sentences, it wants to take us back nine years and charge us again with a crime the penalty of which we have already served.

The Third Matter: In several places in the Indictment, phrases have been used which express possibility rather than actual occurrences, like “he may breach state security or he may harm it.” It is possible for everyone to commit murder, but are they to be charged with it due to the possibility?

Prisoner

S a i d Nu r s i

* * *

In His Name, be He glorified!

Chairman of the Court!

I present my defence, which is in the form of a petition I sent to the departments of government in Ankara and to the President, and the reply from the Prime Minister’s Office, which shows that they recognized its importance. Contained in this defence are decisive answers to the unfounded and offensive suspicions that the prosecution have stated against us. There are numerous untrue and illogical things in the report of the committee of experts from here, which was based on the superficial and malicious reports of other places; my objections to these too have been presented.

In Short: As I stated before, I told Eskishehir Court when they wanted to convict me under Article 163: out of two hundred deputies of the Republican Government, the same number, 163, agreed to assign one hundred and fifty thousand liras to my medrese13 in Van. Due to this, the regard in which the Republican Government held me invalidates Article 163 as far as I am concerned. Although I told the court this, the committee of experts corrupted what I said and wrote: “163 deputies opened proceedings against Said.” It is because of this totally baseless accusation of that first experts’ committee that the prosecution is making charges against us. This is in spite of the fact that the Risale-i Nur had been referred, on your decision, to the highest learned and scientific committee, and having studied and scrutinized all its parts, the committee unanimously made this statement about us: “There is nothing explicit or inferred in the writings of Said and the Risale-i Nur students which suggests that they have any intent to exploit religion or sacred matters, encourage the breaching of state security, or found a political society, or conspire in any way against the Government. It is understood that in their correspondences, Said’s students did not nurture any evil intentions against the Government, or have the idea of founding a political association, or establishing a sufi order.”

The second committee of experts also stated unanimously that “ninety-nine per cent of Said Nursi’s treatises are both sincere, and disinterested, and have in no way departed from the principles of scholarship, reality, and religion. There is clearly nothing in them exploiting religion, or concerning the formation of a political society, or breaching security. The letters and correspondence between the students and between them and Said Nursi are of this sort. Apart from five or ten confidential, complaining, and unscholarly pieces, all the treatises expound Qur’anic verses or the true meanings of Hadiths. Ninety per cent of the available treatises contain comparisons illustrating clearly the tenets of belief in God, the Prophet, and the hereafter and their terminology, scholarly views, moral admonitions to the elderly and to youths, and instructive incidents selected from his experiences in life. They contain nothing which could damage the Government, administration, or public security.

Thus, the prosecution ignored the report of this eminent committee and made extraordinary charges against us based on the confused, deficient first report, so we are truly extremely upset. We in no way deem it fitting for this just court with its proven fairness. If there be no mistake in the comparison, it resembles this story: they asked a Bektashi why he did not perform the obligatory prayers. He told them: “It says in the Qur’an ‘Approach not the prayers.’” When they reminded him that the verse continued “When you are intoxicated,”14 he told them: “I have not memorized the whole Qur’an.” They take a single sentence from the Risale-i Nur, and disregarding what follows it, which puts it in context and explains it, use it against us. Thirty to forty examples of this are to be seen in the defence I shall present, when comparing it with the indictment. I shall recount a subtle incident which is one of those examples:

The prosecution in Eskishehir Court used a phrase about the Risale-i Nur’s instruction in belief which was anyway the result of an error, like “it corrupts the people.” Although it later did not use it, one of the Risale-i Nur students called Abdürrezzaq, said a year after the trial:

“You unfortunate! The Risale-i Nur has received the indirect praise of thirty-three Qur’anic verses, its value for religion has been established by three miraculous predictions of Imam ‘Ali (May God be pleased with him) and the powerful allusions of Gawth al-A‘zam (May his mystery be sanctified); these twenty years it has caused the Government no trouble whatsoever, and besides not harming anyone at all, has illumined and guided thousands of the sons of this land, and strengthened their belief and rectified their conduct, and yet you call that guidance ‘corruption.’ You have no fear of God! May your tongue be cursed!”

Now, the prosecution has seen these words of that student, so I refer to your fairness and conscience the expression: “Said has spread corruption.”

With the idea of interfering in the social teachings of the Risale-i Nur, the prosecution said: “The place of religion is the conscience; it cannot be tied to laws and regulations. Formerly there was social unrest because it was tied to laws.” So I say: “Religion does not consist only of belief; its second half is righteous action. Is fear of imprisonment or being seen by a government detective sufficient to deter those who commit numerous grievous sins which poison society, like murder, adultery, theft, gambling, and drinking? If that was so, there would have to be a policeman or detective stationed permanently in every house, or at everyone’s side even, so that obdurate souls would restrain themselves from those filthy acts. Whereas, in respect of good deeds and belief, the Risale-i Nur places a permanent immaterial ‘prohibitor’ next to everyone. It easily saves them from bad deeds by recalling the prison of Hell and Divine wrath.

Also, due to the signature in one treatise of a wonderful and extra-ordinary ‘coincidence,’ the prosecution made a meaningless inference, saying “the members of a political society.” Are the holders of signatures of this sort in the account books of tradesmen and innkeepers called a society. There was a similar baseless accusation in Eskishehir Court. When I replied and showed the treatise called The Miracles of Muhammad (PBUH), they were astonished. If we had formed a worldly society, those who had suffered so much harm on my account would certainly have fled from me in total abhorrence. This means that just as I and we have a relationship with Imam Ghazali which is not broken off because it pertains to the hereafter not to this world; so these innocent, sincere, pure religious people have displayed a powerful attachment to an unfortunate like myself for the sake of his teachings about belief. This has given rise to unfounded suspicions of an imaginary political society. My last word is:

For us God suffices and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs.

Prisoner in solitary confinement

S a i d N u r s i

* * *

[This piece is very important]

In His Name, be He glorified!

An Important Part of My Final Word

Sirs! Chairman of the Court! Take note!

Since to convict the Risale-i Nur and its students is the equivalent of convicting the truths of the Qur’an and belief, it is to try to close —directly on account of absolute disbelief— the highway taken every year for one thousand three hundred years by three hundred million Muslims, leading to reality and the happiness of both worlds, and it will attract towards yourself their revulsion and objections. For those on the highway assist with their prayers and good works those who have already passed down it. It will also be a means to a doomsday breaking forth over this blessed country. What answer will you give at the Last Judgement when you are asked in the face of those three hundred thousand million claimants: “You did not interfere with the French work by Doctor Dozy called Tarih-i Islam, which from beginning to end attacks Islam, your country and your religion, nor with the works of atheists in your libraries and their free availability, nor with the students of those books who formed themselves into illegal societies, nor with the societies who opposed your politics like the communists, anarchists, the old revolutionary societies, or the negative Turkists; so why have you interfered with the readers of a work of truth and reality like the Risale-i Nur, a true commentary on the Qur’an, and its students, who have no connection with politics whatsoever and have taken the highway of the Qur’an and belief solely to save themselves and their fellow-countrymen from eternal annihilation and solitary confinement? And why have you called the friendship and brotherhood of those sincerely religious people which looks only to the hereafter, a political society? You have convicted them under a bizarre law, and that is what you wanted.” We ask you the same thing. Our enemies, the atheists and dissemblers, deceive you, confuse the judiciary, and busy the Government with us in a way detrimental to the country and people; by calling absolute despotism “the Republic,” and making absolute apostasy part of the regime, and calling absolute vice “civilization,” and attaching the name of “the law” to arbitrary force and compulsion on account of disbelief, they both preoccupy the Government, and have scattered us, thus dealing blows on account of Europeans at the supremacy of Islam and the country and people.

Sirs! As is indicated by the four severe earthquakes in four years coinciding exactly with the severe aggression against the Risale-i Nur students and their being persecuted, and on each occasion their occurring exactly at the time the students were attacked and their stopping when the attacks ceased, you are responsible for the heavenly and earthly disasters that have occurred on our being convicted...!

S a i d N u r s i

who is being held in total isolation

and solitary confinement in Denizli Prison

* * *

In His Name, be He glorified!

Another Part of My Final Word

Sirs!

The Ankara committee of experts has confirmed our decisive reply to the charge of forming a political association insistently put forward by you as a pretext for our conviction, which you have decided upon as may be deduced from the course followed by the prosecution. While being amazed and astonished at your insisting on this point to this degree, this meaning occurred to me: since friendship, fraternal communities and assemblies, and sincere associations pertaining to the hereafter and brotherhood are each both foundation stones of social life, and an essential need of human nature, and a most necessary bond of great strength between people, from the life of the family to that of tribe, nation, Islam, and humanity, and a point of support and means of consolation in the face of the assaults of the material and immaterial things which cause harm and alarm and which each person encounters in the universe and cannot combat on his own, and which prevent him carrying out his human and Islamic duties; and since there are some who give the name of ‘political society,’ although it has no political front, to the gathering together of the students of the Risale-i Nur around the teachings of belief, which is most praiseworthy and is sincere friendship centred on the teachings of belief and the Qur’an and certainly leads to happiness in this world and in religion and in the hereafter, and is a companionship on the way of truth, and co-operation; most certainly and without any doubt, they have either been deceived in some appalling manner, or they are extremely vicious anarchists who are both barbarously inimical to humanity, and tyrannically hostile to Islam, and harbour enmity towards society in the utterly corrupt and depraved manner of anarchy, and strive obdurately and intractably as apostates against this country and nation, the sovereignty of Islam and sacred things of religion, or they are satanic atheists who, working on behalf of foreigners to cut and destroy the life-giving arteries of this nation, are deceiving the Government and confusing the legal establishment in order to destroy or turn against our brothers and our country the immaterial weapons which up to now we have used against them — those satans, pharaohs, and anarchists.

Prisoner

S a i d N u r s i

* * *

Sirs!

With your permission I shall address a few words, in your presence and apparently to you, but in fact to the secret revolutionary committee bent on corruption, which has taken on many forms, and with the idea of depraving this nation in the name of disbelief and atheism and on account of foreigners, has for thirty or forty years employed every means to attack the Qur’an and truths of belief; and to the inhuman, thoughtless officials whom they have made a screen to themselves in this matter; and their propagandists in the guise of Muslims who have confused this court.

(The decision to acquit us on the second day made this fiery speech superfluous.)

S a i d N u r s i ,

in total isolation and solitary confinement

The Correct Answer to an Important Question

Several high-ranking officials asked me: “Why did you not accept Mustafa Kemal’s offer of a three-hundred-lira salary and the post of general preacher in Kurdistan and the Eastern Provinces in place of Shaykh Sanusi?15 If you had accepted it, you would have been instrumental in saving the lives of the hundred thousand people who were slaughtered because of the revolution.”

I told them in reply: the Risale-i Nur, which has been the means of gaining for hundreds of thousands of our fellow-countrymen millions of years of life in the hereafter, has performed that task a thousand times over, in place of twenty or thirty years of worldly life I was unable to save for those people. If I had accepted the offer, the Risale-i Nur, which can be the tool of nothing nor follow anything and holds the mystery of sincerity, would not have come into being. I even told my respected brothers in prison: if those who have condemned me to be executed because of the heavy blows of the Risale-i Nur, which was sent to Ankara, save their belief through the Risale-i Nur and are delivered from eternal annihilation, you bear witness that I forgive them with all my life and soul!

I told those who were pestering me with their surveillance in Denizli after our acquittal, and the high-ranking officials and police chief and inspectors: It is an undeniable wonder of the Risale-i Nur that in nine months of close investigations no document has been found or connection of any kind with any movement, association, or society here or abroad, in the twenty years of my life of oppression, or in the hundreds of my treatises and letters, or among my thousands of students. Could this extraordinary situation have been achieved by the power of thought or through some arrangement? If the private concerns of one person over a number of years are brought to light, there certainly would be twenty matters to embarass or convict him. Since the fact is this, you will say either that some brilliant undefeatable genius is organizing the matter, or that it is a truly munificent Divine preservation. It would surely be an error to contest such a genius. It would cause great harm to the country and people. While to oppose such Divine preservation and dominical grace would be pharaoh-like obduracy.

If you say: “If we release you and do not keep you under surveillance, you may contaminate the life of our society with your teachings and obstruse mysteries.”

I reply: All my teachings without exception have been seen by the Government and judicial authorities, and no matter has been found requiring even one day’s penalty. Forty to fifty thousand copies of those teachings have been passed from hand to hand, being studied attentively and with curiosity, yet the readers have only benefited, no one has suffered any harm. Also, since both the former court and the present court could find no indictable offences, it is an ugly and meaningless injustice for you to interfere with our acquittal granted unanimously by the new court, and with me and the Risale-i Nur, as is proved decisively by the former court only being able to give sentences of six months each to fifteen out of one hundred and twenty of my brothers who were being held in prison, only arbitrarily and on the pretext of five or ten words out of one hundred and thirty treatises, for the sake of an important personage in the eyes of the world. Moreover, I have no new teachings and none of my secrets have remained hidden so that you should try to modify them through supervision.

I am now very much in need of my freedom. Enough now of the unnecessary, unjust, and meaningless surveillance to which I have been subjected these twenty years. My patience is exhausted. There is the possibility that due to old age I shall utter the curses that up to now I have refrained from uttering. “The sighs of the oppressed rise to the Divine Throne” is a powerful truth.

Then those tyrannical wretches who occupy high places in the eyes of the world said: “Not once in twenty years have you worn our headgear; you have not uncovered your head in the presence of either the former court or the present courts; you have presented yourself in the former attire. Whereas seventeen million have taken to modern dress.” So I replied: rather than wearing through a dispensation of the Shari‘a and under the constraint of the law, the dress, not of seventeen million or even seven million, but with their own consent and sincere acceptance of seven thousand European-smitten drunkards, I prefer to wear, in conformity with the Shari‘a and fear of God, the dress of seven thousand million. It may not be said of someone like me who for twenty-five years has withdrawn from social life “he obstinately opposes us.” Even if it was obstinacy, since Mustafa Kemal could not break it, and two courts could not break it, and the authorities of three provinces could not smash it, who are you to struggle pointlessly to break that obstinacy to the harm of both the nation and the Government! Even if he was a political opponent, since as you have confirmed, he has severed all his connections with the world these last twenty years and has in effect been dead, he would not be again raised to life, meaninglessly become involved in political life causing himself considerable harm, and struggle against you; it is therefore lunacy to have groundless fears about his opposing you. Since it is a lunacy to even speak seriously with lunatics, I am giving up speaking with those like you. I said: “Whatever you do, I won’t feel obliged to you!”, which both angered them, and silenced them. My final word is:

For us God suffices, and He is the Best of Disposer of Affairs.16 * God suffices me, there is no god but He; in Him do I place my trust — He the Sustainer of the Throne [of Glory] Supreme!17

* * *

What I Said This Time in My Short Defence

The compasssion, reality, and truth of the Risale-i Nur prevents us from involvement in politics. For innocents are afflicted with calamities and we would have been unjust towards to them. Some people wanted an explanation of this, and I told them:

In the present stormy century, the egotism and racialism proceeding from cruel civilization, and the military dictatorships resulting from the Great War, and the pitilessness arising from misguidance have led to such extreme tyranny and excessive despotisms that if the people of truth defend their rights through physical force, or through severe tyranny, numerous unfortunates will be burnt on the pretext of partisanship, and in that situation, they too will be excessively tyrannical and will be defeated. For those who act and attack out of the above feelings, on some petty pretext, strike at twenty to thirty people because of the mistakes of one or two, and destroy them. If on the way of truth and justice, the people of truth strike only at the one who struck, they win only one in the face of thirty losses, and are then in a position of defeat. If, in accordance with the unjust rule of responding in kind, the people of truth also crush twenty to thirty people due to the errors of one or two, they will then perpetrate a ghastly injustice in the name of right.

This then is the true reason for our having strenuously avoided politics and interfering in government, and for our aversion towards it. For the power of truth we have at our disposal is such that we could have defended our rights completely. But since everything is transitory and passing, and death does not die, and the door of the grave does not close, and if one suffers hardship, it is transformed into mercy; we shall surely place our trust in God in patience and gratitude, and be silent. To forcibly and harmfully break our silence is totally opposed and contrary to justice, fairness, and patriotic zeal and endeavour.

To Conclude: The members of the Government, the politicians, the administrators, the police, and the judiciary have nothing at all over which to struggle with us. At the most, through the bigotry of absolute unbelief, which no government in the world can defend and no one in their senses likes, and the bigotry of atheism, which arises from materialism and is a fearsome plague afflicting humanity, and through their evil, certain covert atheists deceive a number of government officials, excite their suspicions, and incite them against us. And we say: if they incited not a few suspicious people like that but the whole world against us, through the strength of the Qur’an and Divine grace, we would not flee; we would not lay down our arms before that apostasizing absolute disbelief and that atheism!

S a i d N u r s i

* * *

FOOTNOTES

1. Since the matters were the same, our Master, Üstad Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, presented the same defence —skipping where necessary and adding where necessary— to Afyon Court as he had at Denizli. He therefore put the greater part of the Denizli defence speeches together with those of Afyon, and gave them the name of the Fourteenth Ray. Signed, His Students.

2. Qur’an, 49:10.

3. This petition was written twenty days before the Kastamonu earthquake. Through the blessings of the Risale-i Nur, Kastamonu was preserved from the disasters more than any other province, but now the disasters have begun and have confirmed what we said!

4. See page 385, footnotes 11, 12.

5. This refers to the Latin alphabet, which was adopted officially on the passing of a law in December 1928. It replaced the Ottoman (Arabic) script, which was thereafter banned. [Tr.]

6. See page 389, footnote 13.

7. I said, to encourage the offering of endless thanks for a supreme Divine bounty like the radio, that the Qur’an should be recited on the radio so that people could hear it all over the world, and the atmosphere of the globe would become a reciter of the Qur’an.

8. Qur’an, 3:173.

9. Reinhart Dozy (1820-1883), the Dutch orientalist one of whose works was the inaccurate and derogatory Essaie sur l’Histoire de l’Islamisme, which was translated into Turkish by the atheist Abdullah Cevdet and published under the title Târîh-i Islâmiyet (Cairo 1908). [Tr.]

10. Qur’an, 9:129.

11. Article 163 of the Criminal Code: a law designed to enforce the principle of ‘secularism,’ and prevent the growth of any religious movements. [Tr.]

12. Qur’an, 2:156.

13. See, page 483, footnote 69.

14. Qur’an, 4:43.

15. See page 381-2, footnote 9.

16. Qur’an, 3:173.

17. Qur’an, 9:129.