Risale-i Nur

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Firstly: We congratulate you on the joyous reciting of the Arabic call to prayer from the minarets, for it is the introduction to great festivals for both yourselves, and this country, and the world of Islam, and delivers the good news that the marks of Islam will once again shine forth in this country. And saying "Amen" to your acceptable prayers and worship in Ramadan, which wins an eighty-year life of worship, I beseech divine mercy that every night of Ramadan will gain for you the reward of the Night of Power. I request spiritual assistance from you this Ramadan, since I am unable to work well due to my extreme weakness and illness.

Secondly: One of my greatest wishes is to pass the last part of my life in the region of Isparta. I said, as did the Nur Efe: "Isparta is blessed for me, with its very stones and soil." Even, whenever during the last twenty-five years I have felt angry in my heart with the former government, which illtreated and tormented me, I never felt angry at the Isparta authorities, and forgot the others for their sake. I am particularly grateful to the zealous lovers of freedom there, called Democrats, who are true patriots and have started to repair the damage, and who appreciate the Risale-i Nur and the Nurjus. I offer many prayers for their success. God willing, those lovers of freedom will do away with the old absolute tyranny and work for the establishment of a freedom that is congruent with the Shari'a.

Thirdly: For a particular reason, I have to stay here for some time following the festival. A month or two after that, I shall accept to go wherever you deem suitable, on the decision of the leading members of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ and the agreement of the young Saids in Istanbul and Ankara Universities. Since you are my true heirs and you perform my duties in this world a thousand times better than I do, I am leaving it to you to decide where my last dwelling place should be in this life.

Fourthly: I appoint you to deputize for me if you reply to the letters of Ahmed Nazif, Ahmed Feyzi, Halil Ibrahim, Hasan Atıf, and the Nurjus in Bucak, Eflâni, and Istanbul who have sent their congratulations and shown their strong attachment.

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Firstly: In connection with the vigil of the Night of Power, which according to a Hadith falls in the second half of Ramadan, particularly the last ten days, and the odd numbers and especially on the twenty-seventh,

and which may win an eighty-year life of worship, I beseech divine mercy that every one of you together with all the Nur students, and particularly this wretched, most faulty, ill, weak brother of yours, will receive a share and that your supplications will be accepted at the divine court, affirmed by thousands of amens.

Secondly: The young Saids in the university are in truth performing in Ankara and Istanbul the tasks of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ, leaving no need for this wretched Said. As an example of the Risale-i Nur's being in every way sufficient, I am now sending you attached the statements they wrote addressing the deputies, for your information and to be put at the beginning of the seventy copies of the biography, which was also prepared by them, so as to be sent to the seventy deputies. If you consider it appropriate, the statement may be added to the biography as a sort of addendum together with Sungur's defence for the Education Ministry, which I sent to you previously, and Mustafa Osman's petition to Minister of Justice, with fifty to sixty copies either written out by hand or typed, or duplicated in the new letters in İnebolu. I leave this to your discretion,

Thirdly: The leading members of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ are my genuine deputies; they may reply in my place to the letters sent to me, In particular, they should reply suitably to those persons whose names are written in Husrev's letter. We are sending attached part of the reply to the letter Ahmed Feyzi wrote you.

We congratulate all our brothers and sisters on the blessed month of Ramadan and its nights, and send greetings and prayers, and request their prayers.

In His Name, be He glorified!

[We are informing Sebilürreşad, the disseminator of truth, of the treatment meted out by the People's Party which was illegal in a hundred ways.]

Our Master, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, whose illness from poison was worsening so that he feared for his life, sent eight books he had bought with his own money to his brother, a mufti, to protect them. For some secret purpose, the official in the Emirdağ post office seized the books as though he were a policeman, and in person went and told the gendarmes,

the kaymakam, and the judiciary, and phoned Afyon, and creating a furore had the books handed over to the court. The books, however, consisted of the following: five were court defences and their addenda, and three were works the acquittal of which the present Minister of Justice, Halil Özyörük, had three times ordered and Denizli Court had returned. Afyon Court, too, quashed their judgement and had acquitted them.

It's true that Fuat Sirmen, who is the former Justice Minister and a communist, had denounced the works to the former Cabinet and had attempted to have the four-hundred-page Zülfikar Collection - which is a completely strue and beneficial commentary on the Qur'an - prohibited on the pretext of two pages about two verses written thirty years earlier, whereas now the works of the communists and Masons are permitted despite being extremely harmful for the nation and country. So we suggest that to subject this most true and useful commentary on the Qur'an which - as is testified to by thousands of people - has saved the belief of thousands to such treatment as though it consisted of harmful rags, and to cause our Master such sorrow just when he is ill and vulnerable because of his brother, was illegal in multiple ways.

Secondly: An extremely devious and hidden aspect of this matter was this: our Master had gently encouraged his students to assist the Democrat Party materially and morally. The obdurate tyrants of the People's Party understood this, so making mountains out of a molehill, they instigated this incident. For everywhere these books were being sent hither and thither by post and from Istanbul and other places, and there was no interference. The incident was part of a cunning and unforeseen stratagem.

Thirdly: The former government is now being criticized in the press a thousand times more harshly than the two aforementioned verses in Zülfikar, so the interpretation of them can in no way be considered culpable. It is understood from this that the treatment mentioned above was a continuation of the People's Party's abitrary measures, and an example of their assertions that although the government is in the hands of the Democrats, true power and the actual executive remains in their hands.

To the President of the Republic, the Cabinet, the Prime Minister's Office, the Ministry of Justice, and Directorate of Religious Affairs, Ankara

I am explaining a few points for those persons who work for true justice and freedom.

First Point: Both Denizli Court and Ankara Criminal Court scrutinized all the parts of the Risale-i Nur and together with the committee of experts took the decision that there was no objection to acquitting them and returning them to their owners, and they also acquitted Said and his companions and discharged them. Although the Court of Appeal ruled that this same decision was res judicata, now the same Court of Appeal has again quashed Afyon's completely baseless decision against Said and his friends and the quite illegal seizing by two people with personal malice against Said, of those same books and his wonderfully handwritten miraculous Qur'an. And although some of the zealous, patriotic Democrat leaders who have saved the country and nation from the vindictive despotism of the former party accept and appreciate fully those treatises, for three years to cause penurious people like us a loss of thousands of liras and to prolong for three years a case that has been acquitted three times, is an extraordinary injustice and the result of personal animosity. For twenty months while in absolute solitary confinement they did not allow my assistant even to have contact with me. On being released, they posted two policemen on my door. Also, in order to disparage those genuinely God-fearing Nur students just because of their piety, they held their trial at the time of the evening prayer, causing them to perform it later and thus perpetrating a wilful injustice. Also, one time they also confiscated the entire Risale-i Nur in Isparta, and again returned it having studied it.

Since now in the Democrats' time, there is a revival of such marks of Islam as the call to prayer and religious instruction and work with the Qur'an, and a start has been made to repair the harms caused to the Qur'an by the former party; and since the works of the irreligious, the Masons, and the communists are being published; for sure, those people who are seizing such blessed collections as Zülfikar, The Staff of Moses, and The Shining Lamp (Siracü 'n-Nur), which have been commended and appreciated by leading Islamic scholars in such places as Mecca, Medina, and Damascus, and have been read to the scholars of the Directorate of Religious Affairs, and have silenced the scientists, are not doing this on account of justice, right, and truth, but with malicious intent on account of communism and

Masonry. Moreover, in addition to those books they have confiscated and held for three years the miraculous Qur'an, which is worth thousands of liras and in which the name of Allah is written in gold and which the Head of the Directorate holds in esteem and is trying to have printed. Because I am seriously ill from poison and unable to defend my rights, I am appointing Sungur as my deputy. I await from the justice-loving ministers of the new government that they halt the destruction caused by the former government and their past twenty years of tormenting me. I appoint Mustafa Sungur, one of my brothers, as my deputy.

[A significant fact and a conversation of the university Nurjus with the Democrats.]

At the wish of the nation, the Democrats have secured the free expression of the marks of Islam; now, the sole means of gratifying both the country and the nation is to make the movement for Islamic unity a source of support for themselves. Formerly, the self-interested policies of the British, French, and Americans opposed and prevented this, but now they are in need of it. For communism, Masonry, atheism, and irreligion lead directly to anarchy, and it is only Islamic unity based on the truth of the Qur'an that may resist these awesomely destructive forces, And again it is only Islamic unity that may be a means of saving both humanity from this peril, and this country from foreign invasion and this nation from anarchy, Therefore, it is essential that the Democrats rely on this truth with all their strength and take a stand against the communist and Masonic currents.

By leaving free the call to prayer, they gained strength for themselves twenty times greater than their own power. They won the nation's love and made it indebted to them. ... With their support for Islamic unity, the Nurjus form a significant mass backing the Democrats. However, some extremist sections of the former party with Masonic and communist leanings are preparing to deal the Democrats two heavy blows. In the former [pre-Republican] period, they swiftly overturned the liberals (Ahrarlar) {[*]:} when

they twice came to power, and also hanged numerous members of their ally, the Muhammadan Union. They have tried to show that the Democrats, known as the Ahrar, are more irreligious than they are themselves; and now it has clearly emerged that under the pretence of religiosity some of them are trying to incite the Democrats against religion, wanting them to cause harm to it like they do themselves. They are even trying to win the support of some official religious scholars (ulema) and incite them against the Democrats and to crush the Nurjus, who, being on the side of the Democrats, may oppose them. Then the ulema would not have recourse to the Democrats by means of the Nurjus, for the ulema incline to whichever side the Nurjus incline to; there is no movement more powerful that they may join.

Since the truth of the matter is this, the Democrats are obliged to placate and gratify both the Nurjus, and the ulema, and the nation, so as to prevent the extremist Mason and communist elements of the former party taking advantage of this point and attempting to overturn the Democrats, For the former party oppressed both the religious scholars and members of the Sufi orders throughout the past twenty-five years, forcing them to toady to them. It is absolutely essential so as not to lose the assistance of the Americans and their allies, that with all their strength the Democrats strive to revive and repair the marks of Islam, as with the call to prayer.

Regretably, some extremists, Masons, and communists pass themselves off as Democrats despite being opposed to them, with the intention of inciting the Democrats to take destructive measures and show them to be opposed to religion, so as to overthrow them.

In His Name, be He glorified!

Peace be upon you, and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!

Our Dear, Loyal, Devoted Brother, Haji Ali!

We have received your valuable letter, which especially pleased our Master. Our Master says:

At the present time, the Risale-i Nur is sufficient. Scholars testify that they have benefited in one year from the Risale-i Nur to the extent they benefited from studying in the medreses for ten years. Thousands testify to

this. Haji Kılınç Ali has embraced the Risale-i Nur this last year and a half and has read part of it, so in my view is a Nur student of twenty years' standing. I mention him by name among the select students and make him a partner in my spiritual gains, so his share may be written in his book of good works. For his part, he is obliged to devote his life to the Risale-i Nur. A significant instance of wisdom in his having been unable until now to -go to al-Azhar University may be that the Risale-i Nur should suffice him. I nourish powerful hopes that he will be able to found a Nur School in Urfa, which is close to Aleppo and Damascus. Molla Abdülmecid in Damascus, who was an invaluable student of the Old Said, and Seyyid Salih, who is one of the Nur students in Urfa, and the devoted Nur student who is with him, should get in touch with him. I send many greetings to both Molla Abdülmecid, and Haji Ali, and to everyone in Damascus who is attached to the Risale-i Nur, and I request that they pray for me in that blessed place.

Our heroic brother, Haji Ali! Our Master often speaks of your devotion. We too applaud and congratulate you.

My Dear Brother!

Firstly: Mâsha'llah a thousand times over! There are almost no errors in the Words Collection (Sözler Mecmuası), just a few words, which I am sending attached.

Secondly: If you consider it appropriate, take this fifty liras I am sending you and take it on my account in lieu of the collections in the court. If you don't agree to this, take it as the price of my part of the collections which you sent.

Thirdly: For now, it is appropriate that the biography should not be given to the deputies gratis; those who ask for it, should pay for it. But ten to twenty copies should be kept in Ankara.

In His Name, be He glorified!

We heard the terrible news that two of the large collections of the wondrous Risale-i Nur Collection were going to be destroyed. Together with its other parts, those collections, which are completely true and veracious and silence the scientistic philosophers, have been acquitted by the courts of Denizli and Ankara and become res judicata, and their acquittal has been twice upheld by the Court of Appeal. The works have been appreciated and applauded in such centres of the Islamic world as Egypt, Damascus, Aleppo, Mecca, and Medina, and in recognition of that appreciation have been placed on the blessed tomb of the Prophet Muhammad (Upon whom be blessings and peace), and on the Black Stone in the Ka'ba. Like the other transgressions of the Republican People's Party, this vicious treatment is an unprecedented outrage. We Nur students could easily have demanded our rights from those cruel tyrants, but by reason of the powerful compassion that the Risale-i Nur has induced in us towards the innocent children and elderly of the heroic Turkish nation, which for centuries was the standard-bearer of the Islam, and by virtue of the Qur'an's forbidding us from physical struggle and being a light we hold rather than a club, and due to the fundamental principle of our way, to maintain public order, we have been unable to respond to those tyrants materially. For, God forbid, if there were a definite necessity, those who cause it on account of the communists and Masons would regret it a thousand times over.

Furthermore, in consequence of our observations, we have come to hold the firm opinion that general calamities occur whenever the Risale-i Nur is assaulted in the name of atheism and irreligion. This has been confirmed by the fact that four times severe earthquakes have occurred simultaneously with attacks, and many other things have happened. We are therefore alarmed at the powerful possibility that if such a decision is carried out, causing the believers to tremble, and the crime towards those wondrous, valuable, blessed collections is perpetrated, spiritual storms and tempests, and earthquakes and plagues will be visited on this nation and country. For the coincidence four times of severe earthquakes with assaults on the Risale-i Nur has demonstrated this fact even to the blind. We even claimed this in court. No law in the world could seize and destroy the four-hundred-page Zülfikar Collection on the pretext of two pages expounding two verses of the Qur'an in line with the three hundred and fifty thousand commentaries of the exegetists, although it has most effectively served the

belief of hundreds of thousands of people. Anyone with any conscience at all would understand this clear evidence, showing just how far from truth, right, and justice are the perpetrators of this malicious felony, who are the mere tools of irreligion, and shower them with curses and loathing. The heroic Democrat government prevented this evil deed, which was instigated in the time of the tyrannical, reactionary persecutors of the People's Party. We are hopeful that they will return to us without delay the works that for three years have been held by Afyon Court and are in no way reprehensible, and foremost our gilded, miraculous Qur'an which shows the coincidences, and we request this from the relevant offices.

In His Name, be He glorified!

Our Esteemed, Heroic Brother!

Firstly: We wish to draw your attention to a matter of extreme importance: it should not be permitted that our large collections are destroyed; they should be saved whatever the price. Was the decision for their destruction given recently or previously? In your opinion, is this an official decision? Kindly learn the truth of the matter and let us know without delay.

Secondly: We are sending the communication giving information about this matter to the heroic Sungur in Ankara and to the Minister. We send you our greetings and respectfully kiss your hands.

Our Dear and Highly Valued Brother, Heroic Sungur!

Firstly: We send you our greetings and beseech Almighty God for your success in serving the Risale-i Nur.

Secondly: We wish to inform you concerning a most important, confidential matter. According to what we have heard, the one hundred and seventy copies of the The Staff of Moses and Zülfikar Collections which have been confiscated by the Isparta judiciary are the very books the acquittal and return of which has been affirmed by the Justice Minister and which

previously had been returned to our Master in Denizli. We have absolutely no doubt that the decision taken for their destruction, which would bring the earth and the heavens to anger and cause all beings to weep, is a plan against the Democrats devised by extremist members of the People's Party. For the extremist devils have understood that the Nur students protect the Democrats and are a powerful support for them. In this way, they are trying to turn the Nur students against the Democrats and cause the government's fall. Our Master therefore refers it to you to make the very greatest efforts to thwart this plan of theirs, to save the collections, and to have all our books in Afyon returned to us.

To the Government Ministry!

We are disclosing to your esteemed self on the subject of this nation's fate, a plan against the Democrats which is of the utmost seriousness and which Satan even could not have hatched. It is as follows:

The cunning fanatics of the People's Party have understood that the numerous students of the Nur community are protecting the Democrat Party. The community was formed by Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, who, with extraordinary self-sacrifice has for twenty-seven years striven unobtrusively with his works against the irreligion, absolute despotism, and severe tyranny in this country. Even, in the regions the Nur students were most numerous, they covertly planted İsmet to spy on them and investigate them.

The Nur students have, with powerful faith, devotedly served Islam and the nation's belief in every part of Anatolia and have been a means of the tyrants' dominion crumbling. In consequence, in order to turn the Nur students against the Democrats and make them hate them, the Isparta judiciary took the decision to burn the Staff of Moses and Zülfikar collections. Yet these works save lives in this world and the next, and have illuminated and given guidance to hundreds of thousands of believers and numbers of university-educated youths, and have met with approval and applause in Arabia and Egypt and out of respect have been placed on the tomb of the Prophet Muhammad (Upom whom be blessings and peace) and on the Black Stone in the Ka'ba. We received news of this decision, which would bring the heavens and earth to anger and cause all creatures to weep. How- ever, these two lengthy works from the one-hundred-and-nineteen-part Risale-i Nur were acquitted unanimously in 1944 by Denizli Court and its

decision was ratified by the Appeal Court. The case became res judicata and all the works were returned to their esteemed author and their owners. The vindictive decision given latterly by Afyon Court on the particular orders of the communist deputy of the People's Party was quashed by the former just chairman of the Court of Appeal. Finally, with the general amnesty, a veil was drawn over their attempted slanderous accusations and the case was dropped.

While the truth of the matter is this and numerous defamatory publications are being freely disseminated, these moves are being made to destroy the truly veracious four-hundred-page collection on the pretext of two pages of commentary on a verse from the Qur'an, and charges are being made of its violating the law. The purpose of this, which is being carried out directly on account of the former tyrannical party, is to turn the hundreds of thousands of Nur students against the Democrats, to eliminate this powerful source of support for them, and to bring down the Democrat government. We are informing you of this diabolical plan in order to thwart it, and we offer our respects.

Our Most Esteemed, Blessed, Beloved, and Kind Master!

The Directorate of Religious Affairs had the miraculous, handwritten Qur'an in which the name of Allah is inscribed in gold, sent from Afyon Court, and the day before yesterday dispatched it to the Qur'an Examination Committee in Istanbul. It will be returned after having been examined by the committee, which will authorize its publication.

Also, the Consultative Committee of the Directorate has studied the petition sent to the Directorate by the heroic Ahmed Altın of Akşehir, a copy of which he had earlier sent to our beloved Master, In consequence, they are going to give one of the two sets of the Risale-i Nur which our Master sent as a gift to the Directorate to the Consultative Committee to study. We have an esteemed brother in the Directorate who is working to this end, In truth, Ankara, which was completely enveloped in darkness, has changed remarkably and is continuing to change gradually. The poi- sons that were being scattered have lost their effectiveness, as have the demonstrations of the youth.

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Firstly: Bârekâllah, a thousand times over! We declare Mâsha'llah! and All praise be to God! thousands of times, both at The Words Collection being written out beautifully and correctly, and at the seized collections being saved from destruction, and your obtaining some of them as a sample.

Secondly: I refer it to the leading members of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ to reply suitably in my place to the letters that come to me. For instance, I am most gratified at the effective services rendered to the Risale-i Nur by Osman Nuri in Ankara, like a Hasan Feyzi there, and his preparing a house for me there next to his, and his being resigned at his own illness as though, like Hasan Feyzi, he was assisting me when I was ill by alleviating it. I am still waiting here, because we have not yet received our books from the court. I want to be present there when our Qur'an and some of our collections are printed, but I cannot go now because there are many pressing jobs here, so he should not feel offended. If he had not been there, I would have had to go myself. But he leaves no need for me. May God be pleased with him and grant him success!

... ...

Thirdly: I affirm the letter sent by our steadfast, serious brother from Atabey, Abdullah Çavuş. The meanings I gave certain Hadiths forty years ago are again becoming apparent. Even the obdurate are compelled to admit it. Time is affirming the predictions made in the Fifth Ray of The Shining Lamp (Siracü 'n-Nur), that absolute despotism suffers the torments of Hell in this world too. The sincere letter of İhsan from Samsun shows that a Samsun deputy who came here and obtained for himself a full set of the Risale-i Nur was the cause of a light-scattering awakening in that region, for it has resulted in the appearance of such people as İhsan. I am including both of them in my prayers.

Fourthly: The correspondence of the alifs in the Twenty-Ninth Word is truly a wonder, just as it is a wonder that they come out so beautifully when duplicated by machine.

I send my greetings to everyone.

Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!

Firstly: The leader of the new government has evidently understood the importance for the Islamic world and the nation of building a large Islamic university resembling al-Azhar, the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ, in Van Province, a matter I have been following for the past forty years. Sultan Reşad assigned twenty thousand gold liras for its construction, while the former tyrannical government earmarked one hundred and fifty thousand liras, endorsed in the National Assembly by the signatures of one hundred and sixty-three deputies. The President made the statement given below among all the pressing affairs of state, which I am sending to you as good news. Even if it is not realized materially, it is indeed auspicious that the idea of it has been understood.

The President, Celâl Bayar, said in the Parliament while dealing with other high-priority matters, that the Ministry of Education was making enquiries concerning the construction of the University of the East in the region of Van. He said:

"All the difficulties will be surmounted for the founding of such an institution of learning in Van, in the eastern provinces. Work on it will commence in the next financial year."

This means that the university students who presented the biography, gave the President to understand the value of the Risale-i Nur.

Secondly: This very significant announcement by the President is a sign that it is now understood that the Risale-i Nur has performed invaluable services for this country and nation and will perform more. One should offer thanks, not complain, that all the difficulties the Nurjus have suffered have yielded this result of great consequence.

Our Dear, Loyal Brothers, Ziya and Abdülmuhsin!

Our Master says:

"Eşref Edip {[*]:} has been a companion of mine in serving belief for forty years; he now writes articles in Sebilürreşad and represents some of our acclaimed brothers who have now died, and is a true mujahid of Islam. He is a protector of the Risale-i Nur, and if I am to die, I find true consolation in Eşref Edip being among the Nurjus.

"Nevertheless, since the Risale-i Nur and the Nurjus have nothing to do with politics, and the Risale-i Nur can be the tool of nothing apart from divine pleasure, those attached to it do not want to get involved in social and political movements as far as they can. Only, in so far as mujâhids like Sebilürreşad and Büyük Doğu {[*]:} try to defend the truths of belief against the attacks of the people of misguidance, we praise and applaud them with all our lives and spirits, and are friends and brothers to them; but not in respect of politics. For those who come to receive instruction in belief may not be considered in biased fashion. While receiving lessons, there is no difference between friend and foe. Political bias damages this; sincerity is harmed. For this reason, the Nurjus have endured unparalleled torments, yet have exploited the Risale-i Nur for nothing. They have never grasped the club of politics. It was imagined that because the Risale-i Nur had broken absolute disbelief and eliminated the anarchy underlying it and the absolute despotism above it, that it had some sort of connection with politics. Whereas the Risale-i Nur's interpreter has claimed in courts of law that he would not exchange a single matter of belief for rule over the whole world, and has proved it with the way he has lived for twenty-five years and with other indications.

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Firstly: We congratulate you with our whole life and spirit on your activity and successes. The activities and triumphs of the Medresetü'z- Zehrâ are a remedy for all my pains and illnesses.

Secondly: I wrote a note for The Staff of Moses' being translated into good Arabic. I was going to send it with Zübeyir to Seyyid Salih in Ankara. I was also going to send to you via Ankara, a sincere letter from a retired officer in Tarsus and a letter requesting some books from the Risale-i Nur. Then suddenly Ibrahim Efendi arrived here having come as far as Afyon together with his wife in the name of the devoted Nurjus of Elmalı near Antalya, where he works at publishing the Risale-i Nur, so I sent them with him. With greetings to everyone.

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

I am referring an important matter to the leading members of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ. Seyyid Sâlih said that he had understood from his journey in Arabia that there was much need for The Staff of Moses there and that it would be most beneficial and should be translated into Arabic. My condition and illness do not permit me, so in my place the leading students of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ should get in touch with four different places with a view to having a good translation done. One letter should be sent to al-Azhar University with Kılınç Ali, where a number of literary persons should translate it. Another should be sent to the Directorate of Religious Affairs in Ankara where one or two scholars who sincerely appreciate the Risale-i Nur and are attached to it should translate it. Another letter they should send to my brother Abdülmecid, who is the Mufti of Ürgüp near Kayseri, and who although he should have worked with all his strength for the Risale-i Nur these last twenty years, he didn't, so to make up for it, he should now work with all his might at translating it into Arabic. And the other should be sent to the scholars in the region of Isparta who are within the fold of the Risale-i Nur; dividing up The Staff of Moses among themselves, each should translate a part into Arabic.

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Firstly: We were delighted at your surpassing good news, which is a preliminary to the Risale-i Nur's complete freedom. The Isparta judiciary held the books in a house for three years, so as its rent, in exchange for that three hundred liras, send me fifty copies of the biography printed in the new letters at the price of two liras per copy out of the five hundred liras that was left to me, so the price will be the equivalent of those three hundred liras. Send me copies of The Staff of Moses and Zülfikar to the value of fifty liras, since they have suffered imprisonment for four years and are most precious in my eyes, I am sending you the fifty liras now.

Secondly: Bârekâllah! Mâsha'llah! to Nazif a thousand times over! He has proved that he is a second Husrev and that İnebolu is a second Isparta. The Medresetü'z-Zehrâ is the most important matter in the biography and I reckon that Nazif's publications have played a role in the President's serious efforts to found an eastern al-Azhar University, called the University of the East, which bears the meaning of the Medresetü' z-Zehrâ.

Thirdly: Write in reply to the meaningful letter of the Imam Süleyman of Baraklı near Dinar that it is definitely true that the Prophet Muhammad (UWBP) praised the Turks. He indicates their importance in several places. There are Hadiths, but because I do not have any Hadith books with me and do not know the correct wording. But it is certain that the Turkish nation was praised by him. One example is the Hadith about Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror.

The letter sent by Hulûsi Bey, one of the oldest Nur students, is very fine and meaningful and urges his friends in Ankara to enter the fold of the Risale-i Nur. It shows too that he offers a fine example with the unwavering services he has performed for the Risale-i Nur these last twenty-five years. I send many greetings to all my brothers and sisters.

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Firstly: Endless thanks be to Almighty God that we have joyfully received five copies of The Staff of Moses and The Ratifying Stamp of the Unseen, which had been imprisoned in the court for the last three years. May Almighty God be pleased with you for ever and ever!

Secondly: The errors in the copy of Zülfikar returned by the court had not been corrected. The «Lâm» in the eighth line on page one hundred and ten of the Fourth Addendum to The Miracles of the Qur'an is wrong; it

should be «Lâ», because in the Qur'an, «Lâm» is thirty thousand, and «Lâ» nineteen thousand.

Thirdly: In a letter written in the new letters, a person from the Sümerbank factory in Isparta asks a question. You can advise him for me to read the treatise on divine determining. I am both unwell, and unable to write personal letters. Also, Zübeyir has gone to Ankara. Anyway, I don't know the new letters. I am sending it to you for your information.

Fourthly: I have sent my own subsistence, another fifty liras, with the driver Abdurrahman. You can work out how much I owe for the books you sent me and The Words Collection. This was written in haste. I send many greetings to everyone.

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Firstly: I congratulate you. The petition sent this time by Husrev to the ministers is a splendid historical document. But in a wire I received from Sungur a couple of days ago, it says that orders have been given for the return of one hundred and eighty-five works. We could not understand the numbers here. We asked the clerk of the telegraph office. He had evidently written it down wrong. I heard the machine with my own ears: "It means all the works are being returned." I wondered if possibly they had counted some parts of the one hundred and thirty treatises, making it one hundred and eighty-five. We could not understand it. Also, as reported in the Yeni Sabah newspaper, we heard that the President said about a large Islamic university called the University of the East - the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ - that they were endeavouring to overcome all the difficulties to found it. God willing, they will be compelled to build it for the benefit of the country and nation, for it is a goal I have been pursuing for the past forty years.

Secondly: I have sent to a number of important places several of the copies of Zülfikar and The Staff of Moses you sent, which like us were imprisoned for three years. For instance, Abdurrahîm from Vastan, who is Imam in the mosque in Cezire (Cizre) and is one of my old students, came all the way here to visit me. I gave him ten of the most important books. But then I remembered that in two places in the Fourth Addendum to "The Miracles of the Qur'an" in Zülfikar, one in the eighth line and one in the tenth, «Lâm» had been written instead of «Lâ», but in the Qur'an, «Lâm» is thirty thousand, and «Lâ» nineteen thousand. This error had been partially corrected in the other copies, but it had not been corrected in the copies of Zülfikar

that were held by your court. I had forgotten this here. I am referring this to you: via the mufti of Cezire, write to Imam Abdurrahîm and ask him to correct this error of the scribe. In this way, the leading students of the Medresetü' z-Zehrâ will also be in contact with Cezire.

I also understood from Husrev's letter that Zübeyir had mistakenly sent there the note he was going to send to Nazif. Husrev also made a small mistake, for I had sent a short letter to Nazif about the Tenth Principle of the Twenty-Fourth Word, not the Twenty-Fourth Letter. There is no copy of it left here. I had told him to send the copy of the Tenth Principle to Nazif so that he might send us a copy of the note. Nevertheless, his brilliant, long petition reduced to nothing that small error and had it forgiven. What this means is this: as a meritorious act, Nazif duplicated on the machine Jaushan al-Kabir, which is a supplication much favoured by the Nurjus. He had written to me about duplicating with it, the piece in the footnote about its wondrous merits and virtues which are described in figurative Hadiths, I told him that I had read the footnote only three or four times although I had recited the Jaushan every day for the last thirty-five years. To add it verbatim would be inappropriate, for opponents and atheists might make it a pretext to criticize it, God willing, in the near future, the blessed Jaushan al-Kabir will illuminate the Nurjus and fire them with enthusiasm.

Thirdly: The Nurju university students in Ankara and Istanbul are printing two thousand copies of A Guide for Youth. I assume it is the large Guide. That would be better. God willing, it will be a substantial guide for the young people. Write to Kılınç Haji Ali so that he is in touch with the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ, and say that literary scholars should translate The Staff of Moses. Then, by means of the translation, those masters of the Islamic world will be concerned with the Risale-i Nur.

Fourthly: I am curious to learn whether or not our brother Marangoz Ahmed has returned safely from the Hajj. Also, write to Husrev and his assistants that Mustafa Gül and his companions should add the prayer which is at the end of Zülfikar and The Staff of Moses to the end of The Words Collection.

Unending greetings to all of you.

Muallim Osman was Ceylan's friend in prison. He learnt a thorough lesson from him and has the ability to be a second Ceylan. It is astonishing, I received a letter saying that the two Sufi-inclined people I mention in my prayers everyday by name within the circle of the Nurjus, had attacked me and the Risale-i Nur with the idea of selling themselves. I was not offended and prayed for them even more. Just like years ago with the elderly well-known shaykh who maligned us in Istanbul due to the machinations of the former [People's] Party, I looked on them as brothers to me and friends, and I forgave them. But I would like them to read the two Flashes on sincerity.

My brothers! You should not be offended by such people, and do not get into arguments with them.

In His Name, be He glorified!

And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise (Q 17:44).

Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings!

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

You may send a petition to the justice-loving Democrats saying that I am ill and that they should do whatever they think is best. Our lawyer told us in the letter we received from him the day before yesterday that they are trying to differentiate between the books that contain indictable material and those that do not. They are making a pretext of one word out of thousands in one treatise and showing it to be an offence. Their malicious intention is to prevent the spread of the Risale-i Nur by not returning that treatise in a way that conforms with no law - just as they have always done upto the present. Also, although what they show to be an indictable offence in their decision, which has anyway been quashed by the Court of Appeal, is not against us, and although we have proved decisively the malice and with a table of true and false - the eighty errors in the public prosecutor's indictment, with the same antipathy they have made allegations against the four-hundred-page Zülfikar Collection due to a few lines about Islamic

dress and inheritance that were written thirty to forty years ago and only mention what is written in one hundred thousand Qur'anic commentaries. What law in the world would permit them to seize that weighty collection and not return it to us? Also, with the exception of two short pieces about repetition in the Qur'an and the angels, both Denizli Court and Ankara Criminal Court gave the decision to acquit and return to us all the works held for two years by Afyon Court since they could find nothing reprehensible in them. Then although the Isparta authorities at one time confiscated all the works, they returned all of them to their owners, Then they seized The Staff of Moses and Zülfikar on the pretext that they were being published in the old script without permission and held them for four years, but then because they could find nothing indictable in them returned all the one hundred and seventy volumes to us without any loss. And although the religious publications and official newspapers now express the same objections a hundred times more violently that we did in the name of right, towards some of the leaders of the former party, they showed this to be our most serious crime. ... ... ...

Thus, while the truth of the matter is this, Afyon Court stated at the end of its decision, which was also printed in the old letters, not in the name of justice but out of bigoted love of that person who is dead and gone, in order to convict us and due mostly to the prosecutor's malice, that "Said and his friends call Mustafa Kemal anti-religious and an anti-christ and they try to destroy the people's love for him, that's why we're convicting them!" Surely, even if such objections towards a dead person were a thousand times greater, it would only constitute a personal case. There is something strange in this and there must be some other matter in it so that a court of justice has made such a ruling. Now that all the parts of the Risale-i Nur which those people hold have been acquitted four times and the present Minister of Justice has decided, on the quashing of the Afyon Court decision which convicted us, that the Risale-i Nur contains nothing constituting an offence and that it has been acquitted three times, now in this era of the Democrat government, from which the whole nation awaits justice, compassion, and religion, if, due to the cunning schemes of the former tyrants, the Risale-i Nur is left to the abitrary devices of the ill-intentioned, it will be serious treachery against the Democrat government and will dash the nation's hopes of consolation. My deputy in Ankara, Mustafa Sungur, gave the good news in the telegraph he sent on 17.11.1950 that the decision had been taken to return all the parts of the Risale-i Nur to us, and that the just Justice Minister had endorsed the three acquittals. According to Sungur's subsequent letter, orders had been given

for their return. Despite this, and despite his saying that he would verify this by telephone, Afyon Court is meaninglessly collecting all the files of both Eskişehir and Denizli Courts, and with the announcement of the amnesty and the courts' acquittals, it is mixing up those blessed works with those files and sixteen years of slanders and denunciations in order to refute them and throw them into their depository, The affairs of the Risale-i Nur should not be left to those persons who have deceived us for the past three years. We wish to draw this most important matter to the attention of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice.

An extraordinary incident which is one of man examples opposed to justice and religion: We many times requested the return of our Qur'an, which they had confiscated three years ago and which shows the visible miracle of the 2,800 instances of the name of Allah written in gold, but they failed to do so and they did not give it to us. Now the lawyer says that we should send a petition to the Head of the Directorate of Religious Affairs requesting its return. There are hundreds of such examples showing that plots are hatched against us due solely to malice and foreign intrigue. The Democrats, who so please us and the Islamic world, should be prudent, and they should save the Risale-i Nur and us from these torments.

In the name of the Nur students, Said Nursi

In His Name, be He glorified!

And there is nothing but it glorifies with praise. (Q 17:44)

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Ceylân, my Abdurrahman and young Husrev, has performed his duties in two or three places perfectly, and has returned. Now I am sending him to Ankara as my deputy like Sungur, to carry out a more important task.

Secondly: I have sent you the letters from certain persons, for your information.

Thirdly: Let me know how much I owe you for the copies of The Words Collection, and of the biography in the new letters and Jaushan in the old letters, which are from İnebolu and are going to be sent to me.

My Dear, Loyal Brother, Osman Nuri!

Since, owing to your sacred intention and sincerity, Almighty God has gathered the leading young Saids around you in Ankara, and since you consider it necessary for me to be in Ankara, I am now sending in my place to that small Nur School the copies of the Risale-i Nur I have collected, having paid for them out of my own income. They will be neighbours to you to the number of Saids. And by reason of their loyal services upto now, which far surpass those of devoted sons, such hardworking young Saids as Sungur, Ceylân, Sâlih, Abdullah, Ahmed, and Ziya, each of whom is the equivalent of ten to fifteen Abdurrahmans, are my deputies with you and your students, and I leave it to you to supervise that small Nur School in my place, as a place of learning.

My Dear, Loyal, and Blessed Brothers!

Firstly: The possibility occurred to me that with the telegraph signed by Husrev and given to the President, the young Husrevs in Ankara might have the Qur'an written by Husrev printed photographically. You try to learn from the Isparta post office what sort of telegraph it was, and let me know. I am curious.

Secondly: The slight criticisms of us made by a number of Sufis and described in our brother Rıfat's letter, who is in Konya, hold no importance. You should not be upset and should not respond in any way. I look on the criticisms of the believers, and especially of the followers of the Sufi way, and particularly of my person, as advice of a sort and a favour, I forgive them. In the face of the awesome harms caused us by the mis- guided, I consider the insignificant criticisms of my person by believers to be warnings of a sort, urging us in a friendly manner to be cautious.

Thirdly: Incited by covert dissemblers, the weekly papers in Afyon recently presented us as being connected with something we have nothing to do with. The Nurjus here denied it. It is nothing to worry about. We congratulate with our whole life and spirit, the wondrous, effective services with the Risale-i Nur of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ's leading students which

offer many benefits for the Islamic world. I send many greetings to all my brothers and sisters and pray for them, and request their prayers.

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Firstly: Ali and Haji Süleyman from the auspicious village (Kuleönü), and Abdurrahman and Himmet from the vicinity of Dinar, and a leading Nurju from my home region, all came to visit me. I offer thanks to Almighty God that their fervent attachment to the Risale-i Nur in Kuleönü persists as ever, It was a wonder of their loyalty and sincerity that at the very time I had been obliged to send ten of my own collections to Ankara and from other distant places further books had been requested of me, those auspicious brothers brought me as a gift from the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ exactly the amount of the books I had sent. I found among them the entire Letters (Mektûbat) and Additional Letters (Lahika), written out in his own handwriting by Büyük Mustafa (the Elder), who is the leading Abdurrahman. May Almighty God bestow on all of them instances of mercy to the number of those books' letters. Amen!

Secondly: The day before yesterday, Mustafa, one of the young heroes of the Risale-i Nur, came to visit me. He assisted Husrev for eleven months in prison, working quite selflessly for his comfort. He told me that he intended to go and visit him. I replied that it was both Husrev's right and his own right that he should visit him, but that four students who had come here, had gone to Isparta, so there was no longer any need. I told him that since he acted on account of the Risale-i Nur as imam in a large village, that was more useful for the Risale-i Nur than either my personal service, or visiting Husrev at present. If such services for the Risale-i Nur had not been performed in his village, there would have been need for someone as sincere and devoted as himself. So his visit was postponed for now.

Thirdly: Haji Sabri of Konya came to visit me. We were holding a conversation and Sâdık, Hayrî, and Mustafa were presen; it was an important lesson for him. The work for the cause of belief performed for this country and nation and the Islamic world by the leading students of the Medresetü' z-Zehrâ and particularly by Husrev, and their forming a barrier against

the stratagems of the destructive atheists, are acts so tremendously good they would cause even - to suppose the impossible - a thousand evils to be forgiven. In which case, nothing those leading students, and foremost Husrev, does should be criticized, and everyone should co-operate with them as true brothers with genuine, heartfelt sincerity. The lesson had this meaning. God willing, Haji Sabri and Hoja Sabri and Rüştü and those like them will be as firmly attached to Husrev as brothers, and differences in temperament will no longer affect them.

My Dear, Loyal Brothers, and Leading Students of the Medresetü'z- Zehrâ, and Publishers of the Risale-i Nur!

Firstly: I considered the following matter to be appropriate: it occurred to me that as the leading members of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ are the main people who have a say concerning the Risale-i Nur, I should refer it to them for their approval, It is like this:

Recently, because three of our friends who serve me wanted to receive instruction from me temporarily for a few days, and because I felt a desire to revive a valuable lesson I had taught my students formerly, I was teaching from one page of the printed Lemeât (Gleams) every day. Both I and they met it with astonishment and appreciation. I had the idea that the reason no copies of the treatise remained, as with the other old printed treatises, was that enemies who understood their value prevented their publication, while friends did not want to part with their copies owing to their worth. And we saw that Lemeât comprised in the form of fine aphorisms a number of essential seeds of the Risale-i Nur, and in brief maxims encapsulated an extensive social truth in a style so clear and plain that no literary figure or thinker had previously achieved it. It was written in semi-verse and read as easily as prose, and thirty-seven years ago had been composed in twenty days in Ramadan by working for only one or two hours a day. It was as long as a book and was written as a sort of Mathnawi. We marked in the copy we obtained the points where in twenty places, it had made predictions which thirty to forty years later turned out to be true. It gave us the idea that the work was foretelling the Risale-i Nur, and was a sort of index of it and seedbed.

Secondly: I am leaving to the discretion of the Nur hero, Husrev, and

the other leading students of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ whether or not to include Lemeât at the end of The Words as the Thirty-Third Word. I send my greetings to all my brothers and sisters, and pray for them, and request their prayers.

{(*):}

My Dear, Loyal, Faithful, Sincere, and Genuine Brothers and Sisters!

We congratulate you with our whole life and spirit on the festival, and on the festival of those who this year were free to make the Hajj, and on this nation beginning to enjoy - with the despotism in this country being lifted - the freedom prescribed by the Shari'a. We congratulate you too on the nation's spiritual festival and on the festival enjoyed by the Islamic world with its shared awakening, and on the Risale-i Nur answering with the truth of the Qur'an the need humanity feels for the Qur'an's lights.

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Firstly: I have sent to Seyyid Sâlih ten of my own collections from the Risale-i Nur which he had asked you for, for the Muslim Brothers, who are very prominent in Aleppo and the region. He should give them to them.

Secondly: I am closely concerned with Denizli and with our Nur brothers there. Just when I was wondering how the late Hasan Feyzi's friends were, and how and where our old brother Yâkub Cemal was, I was greatly pleased to receive Yâkub Cemal's festival congratulations, sent in the name of the Denizli Nurjus. It took me longing and yearning on a trip around Denizli, and I exclaimed: Mâsha'llah! Bârekâllah!

Thirdly: Some of the wretches who tormented the Nurjus for twenty years and thrust them into prison, are now suffering everyday the distress that they inflicted on us in a month. We endured it in patience, referring those tyrants to Hell. However, the sacredness of the service of belief

demanded from divine justice a sort of hell for those wretches in this world, for we have seen that for some of them it reduces to nothing the pleasure they received in a year from their absolute despotism; time has shown this, This means that divine justice and providence suffice us.

Fourthly: I send my condolences to both the relatives of Ali Osman on his death, and to the Medresetü' z-Zehrâ and the Nur circle. And I congratulate him, for he carried out his duty to the letter and now is included in my prayers together with the Nur heroes Hâfız Ali and Hâfız Mustafa, I send many greetings to all my brothers.

The Hadith which says: "Practise religion as elderly women do!" {[*]:} shows that since at the end of time it will be elderly women who have powerful belief, religiously-minded people should imitate their piety. Furthermore, compassion is one of the Risale-i Nur's four fundamental principles and women are champions of compassion, due to which even the most timorous of them is ready to sacrifice her very spirit for her child.

At the present time those worthy mothers and sisters are faced with a difficult situation. I felt a presentiment in my spirit that I had to explain to those Nur students who want to remain single or who have to, a natural fact which is confidential and should not be disclosed. So I have to say this:

My sisters and daughters! Times have changed and things are not as they used to be. For nearly half a century now in our society secular education and upbringing have replaced Islamic education. So while a man should take a wife to be his companion in the next life as well as to bring him happiness in this world and to keep him from sinning, he loves the wretched woman only in her youth, keeping her under perpetual pressure.

He piles difficulties on her perhaps ten times greater than the ease of life he gives her. And if they are not compatible, called by the Shari'a «kufû'» (well-matched), she passes her life in misery since the rulings of the Shari'a were ignored. Then if there is jealousy between them as well, the situation is even worse. There are three factors driving people to make such a marriage:

The First: Divine wisdom bestowed a natural urge and longing to perform that natural duty, for reproduction. But where the man receives ten minutes' pleasure from satisfying that desire and if licit may suffer difficulties for an hour, the woman suffers the difficulty of carrying the child in her body for nine months and then tending it for ten years after that. This means that because that natural desire and urge of ten minutes results in such long-lasting hardship, it ceases to hold any importance. The emotions and instinctual soul should not drive a person to marry because of it.

The Second: Since by nature women are weak, they need someone to support them. So just to secure this need, it is far easier for them to work and earn their own livelihoods like village women rather than damaging their worship and spoiling their conduct, through which are won life both in this world and the next, by hypocritically trying to win the affections of a husband who has had no Islamic upbringing and is undisciplined and accustomed to dominance. Just as the True Provider provides infants with milk, so that Generous Creator will provide their sustenance. It does not befit students of the Risale-i Nur to seek out an immoral husband who does not perform the obligatory prayers, and hypocritically cultivate his affections and enter under his domination.

The Third: Women have an innate desire to love and pet children. And the hope of having a child who will help them in this life and be an intercessor in the next, and after they have died will assist them with his good works, strengthens that natural tendency and encourages them to marry. But nowadays, since secular education has replaced Islamic training, only one or two out of ten children are devoted to their mothers in return for their kindness and love, and help them and have merits written in the records of their mothers' good deeds through their pious prayers and own good works, and having been upright are intercessors for them in the hereafter. So since eight out of ten are not thus, the unfortunate weak women should not take upon themselves such difficult lives unless they are forced to, just because of that innate desire and natural urge.

So I say to young Nur students who do not want to marry because of this fact that I have pointed out: if they do not find young men who are completely suitable and religious and upright, they should not try to sell

themselves by lowering their standards. If there are no suitable young men, they should remain single like some of the self-sacrificing male Nur students, until a suitor of conscience appears who has received an Islamic upbringing and is suitable for them and will be a companion for all eternity. They should not put everlasting happiness into jeopardy for some fleeting worldly pleasure. Nor should they throw themselves into the evils of civilization.

My sisters and the young girls should read the Treatise on Islamic Dress for Women. [Author]

See, The Flashes Collection. New edn. (Istanbul: Sözler Publications, 2011), 254-8.

While we were in prison, there would sometimes be talk of an amnesty, put about by the former cruel despots in order to deceive, and the miserable prisoners would ask me if this would happen. I would tell them that they were only saying it to hoodwink them. However, the Nur students had been sent to prison three times for the purpose of consoling the prisoners and getting ninety per cent of them to perform the prayers. I therefore hoped from divine mercy with powerful hope that it was a sign that a full amnesty would be granted to the prisons, and I gave good news of this. On many occasions I consoled many men with this. Endless thanks be to Almighty God that the heroic Democrats confirmed my hopes and predictions and were the means of saving many innocent prisoners from torments, for they were being crushed on the pretext of arbitrary, biased laws and certain hostile officials' partisanship. They also made the bold sections of the nation supporters of themselves and of public order. It led also to numerous prisoners completely reforming by reason of their attachment to the Risale-i Nur and the Nurjus, and their becoming useful - rather than harmful members of the nation and country.

In His Name, be He glorified!

Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!

Our Most Beloved and Esteemed Master!

We have sent the completely true piece, "The Risale-i Nur cannot be destroyed!" to the home addresses of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice, and to the official addresses of the other ministers. We are giving it to the deputies we meet and they all say they will do what they can for the matter. The deputy for Isparta, Tahsin Tola from Senirkent, is closely concerned and he said this: "The government has begun to fight communism, but the police are not sufficient for this. The Nurjus have been struggling against it for twenty years and are of great assistance to the government. They say that the Nurjus are the best and the most effective of the various movements today in the country." The preacher and deputy Ömer Bilen, and the elderly deputies Hasan Fehmi Ustaoğlu and Fehmi Çobanoğlu send you many respects and greetings. Both say that in the name of the Risale-i Nur's collective personality, our beloved Master is the true guide of the present age and that it was due to his influence that this unexpected victory was won. These two esteemed deputies say that they have received assistance in many respects from you, our beloved Master, and that relying on the Risale-i Nur's service, they look with great hope to the future, and that they await from divine mercy that Islam will shine in all its glory in the world of humanity. Yesterday, Wednesday, the three deputies said they would visit our Master on the 1st of December.

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Firstly: I congratulate you with my whole life and spirit on the past Birthday of the Prophet (UWBP). {[*]:}

Secondly: The world of Islam will congratulate and applaud your success in publishing the Risale-i Nur. The signs are now appearing. For instance, Pakistan's deputy education minister came to visit me and took

some parts of the Risale-i Nur. He said that he would try to disseminate them among the ninety million Muslims there. He took them and went. Moreover, despite so many dissemblers working against us, the Risale-i Nur has been taken to far-off places in both Europe and Asia. Also, when the Germans in Berlin got hold of Zülfikar, they announced their praises of it in the newspapers, Also, the believers at home are reading The Staff of Moses and Zülfikar enthusiastically, attaching no importance to the prohibitions placed on them by the former Prime Minister and Interior Minister, who were the most opposed to them. Most of the readers are in Ankara. Also, prison directors in several places in two or three provinces have decided to make their prisons into Nur Schools so that their prisoners may reform through the Risale-i Nur, as they did in the prisons of Denizli and Afyon.

Thirdly: The late Burhan was an unlettered, secret hero of the Risale-i Nur. I offer my condolences to both his relatives, and Isparta, and the students of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ. I received the news five or six days ago and during those five or six days, I have prayed for him perhaps a thousand times. For while reciting my invocations during those six days, I have intended him the nearly four hundred times I have pronounced "Save us from Hellfire I make over to Burhan all that I have read and recited.

Fourthly: The Risale-i Nur has begun to fill the secular schools with light. Their pupils are attaching themselves to it to a greater extent than the medrese (religious school) scholars, becoming students of it and spreading it. God willing, the inmates of the religious schools will slowly recognize the Risale-i Nur's worth, for in reality it belongs to them and is the product of their schools. Even now, many muftis and religious scholars appear to be enthusastic about it and are requesting it. The most important frequenters of the Sufi convents (tekye) are the followers of the Sufi way (ehl-i tarikat). It is absolutely essential that they illuminate the Risale-i Nur with all their strength and that they look on it as their own.

{(*):}

Up to now I have thought only of the reality of belief and have said that the present is not the time of the Sufi tarikat; innovations do not permit it. But now it is necessary and essential that all the followers of the tarikats who are within the bounds of the Prophet's (UWBP) Sunna should regard the circle of the Risale-i Nur, which is the summary of all the twelve major tarikats and is

their largest circle, as their own tarikat circle, and enter it. The present time has shown this. Also, even the most sinful followers of the tarikats cannot embrace unbelief easily; their hearts are not defeated by it. Therefore they are not completely shaken and may become true Nurjus. However, as far as is possible, they should not embrace innovations or commit any serious sins that destroy the fear of God.

Fifthly: There is one sole solution in the face of atheism, irreligion, and anarchy, the gravest dangers at the present time, and that is to embrace the truths of the Qur'an. For the human calamity that in a short time transformed vast China into a communist state, cannot be silenced with political, physical forces. The only thing that can silence it are the truths of the Qur'an. The effects of the matter explained in the Night of Power in A Guide for Youth {[*]:} are now to be seen in both America and Europe. For this reason, the true strength of our present government is to be found in relying on the truths of the Qur'an and serving them. By doing this, through Islamic brotherhood, it will gain a reserve force of three hundred and fifty million brethren within the bounds of Islamic unity. Formerly, the Christian states did not support Islamic unity, but now, because communism and anarchy have arisen, both America and the European states are compelled to support it and the Qur'an.

Sixthly: A deputy who is a Nur student came to visit me. He told me that he had visited the Ministry of Justice and told them about the decision to confiscate the Risale-i Nur. Özyörük, the Justice Minister, said that he had given orders to Afyon Court to return it in its entirety, and that he was going to return the copy of The Staff of Moses he had to its author. Halil Özyörük's saying this shows his support for the Democrats and for the Risale-i Nur.

I send many greetings to everyone.

In His Name, be He glorified!

And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise (Q 17:44).

Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!

My Dear, Loyal Brothers and Young Heroes of the Risale-i Nur!

Firstly: I congratulate you with my whole life and spirit on your wonderful work with the Risale-i Nur in a place like Ankara. Truly, in a way far surpassing our hopes, you have been the means of a significant awakening among the educators and students of the secular schools. The work you have achieved in one year in Ankara could only have been done in ten. You should be content with this duty you have performed for belief and the Qur'an in a short time, and not allow your morale to be broken by unimportant incidents. Indeed, they should spur you on to work even harder. Your service in such places at a time around twenty political and social currents from home and abroad are clashing boastfully and maliciously, and the university students are flocking appreciatively to the Risale-i Nur, pleases all the Nurjus enormously, just as in the future it will please the Islamic world, God willing. The rewards are abundant for your small service. Sometimes, one hour's watch in the army under severe conditions, may be the equivalent of a year's worship. Similarly, yourselves and the Istanbul University Nurjus have performed many duties in a short time. Even if the fruits of your efforts are few, be content with them. If some weak persons retreat from the front in war, it arouses even greater heroism in the brave; so if some nervous people withdraw, it should drive the devotees of the Risale-i Nur to greater efforts and resolution, and to work with even more enthusiasm. Yes, you have learnt instinctively an important truth of the Risale-i Nur, and you should still keep it in mind. It is this:

Our duty is to serve belief and the Qur'an sincerely. It is God's business to give us success and induce the people to accept it and to dispel opponents. We may not interfere in these. Even if we are defeated, it should not damage our morale or lessen our service. We have to be resigned on this point. For example, one time they said to Jalaluddin Khwarazmshah, a great champion of Islam: "You will be victorious over Jenghiz!" He replied: "Our duty is to wage jihad. To give us victory is God's business, I can't interfere in that!" Your unshakeable, sincere service up to now indicates that you have followed that champion. You should remain unshaken even if only one or two people out of a thousand accept you. Sometimes, one or two are the equivalent of a thousand.

Secondly: These days, attention in Ankara is excessively turned towards

this world. Those in power have not found the time to accept this principle entirely. Numerous parties, of course, work very hard to find supporters or to hide their mistakes, And some of the currents abroad which are opposed to Islam and the Qur'an have found some people here by means of whom, with propaganda aimed at making those who work seriously for religion nervous or give it up, they cause consternation to any who are not truly devoted or who are attached to this world or to too many friends, and they try to break the Nurjus' morale.

My Dear, Loyal, and Blessed Brothers!

Firstly: I have received both the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ's victorious produce from the Risale-i Nur, of which I was in great need, and the collections the heroic Tahirî sent in the name of his late wife and two daughters, and two weeks ago the most timely complete Letters (Mektûbat) of Mustafa, a worthy successor of the late Hâfız Ali, and the blessed collection written in his own hand by the Risale-i Nur's strong commander, Re'fet Bey, and his letter describing his wonderful and meaningful dream. I was indeed pleased. May Almighty God bestow on all of you a thousand merits for every single letter you have written, and may He bestow endless mercy on the spirits and graves of the late Hatice, the late Hicret, and the late Aişe. Amen!

Secondly: I was very pleased that, as stated in Mustafa Osman's letter, who is a second Husrev - a brother called Sabri wants to come here to serve me. I accept him as though he had come and served for a few months, but at the moment there is no need for anyone to come here from other places. When there is need, I shall let him know. In truth, young heroes resembling the Isparta champions are beginning to emerge in the region of Eflâni.

Thirdly: Contrarily to my rule, I have accepted the gift of fresh grapes sent by the old-established Nur scribe and student, Kâtib Osman, from the Risale-i Nur garden, and the most auspicious gifts from Sava, a leading branch and centre of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ. Whoever I offer them to, I will do so for their merit.

Fourthly: I had written out in a notebook the most important parts of all the letters the Nur hero Husrev wrote to me while I was in Emirdağ, and particularly the parts containing summaries of the letters I had written. But

someone fancied it while I was in prison, and they took it and it got lost. I still have around forty of his letters. I am going to mark them, God willing, and if I can't have them copied out here, I'll send them to you. They can be put together in a notebook, and owing to their importance, perhaps be duplicated.

Fifthly: I have sent fifteen copies of The Words Collection to Ankara. They were very useful. The Nurjus there are working heroically behind the screen of caution.

Sixthly: I have corrected Letters (Mektûbat), which you do not have and which Husrev wants. I shall send it with someone. This time, I realized that the Twenty-Fourth Letter is very valuable, very subtle, very profound, and absolutely true.

I send many greetings to everyone.

My Dear, Loyal, and Blessed Brothers!

Firstly: Our brother, the İnebolu Husrev, Nazif Celebi, wrote to me and asked what would be appropriate to publish after finishing the Hizb-i Nûriye and Salâvat. If you agree, I think it would best to publish the treatises For the Sick and For the Elderly from The Flashes Collection, the short Letter of Condolence for a Child, which is the Seventeenth Letter, and theدأort letter about serving the elderly. But if the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ members deem it necessary, they can correct or excise any sentence or passage they think fit. And they may add to these any other short treatise. Send Nazif a reply in this vein quickly. That brother's publishing together the Jaushan al-Kabir and the Salâvat of the Hizb-i Nûriye is a considerable service for the Nurjus and the believers. May Almighty God bestow on him and his assistants a thousand merits for every single letter. Amen!

Secondly: The new government slowly understands that true power resides in the Qur'an and that they many withstand the destructive enemies through Islamic brotherhood and the truths of belief. Sometimes, a single destructive person may cause alarm to twenty repairers and may sometimes rout them. It is not material forces or external and internal policies and pacts that, when the twenty million Muslims here are quite simply in a situation of defeat, will halt the assaults against them of a force that made vast China submit to itself; it is only the Qur'an and truths of belief forming a

barrier against that force's destruction of the sensibilities of the heart (mâneviyat-i kalbiye), that force's greatest strength, and curing their spiritual wounds. The Education Minister of the new government has evidently felt this fact for, contrarily to his predecessors, he is giving greater importance to religious instruction and the spread of the truths of belief. Even, the newspapers have reported that two hundred thousand liras have been earmarked for a university in the east, called by them the University of the East, attaching considerable importance to it. Both Ankara and Istanbul Universities have certainly grasped the above-mentioned fact and that it is the truths of the Qur'an and belief that will save both the country and the youth from that awesome, destructive force, for the Ankara students presented a letter with one thousand seven hundred signatures congratulating the Education Minister on his including religious instruction in the compulsory schools. And in Istanbul University they told one of the leading members of the new government that in Anatolia there is a powerful current of support for religion, and he replied that they will allow few opportunities to both that current and the leftists. So the university representative told the government leader despite his being opposed to religious publications: "If the current you're referring to is the Risale-i Nur, neither yourselves nor Europe will be able to defeat it!" In connection with this matter, although it is opposed to my way and temperament, I say the following, donning for a minute or two the head of the Old Said:

There is nothing between belief and unbelief. There can be nothing in this country between communism and Islam and its struggle against it. Right and left and centre means three ways. It is fair enough if the English or French say this; they can say, Islam on the right, communism on the left, and Christianity in the centre. But in this country, there can be no other religion or sect besides Islam and belief and its struggle against absolute unbelief. For no true Muslims can ever become Jews or Christians. At the very most, they lose religion completely and become anarchists.

God willing, like the Education and Justice Ministers, the other leading members of the government will fully understand this facto In place of the terms right and left, they will rely on the power of the Qur'an and belief and strive to save the country from absolute disbelief, anarchy, and atheism, and their awesome destruction. We beseech this with our whole life and spirit from divine mercy, and hope for it.

... A couple of weeks ago, Ali Rıza, one of the leading professors of al-Azhar University in Cairo, sent a man here. Similarly, two days ago, a

prominent scholar came to visit me who is originally from Bukhara and lives in Medina and has connections with leading scholars in Egypt and particularly with our former Seyhülislam and my friend in the Darü'l- Hikmet, Mustafa Sabri Efendi. He had told them that he was coming here and in a way came in their name. I gave him as a gift for al-Azhar University eleven copies of my personal collections and sent them with him to that principal school of the Islamic world, which as he said, now has twenty-seven thousand students. And I told him that foremost Mustafa Sabri, and Ali Rıza and Mehmet Zahid Kevseri, should take up those collections from the Risale-i Nur in my place, and protect and inherit them, and try to have them translated into Arabic. I also wrote a letter. The scholar took them and departed.

I send greetings to all my brothers and sisters, and request their prayers.

Firstly: Endless thanks that now in what has the meaning of a small Nur School in Ankara, young Saids and devotees of the Risale-i Nur read one of the collections of the Risale-i Nur every evening; one person reads and the others listen and take lessons. Some high-ranking persons also attend when, on some occasions, there are conferences. In connection with the slanders of the Afyon journalist, some deputies told the Prime Minister and Interior Ministry, and said to the Nur students that Adnan Menderes {[*]:} and the Interior Minister had responded in a friendly manner and sent word that they [the students] should not worry or lose hope. The journalist in Afyon then evidently said that he was going to go to Emirdağ because he had two things to ask of our Master, and that he was going to request these and offer an apology, My students bought one hundred and sixty copies of the newspaper which was published against us, and destroyed them.

I was going to write some more, but I have cut it short due to my indisposition and have only a little time. I send greetings to everyone.

Just like the Isparta heroes, Eflâni and Safranbolu work continuously. In fact, this time, the invocation (Münâcât) was missing from some of the copies of A Guide for Youth. In a very short time, Eflâni wrote out seventy copies of it in the old letters and sent them to me. So we added them to the end of the Guide. God willing, many Sungurs are appearing there, and will appear.

You can send a petition to the justice-loving Democrats in the following vein. I am ill, so write it in whatever way you deem appropriate.

The letter we received yesterday from our lawyer states that in a way that conforms with no law, they have made a pretext of one single word out of thousands and with the idea of vindictively preventing the spread of the Risale-i Nur, said it constitutes an offence and have not returned that treatise. Although according to the decision of the Appeal Court which totally quashed their decision, what they showed to be an offence was not against us, and although we proved decisively the eighty errors in the public prosecutor's indictment and his malice, now with the same malice they have stated that a few lines about Islamic dress and inheritance in the four-hundred-page Zülfikar Collection that were written thirty or forty years ago, about which a hundred thousand Qur'anic commentaries have said the same things, constitute an offence and they have confiscated the work and refuse to return it. Is there any law in the world that would permit this?

Also, with the exception of two short pieces about repetition in the Qur'an and the angels, all the works held by Afyon Court have been acquitted by both Denizli Court and Ankara Criminal Court, having been investigated for two years, and the same works were all returned to their owners by the Isparta authorities after having been seized at some time. Then Zülfikar and The Staff of Moses were confiscated and held for four years on the pretext that they were published in the old script without permission, and all one hundred and seventy copies of the collections were returned to us with no losses because they could find nothing reprehensible in them. And what they showed to be our most serious offence, our objecting in the name of truth to some of the leaders of the former party, are now being reiterated a hundred times more violently in the official newspapers and religious journals. Whereas, a confidential piece of the Risale-i Nur

proved when expounding a truth that specifically pinpointed the present, that it was "a dead leader."

Although that is the truth, the judges' panel in Afyon Court stated at the end of its decision, which was also written in the old script, not in the name of justice but out of bigoted love of that dead man and chiefly due to the prosecutor's malice: "Said and his friends called Mustafa Kemal a wrecker of religion and the Sufyan, and they have tried to destroy the people's love for him. That's why we're convicting them."

Could there be a public trial for such a criticism of a person who is dead and gone, even if it were a thousand times stronger. To give such a judgement in a court of justice surely means that there is some other matter at hand.

Although the books of the Risale-i Nur that such people are holding have four times been acquitted, and the present Interior Minister and former Justice Minister have three times ruled for their acquittal and stated that they contain nothing reprehensible, and that with the quashing of the Afyon decision to convict us, they contain nothing constituting an offence, now at the time the whole nation awaits justice, compassion, and service of religion from the Democrat government, to leave the Risale-i Nur to the abitrary whims of the evil-intentioned due to the machinations of the former despots, is grievous treachery towards the Democrat government and destroys the nation's hopes of consolation.

My deputy in Ankara is Mustafa Sungur. He gave the good news in the telegraph he sent on 17.11.1950 that the decision had been taken to return all the parts of the Risale-i Nur to us. So although the just Justice Minister has three times acquitted them and now according to Sungur's letter, orders have been given for their return, Afyon Court is collecting all the slanderous reports and denunciations of sixteen years as well as the records of the Denizli and Eskişehir trials, and with the announcement of the amnesty and the court acquittals, is mixing up those blessed works and those reports and records in order to refute them, and is depositing them all in its store. The affairs of the Risale-i Nur should not be left to the devices of those persons who have deceived us this last three years. I am presenting this most important matter for the attention of the Prime Minister, Minister of Education, and Interior Minister.

Private Secretariat, the Vatican

No: 232247

22 February, 1951

Dear Sir,

Your fine, handwritten work Zülfikar has been presented to His Holiness the Pope, having been sent by means of Papal Nuncio's Office in Istanbul. His Holiness states that he is most touched by your kind gift and entreats Almighty God for His blessings upon you. I offer my deepest respects ,

Chief Secretary of the Vatican.

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Firstly: I congratulate you with all my life and spirit on the month of Rajab and the Three Months {[*]:} and I beseech Almighty God that these months will be the means of winning for you and for me an everlasting life of eighty years. Amen.

Secondly: For the last thirty to forty days, as a sort of assault on the believers and three religiously-minded deputies, a general upset has been caused in order to hinder the restoration of the marks of Islam. They found the Nurjus to be the most powerful of those working for the cause of belief, so many cunning plans were laid on false pretexts in order to induce them to be neglectful and to dampen their enthusiasm. They wanted with these extraordinary intrigues in Emirdağ, as in Tarsus and Istanbul, to anger me and incite a disturbance. But through the grace of God, I was given extraordinary patience and forbearance. Their plans were completely thwarted. There is the possibility, even, that three high-ranking officials here and in Afyon will be dismissed. And the three deputies put in a good word for us. That is to say, divine providence protects us as ever, all praise be to God. Don't be anxious about things like this, but it is advisable to always be cautious.

Thirdly: The hero Ahmed Feyzi, who may be counted the Risale-i Nur's lawyer, is involved with the duplicating of the Risale-i Nur in Izmir and with the general awakening there, and has undertaken to do the corrections.

Bayram, who in prison was a young Nur hero, brought me a letter describing how the brothers who are helping him there, like Mehmed Yayla and Abdurrahman, are continuing their involvement with the duplicating. Ahmed Feyzi sent some olives and olive oil with Bayram. Although I did not accept my own brother Abdülmecid's gift, I was obliged to accept Ahmed Feyzi's, since I look on him as even closer to me than my brother. But so as not to break my rule, in return, you send to him on my account, one Words Collection, five Jaushan al-Kabirs, and three Hizb-i Nûriyes which belong to me, as Nazif mentioned in his letter, and which will be sent to you from Istanbul.

Two Nurjus have gone to Ankara. The Prime Minister, the Interior Minister, and the Minister of Education all support us. We received the good news, so don't worry about us. I feel a spiritual joy at the difficulties we suffer.

In His Name, be He glorified!

This year, fifteen students will go to the Hijaz together. The Hijaz will pay all their expenses there. On their return, Sâlih and two of his friends will attend the Islamic Youth Conference in Pakistan as members, after travelling through Iran and other countries. The government may pay for their expenses. We await your orders concerning this matter.

Abdurrahim Zapsu saw 'Ali Akbar Shah and Sa'id Ramazan; they were treated with great respect in Pakistan. Their hands were kissed in place of our Master's, and your prayers were requested.

Firstly: I enquire after your health, I kiss your hands and feet, and pray to Almighty God for your health and well-being, and await your prayers, for which I am in great need.

Secondly: There is nothing to worry about here now. The anxiety on the 5th of March was dispelled on the 18th of April, The police station became a Nur station. The Tarsus public prosecutor, having studied the books,

ordered that they should be returned. The chief inspector told me to go to Mersin to get the books that were there, so they could all be returned together. The police in Mersin said that they had sent all the books to Ankara and they would give them to me if they were returned, but that there were none there. So I went back to the inspector in Tarsus. He was very apologetic and said that they only act under orders and that they could not return them without receiving the orders. Then on 18th April they said that the books had arrived and that we should go and get them. I went immediately. I understood from the paper in which they were wrapped that five of our books, Zülfikar, The Ratifying Stamp of the Unseen, The Mysteries Collection, your Afyon defence speeches, and the Hulâsa, had arrived, having been sent from Ankara.

They handed over the books to us with a note saying that they contain nothing to prevent their sale. I gave the chief inspector a copy of The Mysteries Collection, and the police chief a copy of the Hulâsa and the biography in the new letters. They were both very pleased. Both have become Nurjus.

My Master! You told me that my duty lay in this region. I gave my word, and when I left Isparta I said that I would come in March. But my spirit tells me that I have not fully accomplished my duty since I was unable to reach Gaziantep and Maraş.

My Master! A year before I went to Eskişehir, three or four months after I first visited you, I had a dream in which you, my Master, came to our house. You asked me: "If I send you somewhere, will you go?" I replied: "Of course I will!" You told me: "I'm going to send you somewhere for three months." I immediately set off, and you told me: "Stop!" I stopped. You asked: "Did I tell you to go now?" I woke up then, and ever since I have been wondering: "Is it for this year that he gave me that order to make the three-month journey?" Day and night I wept. That is to say, it was destined to happen now. This is from the bounty of my Lord!

My Master, I kiss your hands and feet, longingly and with respect.

The Egyptian radio spoke so much about the Ascension on Wednesday night, that I celebrated it on both Wednesday night and on Thursday night.

Secondly: Evidently, one of the commanders of the Afyon gendarmerie was angry at Ishârât al-I'jâz (Signs of Miraculousness) being seized from us, seeing that it is a scholarly work that was written years ago. The Afyon Public Prosecutor's Office decided that it should be returned to us. They summoned us on Friday and Hayri on the day of the Ascension, and returned it. I considered this to be a sign of the Ascension that, as with the return in Tarsus, the spread of the Risale-i Nur cannot be prevented. God willing, we shall get back our Qur'an and other treatises from Afyon. Concerning the copies of A Guide for Youth which were given to the Public Prosecutor's Office in Istanbul, foremost the lawyer Mehmed Mihrî, who was a leading student of the Old Said, and his son-in-law the defending lawyer Asım, said that they were going to take this matter to court with fifty other lawyers, but, God willing, there will be no need for that and he will get them back with going to court.

Thirdly: The piece called, "Complaint to the Supreme Tribunal at the Resurrection of the Dead," and the piece consisting of ten matters that addressed the Parliament twenty-eight years ago and was printed at that time, and also the piece consisting of three matters about Mustafa that was written four years ago for the President of the Republic, have all been sent to Ankara to show to some of the present deputies and to the believing members of the government. I am also sending them to you for your information.

Fourthly: Mehmed Çavuş and his brother from the village of Baraklı near Dinar came to visit me together with another man. They appeared to me to be quite serious. Subsequently, they wrote some things in a letter and I am sending you a part of it attached. The brother asks some questions, but the Risale-i Nur leaves no need for this; it supplies answers to everything in my place. Only, in his question about the verse, «Immortal youths will [attend on] them» (Q 56: 17, 76: 19) in the letter of condolence on the death of a child, {[*]:} it says in some old commentaries that in Paradise everyone from children to the elderly will be thirty-three years of age. God knows best, but the meaning is this, that the term "youths (wildân)" in the unambiguous verse means that children, for whom it is not compulsory to perform the religious obligations and they are absolved from them, and who die before the age of puberty, will remain as lovable children worthy of

Paradise. Nevertheless, according to the Shari'a, parents should encourage their child to perform the prayers when they reach the age of seven in order to familiarize them, and they should strongly encourage him when he reaches ten, to accustom him. That is to say, although it is not compulsory, as a sort of supererogatory worship, children who perform the prayers from the age of seven till the age of puberty like adults, and hold the fast, will be thirty-three years old in Paradise, in order to receive the large rewards of pious adults. Some commentaries included all children, without elucidating this point. It was supposed to be general, although it is specific.

My Dear, Loyal, Thoughtful Brothers!

Firstly: Owing to many signs, I have formed the certain opinion that the reason covert atheists have deceived a number of officials, and insistently levelled their accusations at A Guide for Youth alone out of all the lengthy confidential treatises of the Risale-i Nur, and have caused me difficulties this last one and a half years, is the piece about the air (Hüve Nüktesi) in the Guide. {[*]:} For the true meaning of divine unity that the piece discloses most clearly and decisively, smashes absolute disbelief, In fact, in one part of it, it disallows every sort of doubt and hesitation. Because covert atheists could find nothing to combat this, they tried to prevent its spread by banning it officially. I am going to explain to you only three of many points related to the piece about the air that I expounded for the leading students of the Medresetü' z-Zehrâ the day before yesterday.

First Point: According to an inner meaning of the verse: «To Him ascend [all] good words» (Q 35:10), one elevated and important duty of the element air is to be an ever-changing page for the pen of divine power, in order to make heard to all the angels and spirit beings in the globe of the air the beautiful, meaningful, veracious words of belief inscribed by the pen of divine determining and spread through divine permission, and to convey them to the Supreme Throne. Since this is the most important of the air's sacred duties and of the wisdom in its creation; and since by means of the radio the face of the earth is made into a single dwelling and is a vast divine bounty for humankind; most certainly, as humankind's universal thanks, before anything else the words that the radio broadcasts should be foremost the Qur'an and its truths, which are divine speech and

"good words," and the lessons of belief and fine morals, and the essential needs and benefits of mankind. Then it may be thanks for that vast bounty. For if thanks are not offered for bounties, they become harmful for people.

It is true that human beings have need for some enjoyable entertainments, as they have need for true facts and reality, but amusements should be only one in five. It is otherwise contrary to the air's purpose, Moreover, while being a vast bounty for humankind, it is the cause of laziness and vice and the neglect of necessary duties, thus becoming a serious calamity. For it destroys people's enthusiasm for work and effort, which they need.

Now, before my very eyes is the tiny machine of a radio, which was brought to my room so that I might listen to the Qur'an. I listened to it and saw that only a tenth of it was allotted to "good words." I understood this to be a human error. God willing, they will correct it, And as thanks for this bounty of the radio, which should be a means of transforming the whole face of the earth into an enlightened council and elevated dwelling and a school teaching religious belief, four fifths of what it broadcasts will be "good words" which will be spoken to win everlasting life for human- kind.

Second Point: It says in the Risale-i Nur that "one who cannot create the universe, cannot create an atom. Only the Being who creates the whole universe can create an atom in its right place and make it perform its orderly duties."

One particular proof of this sentence's universal proofs is this: the handful of air in this small radio I have with me, which is the container and receptacle of words, demonstrates decisively the following: a single phrase of the Qur'an, for instance, "all praise be to God!" with all its letters and in the mode and style particular to the reciter, reaches our ears with no change through the handful of air in the radio, over distances varying from one hour to a year from one of the nearly two hundred radio stations whose names appear written in this machine. In order for the phrase to reach our ears and in order to convey it to them without its being altered or distorted, there have to be found in every atom of that handful of air, an infinite power and comprehensive will, and knowledge so all-embracing it knows all the different modes of the Qur'an reciters in those centres all over the earth. For if there were no all-seeing eye to see them and ear to hear every- thing everywhere at the same moment, most certainly that miracle of power would not come into existence. That is to say, this handful of air molecules can manifest such a miracle of power only through a knowledge and will that encompass the whole universe, and the power of a Being possessing hearing and sight, and an Absolutely Powerful One for whom nothing

is difficult and for whom the greatest thing is as easy as the smallest. For to ascribe the existence of air waves to the creation of imaginary haphazard chance, blind force, and deaf nature, means making every single molecule an absolute ruler that sees, knows, and does everything in the globe of the atmosphere covering the whole earth. This is a totally impossible superstition which is infinitely distant from reason.

Third Point: The following fact is understood from the miracle of power that the handful of air displays in the tiny machine of this radio, a receptacle which acts as a flowerpot for the blooms of words: every one of the air's molecules describes Almighty God together with His Being and attributes, and every one of them proves them. With their extensive, lengthy proofs, the philosophers and religious scholars who investigate the universe, take the whole of it into consideration when proving the existence and unity of the Necessarily Existent One. Only then do they attain fully to knowledge of God. However, just as a fragment of glass displays the sun when it appears, the same as the surface of the ocean displays it, and it points to the sun; so too, in consequence of the above-mentioned truth, all the particles in that handful of air display in themselves the manifestation of divine unity and of the divine attributes and perfection, the same as the ocean of the universe. Thus, since the Risale-i Nur, which is a flash of the miraculous meanings of the All-Wise Qur'an, has elucidated this fact, an attentive Nurju is not compelled to say: "There is no existent save God" in order to attain a constant sense of the divine presence and be perpetually aware of knowledge of God. And the Nurju does not need to say: "There is none witnessed save Him" in order to attain a constant sense of the divine presence like some of the people of reality. For the sacred window of the shining truth of "In everything is a sign indicating that He is One!" {[*]:} is sufficient for him. A brief explanation of this Arabic phrase is as follows:

Everyone in this world has their own world, their own universe. Quite simply, there are universes and worlds one within the other to the number of conscious beings. The pillar of each person's personal world, universe, and world is his own life, If he has a mirror in his hand and holds it up to a large palace, he will have a palace in his own mirror. Similarly, each person has his own personal world. Saying, "There is no existent save He," some of the people of reality denied this personal world, and in accordance with the inner meaning of abandoning everything other than God, found a

permanent sense of the divine presence and knowledge of God. Another group of the people of reality said: "There is nothing observed save Him" in order to find permanent cognizance of God and an awareness of the divine presence, and consigned their personal worlds to oblivion. They drew a veil of transience over them, and finding a sense of the divine presence, transformed all their lives into worship of a sort.

Now at the present time, in accordance with the inner meaning of "And in everything is a sign indicating that He is One," which has become apparent through the miraculousness of the Qur'an's meanings (i'caz-i mânevî), there is a window revealing divine unity in everything from particles to the stars, and there are signs (âyet), that is, indications and evidences, making known directly the Single One of Unity together with His attributes. Thus, in the piece about the air (Hüve Nüktesi) are succinct indications to the above-mentioned sacred truth concerning belief and the divine presence. The Risale-i Nur has proved and elucidated it. In former times, the people of reality explained it somewhat briefly and summarily. This means that these ghastly times are more in need of this truth, since it has been bestowed in detail through the All-Wise Qur'an's miraculousness and the Risale-i Nur has disseminated it.

Such parts of the Risale-i Nur as Zülfikar, The Miracles of the Qur'an Collection, which the Hajis saw had been placed next to the Black Stone in Mecca out of respect, and The Staff of Moses Collection, which they say had been placed on the Prophet's (Upon whom be blessings and peace) tomb in Medina, are means of securing the world of Islam's true brother- hood for us. But for four years, moves have been made to destroy them by confiscating them and leaving them to rot in court repositories as though they were pernicious rags. This is despite four courts having ruled for their acquittal and free publication, and on numerous occasions our having applied to the authorities and sent petitions requesting their return, and the Prime Minister having said that uptil now no harm has come to country due to the propagating of religion. And now the religiously minded are

alarmed at the law ensuring religious freedom being postponed although it should have had priority and been ratified urgently, and they are worried that in the nation's eyes the religious deputies are failing to perform their most crucial religious duties. We too are alarmed and so that internal covert atheists and traitors who work on account of communism do not take advantage of this situation, out of patriotism I am compelled to explain the following fact to you. The fact is this:

Due to my illness these days, I have been unable to endure the intense cold. On numerous occasions I have experienced that as a result of a general error, the air and earth grow angry and give news of divine wrath through earthquakes and storms, and display conditions opposed to the ordinary. I perceived in this signs of a non-material storm. I wondered in my heart if a general mistake had again been made, causing harm to Islam and the truths of belief. I asked what there was in the newspapers and what the news was, although it is not my custom and I have given up world politics. They told me that the law ensuring the freedom of religious people who disseminate religion has been postponed, while the law concerning leftists has been expedited and ratified.

It occurred to my heart that before anything else, for the benefit of this country and Islam it is essential that the law ensuring the freedom of religious people be both expedited, and ratified, and urgently implemented in schools. For together with winning for this country with such a ratification, the moral strength of the nearly forty million Muslims in Russia and the four-hundred-million world of Islam, as a reserve force, it would halt the moral and spiritual depradations of communism. For while due to its thousand-year enmity Russia should first of all have attacked us, rather than America or Britain, what obviated such an attack was doubtless the truths of the Qur'an and belief. In which case, before anything else, in the face of that extraordinary force, it is absolutely essential to actively grasp the truths of the Qur'an and to construct a Qur'anic barrier before irreligion, like an insuperable barrier of Dhu'l-Qarnayn. For it is only the truths of belief and the Qur'an which have prevented Russia from attacking us and halted it, although up to the present it has overrun half China and half Europe. Since the judiciary can respond to the Russians' moral destruction only by giving material penalties to one man out of a thousand; moral and spiritual bombs are needed against that force which hands over the property

of the rich to vagabonds and the poor and proffers the daughters and wives of the honourable to licentious youths, and in a short time has seized half of Europe, Those bombs are the atom bombs of the truths of the Qur'an and belief; they may halt that dreadful leftist current. Such a universal force cannot be halted with the material penalties, dealt out to one man out of a hundred, by the judiciary.

For this reason, the religious deputies postponing this matter, which should be expedited, has led to the globe of the atmosphere objecting to it with severe cold, as we have previously experienced many times.

Humanity has experienced a powerful awakening as a result of the two ghastly world wars, due to which, most certainly, no nation can now exist without religion. Russia cannot remain without religion, nor will it return to Christianity. At the very most, it will be reconciled with the Qur'an, which smashes absolute disbelief, is based on truth and reality, and is founded on proof and evidence and persuades the intellect and heart; or it may follow it. Then, it will not draw the sword against the four hundred million adherents of the Qur'an.

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Firstly: I congratulate you on the Night of the Prophet's (UWBP) Birth with all my life and spirit, and I give you the good news of your success and the extraordinarily effective spread of the Risale-i Nur, And we congratulate the Nurjus.

Secondly: This blessed night, I received a severe admonishment in my heart due to which two ideas occurred to me in connection with the Istanbul University Nur students describing the wonders of the Old Said and New Said in the biography.

The First: My friends have formed an opinion of me far exceeding my due, concerning some prodigious sainthood. And among opponents and philosophers an apprehension has formed, again far surpassing my due, of a truly wondrous genius, and among some of them even, of powerful magical powers, An explanation of this has been sought from me in many places, as to what the truth is. So owing to the powerful warning I received this night, I have been obliged to explain a fact with many preliminaries.

First Preliminary: The seed of the pine, as tiny as a grain of wheat, is the source of a mighty pine tree; divine power creates the vast tree from the

seed. Only one part out of a million is found in the seed, yet in meaning it is an index written with the pen of divine determining. Otherwise, as many factories as a village would be necessary for the vast tree to be formed with all its branches and twigs. Thus, a proof of grandeur and divine power is that it creates things as huge as mountains from a particle. In just the same way, without intending any humility or modesty, I proclaim with full conviction that the services I have performed and the course of my life have been a sort of seed. Divine providence bestowed the Risale-i Nur, which proceeded from the Qur'an and is a lofty, fruit-bearing tree, in order to be the source of a crucial service for religious belief at this time. I swear that I never saw in myself due to the wonders that have happened throughout my life, any ability or virtue or anything needing extraordinary talent. I used to be quite astonished. Let alone possessing a wonderful genius or marvellous sainthood, I did not consider myself capable of organizing myself and participating in social relations. It is true that some traits like self-advertisement were apparent in my life, but that was a sort of involuntary boasting so as not to give the lie to people's favourable opinions. Because I did not know the wisdom in my not being as the people supposed and thought that I was no use for the world, I considered that my thus being held in regard a thousand times higher than was my due was totally opposed to right and truth. But endless thanks be to Almighty God that now at the end of this life of seventy to eighty years we have understood the wisdom in it to a degree through divine grace, and I am going to indicate a part of it briefly. I am explaining a few examples out of many.

First Example: The method followed in the medreses requires at least fifteen years' study so that the Islamic sciences and religious truths may be fully acquired. At that time, what was observed in Said was not a wondrous intelligence or spiritual power, but a state or condition whereby, in extraordinary fashion outside all abilitiy and talent, in three months after acquiring in two years the basics of Arabic grammar and syntax, astonishingly he as though read forty to fifty books in three months and received his diploma.

Sixty years later this situation showed directly that a Qur'anic commentary would emerge that, in the short period of three or four months, could teach people and that the wretched Said would be employed in its service. And it also suggested the idea and predictions that a time would come when there would be no medreses where the sciences of belief could be learnt in fifteen years, or even in one, or else they would be reduced in number.

Second Example: I confess and believe certainly that Said's debating

with prominent scholars in his youth long ago, and his answering their questions, and even to his replying correctly to their most complex questions without being asked, occurred through neither my wondrous intelligence nor my outstanding abilities. I am quite certain that my answering correctly although I was a helpless, childish, confused, noisy youth who would have been defeated by ordinary hojas or young students, let alone leading scholars, did not result from my capabilities and intelligence. I was amazed at it for seventy years. But now through divine grace I have understood one reason for it which is that a tree which would be a seed to the medrese sciences would be bestowed and that the person who served the tree would have numerous rivals and opponents. Thus, despite it being the custom among Muslims for the adherents of different ways and outlooks to criticize one another and publish opposing works, like the Sunnis and the Mu'tazilites; and at this time, the most effective and devastating opponents who would strike at that Nur tree's servant should have been the medrese hojas, endless thanks be to Almighty God that contrarily to that longstanding custom, the hojas have been unable to produce works critical of the Risale-i Nur. A reason for this is that as a youth, Said answered the ulema's questions correctly and evidently disheartened them, for nowhere have jealous hojas opposed the Risale-i Nur although by their profession they are strongly opposed to Said. I have thus formed the opinion that this is one instance of wisdom in that situation. For if it had been otherwise and in these strange times the people of the medreses had started to oppose it, it would have provided our covert enemies, the supporters of irreligion, with a powerful means of refuting both the Risale-i Nur and the ulema. Endless thanks be to Almighty God that the official ulema, whom the Risale-i Nur offends most, have been unable to oppose it.

Third Example: I am now quite certain that one instance of wisdom in Said not accepting since the childhood of the Old Said, and his not being able to accept, alms and gifts, although both he himself and his father were poor, and his not accepting presents although he was greatly in need, and his never going to collect subsistence although the custom in Kurdistan was for the students' food to be donated from the people's homes together with zakat and their expenses, and his not knowingly accepting zakat even - I am now certain that one reason for this was that I was made to feel disgust at that acceptable custom and harmless practice, and to accept extreme poverty and need, and to avoid awaiting charity from people, so that later in life a sacred task like the Risale-i Nur concerned solely with belief and hereafter should not be exploited for worldly ends or personal benefits, and true sincerity, the true strength of the Risale-i Nur, should not be impaired.

I also perceive a sign in this that in the future, the religious scholars will suffer defeat due to need and the struggle for livelihood.

Fourth Example: In the face of the worldly's oppressing the New Said in his old age for twenty-eight years with extreme severity, in a way completely opposed to the law, fairness, conscience, and even humanity, although he has tried to withdraw totally from politics and the world; and their raining down blows on his head and insulting him vilely, although he could not endure even the bite of a fly; he has been given an unprecedented patience and forbearance. I feel quite certain that one instance of wisdom in this, and also, with the courage proceeding from belief in the truth "the appointed hour is fixed and does not change," in his remaining patiently silent in cowardly and abject fashion although he is extremely nervous and highly strung and not cowardly by nature, and also in fact, somewhat later, after the torments, relief being imparted to his spirit, was the politicians being given the groundless suspicion about Said that he was exploiting religion for political ends, so that he should not exploit the Risale-i Nur, which expounds the All-Wise Qur'an's truths of belief, for personal benefits or spiritual ranks or for anything. I have the firm conviction that, to prevent Said with torments and imprisonment from making religion the tool of politics, the cruel rulings of the politicians were the compassionate slaps of divine determining, saying: "Beware! Don't exploit the Risale-i Nur, a commentary expounding the truths of belief, for your personal benefits or even for your spiritual attainments, or to be saved from calamities and harmful things, lest true sincerity, the Risale-i Nur true strength, be spoiled." In fact, whenever I have neglected the Risale-i Nur's service and become excessively preoccupied with my life in the hereafter and worship, the worldly have pertinaciously fallen upon me, inflicting torments on me. We refer further explanation of this fourth example to one of the letters written recently, which concerns understanding the wisdom in the politicians imprisoning Said with accusations of his exploiting religion for political ends, and on his perceiving that these rulings were the compassionate slaps of divine determining, his forgiving the politicians and his enduring it.

Fifth Example: Everyone used to be astonished that this wretched Said's handwriting was so poor that he could not write as much as a clever child could write in ten days, although his need to do was so great and he had been busy with that occupation for seventy years, and on some days was compelled to correct as many as two hundred pages. And Said was not altogether lacking in ability, I am now quite certain that the reason for his being semi-literate despite his blood brothers all having fine handwriting

and he was much in need of it, was this: a time would come when personal, minor strengths would be unable to withstand the assaults of awesome, immaterial enemies, and it would become necessary to earnestly seek people with fine handwriting to share in the work, and to serve that nonmaterial tree like the water, air, and light serves a seed. Then a universal, general, and powerful pen would be needed in place of that personal, minor service, so as to attain true sincerity by melting icey egotism in that blessed pool, and serving belief in this way. The wisdom was this.

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

We congratulate you on the blessed festival. God willing, you will live to see a great festival for the Islamic world. There are numerous signs that, as the source of sacred constitutions for the United Islamic States, the All-Wise Qur'an will prevail fully over the future and bring about a grand festival for all humankind.

Secondly: No doubt remains that the Risale-i Nur and the Nur students are under the protection of divine providence for despite the sensitivity of the times, with their arbitrary laws and interminable obduracy they have been able to cause one per cent of harm to the Nur students. The plan was to preoccupy six hundred of the active Nur students with court cases, but only six of them were subject to punitive treatment. In fact, as described by the Nur champion, twenty-five courts could find nothing indictable in hundreds of thousands of copies of the Risale-i Nur's treatises and hundreds of thousands of Nur students. It is decisive evidence that these numerous courts admitted that they could find nothing reprehensible in the Risale-i Nur. For just as such courts as Istanbul and Afyon did not convict me although what I said in them was completely opposed to their sensitive and easily misinterpretable laws; so too, they could find nothing indictable in the Risale-i Nur, although it confounds the unjust laws of civilization. This demonstrates clearly that the truth contained in the Risale-i Nur has defeated those who contest it and induced the law courts to be fair and just. Divine providence preserves the Risale-i Nur, which is a miracle of the Qur'an, from its opponents. Its adversaries' attacks make it shine even brighter and are means of its spreading.

Our Master says:

Although those government officials who have had dealings me these twenty-eight years have always oppressed me, the police have never troubled me; in fact, some of them have been protective. I am now pronouncing the reason for this, which is that it is now realized that the Nur students and the Risale-i Nur work to secure public order and security like moral police, and in sacred fashion, and that with their admonishments in regard to belief, they lodge a prohibitor in people's hearts. Evidently, the police perceived this and always appeared friendly to us. The underlying meaning of this is as follows:

In accordance with a fundamental law of the Qur'an, so that no harm should come to ninety innocents because of ten criminals, the Nur students and the Risale-i Nur prevent those who try to disturb public order. In consequence of this, despite the existence of awesome non-material destructive forces struggling to disturb public order, and despite their endeavouring to do this in this blessed country to a greater degree than in France, Egypt, Morocco, and Iran, the chief reason they have been unable to do so is that, as a moral force for the police, six hundred thousand copies of parts of the Risale-i Nur and five hundred thousand Nur students have withstood that spiritual and moral destruction. The police have felt this, for contrarily to the officials these last twenty-eight years, they have behaved towards the Risale-i Nur fairly and kindly.

Our Master also says:

More than the hojas and even the Sufis, the duty of members of the police force demands that they should be God-fearing, preserve themselves from serious sins, and perform their religious obligations. There is intense need for this, for then they may carry out to the letter their duties connected with public order and security against the forces wreaking moral and spiritual destruction.

[This letter, which our Master wrote long ago, was added to the court decision since it answers fully the accusations of securing personal influence and exploiting religion for political ends.]

It is proved in the Risale-i Nur that sometimes justice is manifested through tyranny. That is to say, for some reason a person suffers an injustice or is the victim of oppression, or he is visited by a calamity and is convicted for a crime and sent to prison. It is unjust and the sentence is unwarranted, but the event is a means to the manifestation of justice. Divine determining inflicts the sentence on the person through an unjust hand because he deserved it or for some other reason, causing him to suffer the calamity. It is a sort of manifestation of divine justice.

I am thinking now, for twenty-eight years I have been made to move from province to province and from town to town. I have been dragged from court to court. Of what crime do those who inflict this persecution and torment on me accuse me? Exploiting religion for politics? But why have they been unable to prove this? Because in reality there is no such thing. For months and years one court was trying to find me guilty and convict me. It gave up and another court opened proceedings against me concerning the same case. For a while it pursued the matter and pressurized me, making me suffer every kind of torment. It too could conclude nothing so gave up, then a third court fastened itself onto me, In this way I have been dragged from misfortune to misfortune and from calamity to calamity. Twenty-eight years of my life have passed thus. Finally they themselves have understood that there is absolutely no truth in the crime they accuse me of,

Do they intentionally accuse me, or have they been carried away by some groundless fear? Whether intentional or unfounded, I know with complete and utter certainty that I have no connection whatsoever with such a crime. All those who are fair-minded know that I am not a person who would exploit religion for politics, In fact, my accusers know this. So why do they persist in persecuting me? Why have I been the object of such continuous oppression and persistent torture although I am innocent? Why have I been unable to be saved from this misfortune? Is this situation not opposed to divine justice?

For twenty-five years I could find no answer to these questions, but now I have understood the true reason for their persecution: I say with utter

regret that my crime was to make my serving the Qur'an the means to my progress, material and spiritual, and to my attainment of perfection.

I understand this now and feel it, and I offer Almighty God a thousand thanks that for long years outside my will powerful immaterial obstacles prevented me from making my serving belief a means to my spiritual and material progress, and to my being saved from Hell and torment, and even to my eternal happiness; they prevented my making it a tool of anything at all. These deep-seated feelings and inspirations left me in amazement. I was being prevented both in my spirit and heart from trying to attain spiritual rank and the happiness of the hereafter, which everyone wants, and from taking such a way, although it is a lawful right and causes no harm to anyone. I was shown that, driven by the innate desire for knowledge, I should only serve belief for God's pleasure alone. For at this time, a way of teaching the Qur'an is necessary which, having no other purpose at all, can be the tool of nothing and will effectively impart the truths of belief together with the worship which is innate to man, to those who do not know them and need to learn them. These have to be taught in a way that will save belief in this confused world and afford certainty to the obdurate; that is, in such a way that they are exploited for nothing. Only in this way can absolute disbelief and obstinate misguidance be smashed, and everyone gain complete certainty, At this time, in these conditions, this certainty may be gained through knowing that religion is being made the tool of nothing, be it personal, worldly, for the hereafter, material or immaterial. For an individual person who confronts the awesome collective personality of irreligion, proceeding from certain covert organizations and political societies, cannot dispel the doubts it gives rise to, even if he is at the highest spiritual rank. For the ego and soul of an obdurate person who wants to believe may say: "With his brilliance and extraordinary spiritual rank, that person has deceived us," and he will therefore continue to doubt.

Endless thanks be to Almighty God that for twenty-eight years, being accused of exploiting religion for politics, divine determining dealt me blows purely justly, through man's oppressive hand, so that involuntarily I exploited religion for nothing personal. It was warning me, "Beware! Do not exploit the truths of belief for your own person so that those needy for belief may understand that it is only the truth that speaks. Let all whisperings of the soul and diabolical suggestions cease, let them be silent!"

This, then, is the reason for the fervour the Risale-i Nur has given rise to in people's minds, like the towering waves of mountainous seas, and for the effect it has on their spirits and hearts; it is nothing else. Thousands of scholars have published hundreds of thousands of books about the same

truths that the Risale-i Nur discusses, and more eloquently, yet they have been unable to halt absolute disbelief. If in these extremely difficult conditions the Risale-i Nur has been successful to an extent in the struggle against absolute disbelief, the reason is this: there is no Said. Said has no power and no authority. It is only the truth that speaks, the truths of belief. Since the light of the truth has an effect on hearts needy for belief, let not one Said be sacrificed, but thousands.

Let all the tribulations and oppression I have suffered these twenty-eight years, all the torments to which I have been exposed, all the calamities I have endured, let them all be forgiven. All those who have persecuted me, moved me from town to town, insulted and wanted to have me convicted due to their various accusations, those who have readied places for me in the prisons - I have forgiven all of them.

And I say to just divine determining:

I deserved those compassionate blows of yours. For if like everyone I had taken a way thinking of myself, which is completely licit and harmless, and if I had not sacrificed the effulgences, material and spiritual, which I felt, I would have lost this supreme immaterial strength, present in serving belief. I sacrificed everything, material and immaterial, I submitted to all the misfortunes. I patiently endured all the torments. It is because of this that the truths of belief have spread everywhere. It is because of this that the Risale-i Nur school of knowledge has raised hundreds of thousands and perhaps millions of students. They will now continue to serve the cause of belief, not departing from my way of sacrificing everything, material and immaterial. They will work for God's pleasure and God's pleasure alone.

Many of my students have suffered every kind of tribulation, torment, and oppression together with me. They have undergone severe tests. I want them to forgive all the injustices and those who have wrongfully persecuted them, like me. For unknowingly, without comprehending the mysteries and profound manifestations of divine determining, they have served our cause and assisted in the unfolding of the truths of belief. Our duty consists only of seeking their guidance. I recommend that none of my students harbour even the slightest desire for revenge against those who have persecuted and oppressed us, and that in the face of them they work loyally and steadfastly for the Risale-i Nur.

I am very ill. I have no strength now to either write or speak. Perhaps these will be my last words. Let the Risale-i Nur students of the Medresetü' z-Zehra not forget this testament of mine.

My Brothers!

This a truth of the greatest importance which was composed due to a spiritual admonishment, and which, if you deem it appropriate, may be given to the Prime Minister and religious deputies.

Introduction: I have given up politics for nearly forty years and most of my life has passed as a sort of recluse and I am not busy with social and political life, and therefore did not see a serious peril, Recently, I have perceived that a danger is preparing the ground to cause serious harm to both the Islamic nation and to this country and Islamic government. I am compelled therefore to explain three points which have been imparted to me as a warning for the politicians who work for the good of Islamic nationhood and sovereignty and this country, and for those who zealously work for the human community.

First Point: Although I have not listened to the newspapers being read, for the last year or two I have heard the phrase "accusations of political reaction" being repeated over and over again. I listened attentively with the Old Said's head and saw quite clearly that the covert enemies of Islam who exploit politics for irreligion are making iniquitous accusations - not of being Muslim or being zealously religious or having powerful belief, but of exploiting religion for political ends and even utilizing politics for religion and making them subservient to it. Those covert enemies who strive to revert to one of the most savage, primitive fundamental laws of humankind, and have donned the mask of patriotism, in completely unjust fashion brand with accusations of political reaction and imagine to be harmful for the country, those striving to reinforce this Islamic government with the moral strength of Islam and to secure for it four hundred million true brothers as a reserve force, and to save it from begging to certain tyrannical Europeans. The time has come to explain, in the second point, the chief of many examples, as a barrier against the awesome injustices of this century. There are two sorts of reactionism, which have two fundamental laws as their source:

The first is true reactionism, which is political and social. Its fundamental law has led to much abuse and tyranny.

The second is the basis of true progress and justice, but it is given the name of reactionism.

Second Point: Those who attack religion in the name of civilization and a fundamental law remaining from the primitive, savage eras of mankind, are reverting to similar savagery and primitiveness due to reactionism. That ghastly, barbaric fundamental law, which annihilates humanity's welfare

and justice and general peace, is now wanting to infiltrate our wretched country. Strife is appearing, as though the beginnings of obdurately biased partisanship are being inculcated. The fundamental law is this:

Due to the mistake of a single member of a group, or of a movement or tribe, all the members of those groups are condemned and falsely imagined to be enemies and responsible. One mistake becomes thousands. Brotherhood and citizenship, and love and fellow-feeling, which are the foundations of unity and unanimity, are overturned. Yes, obdurate opposing forces that clash, lose their power. Then due to the weakness arising from this loss of power, the nation and country cannot be served justly. The forces are obliged to give material and other bribes, and in order to find supporters for themselves, irreligious currents utilize the cruel, savage, primitive fundamental law mentioned above, In the face of this, in accordance with the revealed, sacred verse, «No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another» (Q 6:164 etc.), which is pure justice, is a fundamental law of the Qur'an which ensures true love and brotherhood and saves this country from this danger. It says: "No one can be held responsible for another's fault. No one may be said to share in a crime committed by his brother even, or his tribe or group, or party. If he supports him somehow in the crime, it is a sin for which he will be answerable in the next world, not in this world." If this fundamental law is not promulgated swiftly, human society will fall to the very lowest of barbaric reactionism, equal in destruction to that perpetrated during the two world wars.

The following is the basis of the politics of those wretches who give the name of reactionism to such sacred fundamental laws of the Qur'an as the above and accept the fundamental law of barbarism and savagery: "Individuals may be sacrificed for the good of the community. Personal rights may be disregarded for the welfare of the country. Minor injustices may ignored in the interests of state policies." It considers permissible the killing of a thousand people because of one criminal. Thousands of innocents may be thrown into misery due to one man being wounded. On such pretexts, two hundred men being lined up and shot is overlooked. In the First World War, thirty million wretched human beings were wiped out due to the errors of three thousand. There are thousands of such examples. So to label "reactionary" and leave under suspicion those self-sacrificing believers and students of the Qur'an who oppose the awesome injustices of that barbaric reactionism and who strive to secure true justice, unity and brotherhood in line with the fundamental law taught by the verse, «And no bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another,» which is one of hundreds of the Qur'an's fundamental principles, resembles preferring the

accursed Yazid's tyranny to the justice of the Caliph 'Umar. It resembles preferring a cruelly savage law of the Inquisition to the above-mentioned law of the Qur'an, which is the means to humanity's highest progress and justice. The politicians working with the Islamic government for the welfare of this country should hold these facts in view. The government will otherwise be weakened with the clashing of three or four obdurate opposing forces. Then since its weakened power, with which it has to secure the country's interests, will be insufficient to preserve its authority - even as a despotism - and public order and security, it will pave the way to sowing the seeds in this blessed Islamic country, of the French Revolution. One feels consternation at such a possibility.

Since, by reason of the weakness and powerlessness arising from disunity, extraordinary non-material bribes are being given in the face of the foreigners' policies and their insignificant, temporary aid, it gives the idea that no importance is being given to the brotherhood of four hundred million brothers and the way of millions of forefathers. Supposing themselves to be compelled to maintain power through so much wastefulness and fat salaries, bribes are given so that no harm comes to public order and politics, and the nation's poverty is disregarded, Most definitely it is absolutely essential that the politicians in this country should give gratis and as a harmless bribe to the four hundred million Muslim brothers who in the future will form the united states of the world of Islam, ten times the political and non-material bribes they now give to the West and the foreigners; to do so would be in the interests of this country and nation and Islamic state.

One such acceptable, necessary, most advantageous, permissible, and obligatory bribe is to take as guiding principles the sacred, fundamental laws taught by the following verses: «Indeed, the believers are brothers» (Q 49:10), «Hold firm to God's rope, all together, and be not divided among yourselves» (Q 3:103), and «No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another» (Q 6:164 etc.), «And fall into no disputes, lest you lose heart and your power depart» (Q 8:46).

The third point has been postponed for now.

Postscript: My brothers! Three things have led to the severe warning you received previously being changed:

The First: The Nur hero Husrev saying that twenty-five courts have ruled that the Risale-i Nur contains nothing incriminating.

The Second: One of the Risale-i Nur's heroic lawyers saying that it

would be appropriate if the vehement words were toned down, since the Ankara government is not opposed to Said.

The Third: A sign that the wrongful oppression of the Nurjus is being lessened and rebuffed is that although, according to certain reports, there was a plan to send to court at least six hundred active and capable Nur students due to Afyon Court saying that there were six hundred thousand of them and on the pretext of the Malatya Incident, {[*]:} only one out of twelve and then out of six was given a one-year sentence. It was in consequence of this that the severe expressions were toned down.

[A lesson from Signs of Miraculousness (Ishârât al-I'jâz) given by our Master to Santral Sabri and Sıddık Süleyman in Emirdağ.]

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate

All praise be to God, the Lord of all the Worlds, and blessings and peace be upon our Master, Muhammad, and upon his Family and Companions, for ever and ever!

Signs of Miraculousness consists of only the first of what was going to be thirty parts. Our Master said that since the Risale-i Nur is a commentary on the Qur'an's meanings, he had greater need for it at this time, for it comprises what the remainder of the thirty parts were going to contain. Yes, it seems that Signs of Miraculousness is an index and list of the Risale-i Nur in its entirety, and a seedbed of that light garden, and a source elucidating the Qur'an's inimitability (i'jâz al-Qur'ân). Owing to its subtlety and profundity, only few scholars have comprehended it up to now. But whoever has seen it has appreciated its singularity and applauded it greatly. The Old Said's discerning the very finest relationships between the words and phrases in the Qur'an's miraculously concise composition, while in the front lines and sometimes on horseback during the fierce fighting of the First World War, and his being preoccupied with this, and the grievous

dangers of that terrible war not distracting him, nor the freezing cold, and his considering the subtleties of those relationships to be more important than anything are all examples of his truly wondrous devotion and self-sacrifice in serving the Qur'an. In fact, we look on the Old Said's scholarly and moral sacrifices in those terrible conditions, attaching no importance to the horrors as he composed Signs of Miraculousness, as even more wondrous than the self-sacrifice of the New Said these thirty years, and his not reading the newspapers for thirty-five years in the present strange times and for ten years neither knowing nor asking about the Second World War, and his never giving up writing the Qur'an's mysteries in prison despite being under threat of execution, and his totally disregarding all the dangers.

Secondly: In truth, some wonders are apparent in the printed copies of Signs of Miraculousness which allow no possibility of chance. It was therefore thought appropriate to reprint it in the same way, showing the wonders, to send to such places as Arabia and Pakistan. Nevertheless, the extremely succinct and concise sentences with which the Old Said elucidated the inimitability of the Qur'an's conciseness, and the fine relationships and eloquence, need to be elucidated and translated into Turkish.

One of the marvels of Signs of Miraculousness is its showing the inimitable flashes of miraculousness in the relationships between the Qur'an's verses, and between the phrases of each of its verses and between their words and letters, and in the meanings thereby intended, and in the composition and ordering of each of the verses, phrases, words, and letters; and its explicating the fine points in the composition as the second hand of a clock counts the seconds, the minute hand, the minutes, and the hour hand, the hours, and its elucidating the truths with proofs, and its showing that sometimes a single letter expresses a significant truth, It proves the meanings of all the verses concisely with decisive arguments so that they now form the seeds and summaries of the one hundred and thirty parts of the Risale-i Nur. And it expounds the fine points of the sentences, phrases, and letters and their implied meaning through the subtle rules of the science of rhetoric, and the rules of Arabic grammar and syntax, and the principles of the sciences of logic, the principles of religion, and other sciences. It discovers and elucidates, even, the very finest eloquent relationships undiscernible with a microscope and the hints of theme And since the Qur'an's view is universal, it may surely be said that its sacred words implicitly and symbolically allude to and indicate all true meanings and points, which are elucidated.

The Qur'an of Mighty Stature is an all-embracing divine speech and universal dominical address delivered from the Sublime Throne that addresses all the classes, nations, and members of humankind in every age. So also, and especially at this time, does it encompass many sciences and branches of learning related to the physical aspects of the world, knowledge of which is beyond the capacity of a single person or small group. Therefore, a commentary issuing from the understanding and imaginative power of one person the scope of whose comprehension is very narrow with regard to time, place, and specialization, cannot truly expound the Qur'an, for he cannot be acquainted with and be an expert in all the exact sciences and the branches of knowledge concerned with the spiritual and material states of nations and peoples, all of whom the Qur'an addresses. And he cannot be free of bias towards his own profession and discipline that he might explicate the truths of the Qur'an impartially. Also, a person's understanding is peculiar to him and he may not call on others to accept it - unless it is affirmed by a consensus of some sort. And his findings and judgements related to actions are binding only on himself and no one else, again unless approved by a consensus.

In consequence of this, a commentary should be written after minute studies and researches by an elevated committee of authoritative scholars each of whom is a specialist in a number of sciences, proving the Qur'an's subtle meanings and its fine points to be found scattered through other commentaries, and its truths, which become manifest in time due to the discoveries of science. Just as its legal ordinances have to be ordered and regulated, not according to the thought of a single person, but by such a committee after being scrutinized and studied minutely by it. Thus, gaining the trust and confidence of the mass of the people, the committee will implicitly assume responsibility for them and be an authoritative source for the Muslim community.

Indeed, one who expounds the Qur'an should possess high intelligence, penetrating independent judgement, and a high degree of sainthood, But in these times in particular, such conditions can be met only by the brilliant collective personality born of the co-operation of an elevated, esteemed committee and the uniting of the minds of its members, of their assistance for one another and harmony of spirit, and of their freedom of thought,

and, being free of bias, of their complete sincerity. Only a collective personality such as this can expound the Qur'an. For in accordance with the rule, "What is not found in the parts is present in the whole," such qualities, which are not to be found in any one person, are present in the group.

While awaiting, as I had for many years, the appearance of such a committee, I had a premonition that we were on the eve of a terrible earthquake that would lay waste the country.

Yes, our master said while teaching us on the roof of the Horhor Medrese in Van that there was going to be a terrible earthquake, and exactly as he predicted, a short time later the Great War broke out.

(His students of the time) Hamza, Mehmed Şefik, Mehmed Mihrî

And so, in accordance with the rule, "It is not permissible to abandon a thing completely even if it is not wholly obtained," despite my impotence, faults, and difficult style of writing, I started to set down on my own some of the Qur'an's truths and some indications of the miraculous inimitability of its composition. Then, on the Great War breaking out I found myself in the mountains and valleys of Erzurum and Pasinler. Whenever the opportunity arose while I was performing the duty of jihad in the midst of those tumultuous conditions, I used to write what occurred to my heart in phrases that did not always match one another. Since it was not possible to have any books or commentaries to refer to, what I wrote consisted only of what occurred to my heart. If these inspirations of mine are appropriate for a commentary, light of lights; if they contain contradictory aspects, these can be referred to my own defects. Certainly, there are places that are in need of correction, but since it was written with complete sincerity in the front lines of war among the slain, like it is not permissible to change the clothes and wash off the blood of martyrs, I could not permit the ripped phrases in which it was clothed to be changed; my heart would not consent to it. And now it does not consent to it, for now at this time, I cannot find that utter sincerity and purity of heart.

Furthermore, I did not write this work of mine, called Signs of Miraculousness (Ishârât al-I'jâz), with the intention of its being a true commentary; only, in the event of its being well received, I wrote it as a model and source for a commentary to be written in the future, that treated a few aspects of Qur'anic exegesis. My eagerness drove me to what was beyond my power; if it is found acceptable it will give me the courage to continue.

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

The Most Merciful. * It is He who has taught the Qur'an. * He has created man. * He has taught him speech [and intelligence] (Q 55:1-4).

We offer Him praise and thanks, and seek His blessings for His Prophet, whom He sent as a mercy to all the worlds, and through its signs and indications made his greatest miracle encompass the universe's truths, so to remain permanently through the passage of time till the Day of Requital, and for all his Family and Companions.

SO KNOW firstly that our aim from these indications is a commentary on a number of the symbols of the Qur'an's ordering and composition (nazm), for one aspect of its miraculousness is manifested in its composition. Indeed, the embroidery of its composition is its most brilliant [form on miraculousness.

And know secondly that the fundamental aims of the Qur'an and its essential elements are fourfold: divine unity (al-tawhîd), prophethood (al-nubûwwa), the resurrection of the dead (al-hashr), and justice (al-'adâla). For when mankind, like a successive caravan and procession, departs from the valleys of the past and its lands, travels in the deserts of existence and life and proceeds towards the heights of the future, facing towards its gardens, events shake men and the universe turns its face towards them. It is as though the government of creation sends natural philosophy (fann al-hikma) to interrogate and question them, saying: "O mankind! Where are you from? Where are you going? What are you doing? Who is your ruler? And who is your spokesman?" At one time during this conversation there stood up one from among humankind - as did those like him of the prophets with authority the lord of humankind Muhammad al-Hashimi (UWBP), and said through the tongue of the Qur'an: "O philosophy! All of us beings we come forth emerging by the power of the Pre-Eternal Ruler from the darkness of non-existence to the light of existence, and all of us, we sons of Adam, are sent as officials privileged above our brother creatures in bearing the Trust; we are on our way, journeying on the road of the resurrection towards eternal felicity; and we are busy in this world in preparation of that felicity and the development of the potentialities that are our capital; and I am their master and their spokesman. Here it is before you, my manifesto, which is the word of the Pre-Eternal Ruler on which sparkles the stamp of miraculousness." Thus, the answerer of these questions, the correct answer, is none other than the Qur'an, that book - the answer is those four fundamental principles.

Just as the four aims are seen in the whole of the Qur'an, so they are manifested in every sura; indeed, they are hinted at in every phrase or alluded to

in every word; because each part is like a mirror to the whole ascending, just as the whole is seen in each part successively. And by this point I mean that by this participation of the part (al-juz') in the whole (al-kull), the Qur'an is made known as a totality (al-kullî) with constituent parts (al-juz'iyyât).

- If you were to ask: Show me these four aims in «Bismillâh - In the Name of Allah» and "al-hamdulillâh - all praise be to Allah."

You would be told: Since «Bismillâh» was revealed in order to instruct [the Most High's] servants, 'Say!' (Qul) is implicit in it and essentially it is implied by [all] the words of the Qur'an. So according to this, there is in 'Say!' (Qul) an indication to prophethood; and in «Bismillâh» a sign to the Godhead; and in the prefixing of [the preposition] «bi-» of «bismillâh» a sign to divine unity; and in «the Most Merciful (al-Rahmân)» an allusion to the order [of the universe, and therefore to] justice and beneficence; and in «the Most Compassionate (al-Rahîm)» a hint to the resurrection of the dead. Likewise, in «all praise be to Allah (al-hamdulillâh)» is an indication to the Godhead; and in the lâm of specification (the «li-» of «li-llâh») a sign to divine unity, And in «Lord and Sustainer of all the worlds (Rabb al-'âlamîn)» is a hint to justice, and also to prophethood, for the prophets are the educators of humankind. And in «Master of the Day of Judgement (Mâlik yawm al-dîn)» is an explicit statement of resurrection. Likewise, the shell of «Innâ a'taynâka'l-kawthar» (Q 108:1) contains these pearls [of the Qur'an's four main aims]. This is an example, so carry on in the same way.

«In the name of Allah (Bismillâh)» is like the sun, which illumines itself as well as others and is self-sufficient. Thus, the «In (bi-)» is related to the verb that is implicit in its meaning; that is, "I seek help from it;" or the meaning usually associated with it; that is, "I swear by it." Or it is related to the implicit 'Say!' (Qul), which necessitates a subsequent 'recite!' or 'read!' (iqrâ') to denote sincerity and divine unity.

As for «name (al-ism)» know that Allah has names pertaining to His essence, and names pertaining to various sorts of action, such as Forgiving, Provider, Giver of Life, and Dealer of Death, and so on. They are various and numerous because of the multiplicity of the relations of His pre-eternal power with the different kinds of beings. Therefore, «Bismillâh» is an invocation, seeking the agency and connection of divine power, that its connection might be a spirit for man and a help for him in his actions.

«Allâh:» the proper name of Allah is a comprehensive summary of all the attributes of perfection, for it implies the Essence, unlike other proper nouns, in which there is no necessary implication of attributes. {[*]:}

In His Name, be He glorified!

Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Firstly: Firstly: I congratulate you with all my heart on all the festivals and holy nights, both those of the past and future, and the material ones and the spiritual ones, and entreat divine mercy that your prayers and worship are acceptable, and say "Amen" to them.

Secondly: I am compelled to answer privately two of your questions which in many ways are important and you have frequently asked implicitly:

Your First Question: Why was it that in the early Second Constitutional Period you were passionately involved in politics, yet for nearly forty years now you have given them up completely?

The Answer: I understood with complete certainty that the ghastly crimes committed by mankind up to the present sprang from the abuse of the law which is basic to politics and may be expressed as "Individuals may be sacrificed for the good of the nation; persons may be sacrificed for the well-being of the community; everything may be sacrificed for the fatherland." This fundamental law created by man is indeterminate and has therefore opened up the way to excessive abuse. This wrongful law issued the fatwa for the two world wars and overturned a thousand years of human progress. So too it permitted the annihilation of ninety innocents on account of ten criminals. On the pretext of the general good, personal hatred razed a town because of a single criminal. The Risale-i Nur has proved this fact in some of its collections and defence speeches, so I refer you to them.

Thus, in the face of this unjust law of man's politics and diplomacy I discovered the below-mentioned fundamental laws of the Qur'an of Miraculous Exposition, which comes from the Sublime Throne. They are expressed by these verses:

No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another (Q 6: 164 etc.). * If anyone slays a human being - unless it be [in punishment] for murder or for spreading corruption on earth - it shall be as though he had slain all mankind (Q 5:32).

These two verses teach the following principle: others are not answerable for a person's crime, and without his consent, an innocent person may not be sacrificed for the whole of humankind even. If he voluntarily gives his

consent and sacrifices himself, his self-sacrifice is a sort of martyrdom and is another matter. This establishes true justice for man. For details I refer you to the Risale-i Nur.

Second Question: While travelling among the nomadic tribes of the east long ago, you used to strongly urge them towards progress and modern civilization. But for nearly forty years now you have called it "low" civilization, and you have withdrawn from the life of society and gone into seclusion. Why is this?

The Answer: Since modern Western civilization acts contrarily to the fundamental laws of the revealed religions, its evils have come to outweigh its good aspects, and its errors and harmful aspects its benefits; and general tranquillity and a happy worldly life, the true aims of civilization, have been destroyed. And since wastefulness and extravagance have taken the place of frugality and contentment, and laziness and the desire for ease have overcome endeavour and the sense of service, it has made unfortunate humankind both extremely poor and extremely lazy. In explaining the fundamental law of the revealed Qur'an:

Eat and drink, but waste not in excess (Q 7:31),

and,

Man possesses naught save that which he strives (Q 53:39),

the Risale-i Nur says: "Man's happiness in this life lies in frugality and endeavour, and it is through them that the rich and poor will be reconciled." I shall here make one or two brief points in accordance with this explanation.

The First: In the nomadic stage, man needed only three or four things, and it was only two out of ten people who could not obtain them. But now, through wastefulness, abuses, stimulating the appetites, and such things as custom and addiction, present-day civilization has made inessential needs seem essential, and in place of the four things of which he used to be in need, modern civilized man is now in need of twenty, and it is only two out of twenty who can satisfy those needs, and in a totally licit way; eighteen remain in need in some way,

That is to say, modern civilization greatly impoverishes man, Because of the needs, it drives man to wrongdoing and illicit gain. It perpetually encourages the wretched lower classes to challenge the upper classes. It has abandoned the Qur'an's sacred fundamental law making the payment of zakât obligatory and prohibiting usury and interest, which ensured that the lower classes were obedient towards the upper classes and the upper

classes were sympathetic towards the lower classes, and it encouraged the bourgeousie to tyranny and the poor to revolt. It destroyed the tranquillity of mankind.

Second Point: Since the wonders of modern civilization are each a dominical bounty, they require real thanks and to be utililized for the benefit of humankind. But now we see that since they have encouraged a significant number of people to be lazy and indulge in vice, and have given them the wish to heed their desires in ease and comfort; they have destroyed these people's eagerness for effort and endeavour. Moreover, by way of dissatisfaction and extravagance, they have driven them to dissipation, wastefulness, unjustness, and what is unlawful.

For example, as it says in A Key to the World of the Risale-i Nur, although the radio is a great bounty and demands thanks in the form of being used for the good of humanity, since four fifths of it are used on unnecessary, meaningless trivia, it has encouraged idleness and depravity, and destroyed the eagerness for work. I myself even have seen that of a number of highly beneficial marvels which should be used for endeavour and work and man's true benefits and needs, eight out of ten are urging man to indulge in pleasure and amusement, to satisfy his desires, and to be lazy, and only one or two of them are being spent on essential needs. There are thousands of examples like these two small ones.

In Short: Since modern Western civilization has not truly heeded the revealed religions, it has both impoverished man and increased his needs. It has destroyed the principle of frugality and contentment, and increased wastefulness, greed, and covetousness. It has opened up the way to tyranny and what is unlawful. By encouraging people to take advantage of the means of dissipation, it has also induced those needy unfortunates to be totally slothful. It has destroyed the desire to strive and work. It has encouraged depravity and dissipation, and wasted their lives on useless things. Furthermore, it has made those needy and lazy people ill; with its abuses and prodigality, it has been the means of spreading a hundred sorts of diseases.

Humankind is constantly threatened by three awesome matters: severe needs, the tendency towards vice and dissipation, and death - and numerous illnesses which perpetually remind him of death - which the atheistic currents that have awakened mankind by their infiltrating civilization show to be eternal extinction. All these cause humanity a hellish torment.

In the face of this ghastly calamity, it is understood from the signs and allusions of the Qur'an of Miraculous Exposition that with the awakening of its four hundred million students and its sacred, revealed fundamental

laws, it will heal those three awesome wounds - as it did one thousand three hundred years ago; and if doomsday does not soon break loose, with its showing that rather than being external extinction, death resembles the despatch papers for the world of light, it will gain for humankind the happiness both of worldly life and of the life of the hereafter; and in the civilization that will grow out of the All-Wise Qur'an, the virtues of civilization will prevail over its evils; and unlike what has happened up to the present, a part of religion will not be given as the bribe for part of civilization, but civilization will serve and assist those heavenly laws. As the All-Wise Qur'an indicates this, so awakened humanity awaits it from divine mercy, and seeks it, and beseeches divine mercy for it.

In His Name, be He glorified!

And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise! (Q 17:44)

Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!

My Dear, Loyal, Devoted Brothers!

Since I have received telegraphs and letters from many places for the festival and since I am very ill, the leading students of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ, my heirs, will have to congratulate both themselves and those close brothers of mine in my place. We also offer congratulations on the great festival of the world of Islam, the eve of which we are now celebrating, and on the establishing in the newly formed Islamic states of Islamic unity, which is beginning to unfold in Asia and Africa and makes four hundred million Muslims into brothers to one another and helpers, both material and moral and spiritual, and the sacred laws of the All-Wise Qur'an being taken as fundamental in those new Islamic states, Together with many signs appearing that the Qur'an, which among all religions bases all its injunctions and truths on reason and proofs, will on its own smash the emerging absolute disbelief, bringing about this coming festival for the future of humanity. We therefore congratulate with our whole life and spirit the students of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ and all the Nur students on their working to publish the Risale-i Nur, both at home and abroad, in Turkish and Arabic, and a significant section of the religious Democrats for their support of the Risale-i Nur's free dissemination.

We congratulate too with our whole life and spirit the more than one hundred and eighty thousand pilgrims, who although there were many reasons for their paucity, performed their holy obligations this Greater Hajj, which is the sacred, heavenly congress of the religion of Islam and marks the eve of the great festival.

Whenever, these last five years, I have gone out around Emirdağ in the phaeton for some fresh air, young children from the age of one to seven have come running up more eagerly than they do to their own parents, and have clung onto my hands. They have even fallen under the phaeton once or twice but extraordinarily have been unhurt. Some two or three-year-old children who have never even seen me before have come rushing up over the thistles in bare feet. Then saluting me like grown-ups, have tried to kiss my hands. This situation astonished both myself and my brothers and those who witnessed it. It happened not only in one place, but everywhere and even in the villages I passed through round about.

A sudden, and undeceiving, thought occurred to me due to which both I myself and my friends felt certain that owing to their innocence, the children around here had a premonition, or instinctive perception, that, although they were not conscious of it with their minds, the Risale-i Nur would be very beneficial for themselves and other innocent children in this region, and that instinctive urge drove them to race more eagerly than if their mothers' had urged them to the person who in respect of its meanings interpreted the Risale-i Nur.

For our part, we had a presentiment and felt that in the future leading Nurjus would appear from among these young innocent creatures, and that their present behaviour indicated that they would be select Nur students. Since I have no children, I included all of them in my prayers as spiritual offspring, and I mention them every morning together with the Nur students.

Also, there must be a truth which causes a one-year-old innocent child to prefer a forty-year-old unconcerned man and show him sinless, heartfelt

interest. It is also for this reason that I respond sincerely to their greetings, the same as I salute grown-ups. And I used to say to them that due to both their innocence, and the fact that in the future they would be true Nurjus, their prayers for me would be acceptable: "You are now my spiritual off- spring, so just as I pray for you, your prayers for me will be acceptable, God willing, since you are without sin. So you pray for me too, for I am seriously ill."

I and the brothers who are with me concluded that there is a strong possibility that in the face of the plans of the Masons and atheists to open schools to educate the youth according to communism and then trying to corrupt the youth with the changing schools, the innocent young children of the Turkish nation, which is the standard-bearer of Islam, receiving lessons from the Risale-i Nur with a luminous awakening, is a response to that calamity being visited on the youth. God willing, it is a sign that both the children and the youth will be saved from the evils of the Masons and atheists, owing to which they display that strange behaviour,

In His Name, be He glorified!

And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise! (Q 17:44)

Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!

My Dear, Loyal Brothers and Nur Students of the Medresetü' z-Zehrâ!

When I arrived in Isparta, I received the news that a school for prayer-leaders and preachers was going to be opened. This gave me the idea that since most of the pupils who would register for the school would be Nurjus, a Nur School should be opened unofficially in the vicinity of the official school and that the latter should be made into a sort of Nur School. A day or two later, a rumour spread that I was going to teach, and it was understood from the streams of men and women from all around who came to listen that if such a semi-official, general Nur School were to be opened, such a thronging crowd would form that it would become impossible. So the idea was abandoned due to the possibility of unnecessary crowds gathering, as they did when we went to the court in Afyon. A second truth was imparted to my heart. It was this:

If anyone has a household of four or five people, he should make his house into a small Nur School. If he does not have such a household and is alone, he should foregather with three or four of his neighbours who show interest, and they should make the house they gather in a small Nur School. If, at least when they are not working, they spend even five or ten minutes reading or writing out the Risale-i Nur, or listening to it, they will receive the rewards and honour of true students of the religious sciences, and they will also be performing the five sorts of worship described in the Treatise on Sincerity. It was imparted to my heart that like true students of the religious sciences, even their commonplace dealings when working for their livelihoods may become a sort of worship. So I am telling my brothers of this.

In His Name, be He glorified!

Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Firstly: I congratulate you with all my life and spirit on the services you perform for the Qur'an and belief. We are sending you this letter in order to consult you and learn your opinion concerning a subtle matter. Is it appropriate? If it is not, you may correct it.

Secondly: It is proved in the Risale-i Nur that divine determining acts justly within the unjust acts of men. That is, sometimes people act wrong- fully for some reason and they throw a person into prison, but in that very imprisonment divine determining acts justly due to some other reason, and condemns him to prison for a crime he has committed. Something strange that happened to us elucidates this truth: the imaginary crime of which they could find not the slightest sign yet for twenty-eight years presented in numerous courts and provinces as the reason for accusing and convicting me and unjustly sentencing me to imprisonment, was this:

They said: "Said wants to exploit religion for political ends and he is

doing so." But they could find no evidence for these allegations in my calamitious new life and the thirty large collections of my writings. Since no court could find anything in these matters and could not convict me, for other courts to insistently seize on the same matter, is completely opposed to the law, reason, and customary practice. Indeed, those who exploit politics for irreligion direct these accusations at us as a screen for themselves. Whereas my sixty-year life of scholarship in the service of religion is certain proof and a decisive argument that throughout my life I have followed the principle of making politics, this world, and all social currents the tools, servants, and followers of religion. I have claimed and proved with decisive evidence in the courts that I would not exchange a single truth of belief for rule over the whole world, let alone exploit religion for politics. Although this is the case, certain members of the judiciary and politicians who occupy high places have imagined the accusation, which is in twenty ways opposed to the truth, to be the truth, and for twenty-eight years have acted unjustly towards me. Recently, I have understood the true reason for this, which is as follows:

The gravest danger that faced me in serving belief at this time of egotism, and my most serious offence and crime, was the possibility of exploiting the work I did in serving the Qur'an for my own material and spiritual progress and attainment. I offer endless thanks to Almighty God that outside my will over this long period of time I perceived a powerful, non-material obstacle preventing me from making my service a tool of anything at all, let alone of my spiritual progress and attainments, and a means of being saved from the torments of Hell, and even gaining everlasting happiness. I was always astonished at this. Why was I being prevented in my spirit from winning through good works the spiritual ranks and the happiness of the hereafter that everyone wants, although it is licit and harmful in no way? Then it was shown to me that to serve belief, seeking divine pleasure alone and as an innate, scholarly duty, was itself the wage.

For at the present time, such Qur'anic instruction is necessary as is the tool of nothing, and follows nothing, and teaches the truths of belief effectively to those in need, with innate worship and affording complete certainty to everyone, and following no other aim. This is the sole solution in these terrible times. Only in this way may it smash absolute disbelief and obdurate, perverse misguidance, A person may feel completely confident in such instruction in present conditions by knowing that it is being exploited for nothing, neither personal, worldly, or pertaining to the hereafter, or material or spiritual. For even if he has attained the highest spiritual rank, the person cannot counter the diabolical whisperings issuing

from the atheistic collective personality born of secret revolutionary and other societies. An if his soul and ego are perverse, a person who wants to believe may say: "This holy person is deceiving us with his brilliance and wondrous station." And he may remain in doubt.

Thanks be to God, beneath the accusations of exploiting religion for politics these last twenty-eight years and outside my will, divine determining has been striking me totally justly with the tyrannous hand of man so as not to make religion the tool of anything personal. That is, it was warning me: "Beware! Beware! Don't exploit the truths of belief for your own person! Then those needy for belief may understand that it is only the truth that speaks, and the anxiety of the soul and tricks of Satan may be silenced and cease!"

In truth, millions of books write eloquently about the truths that the Risale-i Nur discusses and thousands of true scholars have taught them, yet they have been unable to halt fully the awesome flood of absolute disbelief in this country. Whereas by reason of the above, the Risale-i Nur has overcome it to an extent, as even its enemies agree. Yes, the Risale-i Nur has performed this task against absolute disbelief in these taxing conditions. That is to say, its power arises from this might mystery.

So with my whole spirit I felt resigned towards the torments and calamities I had suffered for the past twenty-eight years. I forgave all of them and I told just divine determining that I deserved its compassionate slaps. For if I had taken the completely licit, harmless way that everyone takes for God's sake and had not sacrificed entirely my physical and spiritual feelings, I would have lost this extraordinary non-material power which is found in serving belief. A strange example of the power was that someone read a book about the truths of belief by certain persons of whom I could be only the lowest student, and then read a page of the Risale-i Nur, and declared that that one page of the Risale-i Nur had saved his belief to a great extent than the other book.

Our Master says that it is good that the trials have been postponed. The fact that upto now the troubles inflicted on the Risale-i Nur and on the Nurjus have been transformed into mercy shows that there must be

some instances of good in their postponement, one of which may be as follows:

With the Risale-i Nur beginning to show its effect abroad in the Islamic world and to spread, and with the politicians here inclining towards westernization a little as a bribe to Europe, to grant the Risale-i Nur complete freedom as is supposed, would cause doubts abroad in the Islamic world concerning its true sincerity. This would either force the Nurjus to be hypocritical, or would seriously diminish the Risale-i Nur's value due to the idea that they show no concern about those inclining to westernization and thus display weakness. The postponement allays such suspicions and proves that for the past thirty years the Nurjus have not bowed before anything that is opposed to the marks of Islam.

In His Name, be He glorified!

The underlying reason for the two trials this year need to be explained. The reason for the trial here was this:

Fifty years ago, I interpreted a Hadith about the Sufyan and the brimmed hat. Then much later the courts said that this was an attack on a commander. One reason for the severity of the sentence handed down to me by Afyon Court was shown to be that attack. But it had not been written at that time and the commander was not alive. Although the hundred million Muslims living under British rule repudiated both it and its religion, this was not held to be an offence. And the newspapers now strike at least twenty times more severely than I did with that Hadith at that commander, at those former leaders and commanders, yet they are not charged with offences and are free to do so. Fifty years ago I cast the stone of a Hadith and twenty years later it struck the head of a commander and broke it. He is now dead and gone and his relations with the government and this world are severed. Whereas now the assaults on the leaders of the former party (RPP) as deputies or officials and although they are connected with the government, are perhaps a hundred times greater than the slap the Risale-i Nur dealt, but the newspapers are free to publish them.

The truth about the books being seized is this: only one or two pages of

a single book out of the one hundred and thirty-three books of the Risale-i Nur mentioned that slap. So to seize all the books because of it is a cruel injustice like punishing one hundred and thirty-three men because of one man's error. The books of anti-patriotic, anti-religious atheists, heretics, and communists being found in bookshops and libraries and people reading them, even the thoroughly anti-Islamic book of Dr. Dozy, demonstrates that this seizure of the Risale-i Nur is an unjustifiable, wrongful injustice.

No religious scholar or philosopher has objected to or criticized the Risale-i Nur these past twenty-eight years although it has been distributed in the main centres of the Islamic world and in this country. The courts and politicians have objected to only two matters; one, about Islamic dress, the other about a commander at the end of time wearing a brimmed hat and forcibly making others wear it. Subsequently, four or five courts acquitted all the books including those two matters. So now to seize the Risale-i Nur with its twenty thousand pages due to those one or two pages, as though convicting it, resembles this: if a man attacks another, not unfairly but fairly, but others do not deem this an offence nor do five courts of law count it a crime, to seize twenty thousand pages of the Risale-i Nur because of two pages and imprison them in Afyon for four and a half years, like convicting twenty thousand men due to an imaginary offence, is an error and crime a hundred times greater than that attack, and an assault against this country.

In His Name, be He glorified!

Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Firstly: Endless thanks be to Almighty God that you, the leading students of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ, demonstrate that medrese's essential meaning, which for fifty-five years has been my long-sought goal and is a result of my life.

Secondly: Since I am unable due to severe illness and other causes to speak with my Nurju brothers and I am deprived of their conversation, I appoint both you, and the lessons the Risale-i Nur has given to the New Said in the Qur'an medrese, and the lessons concerning the life of society the Old Said received in the medrese of The Damascus Sermon and its

addenda, to speak in place of this wretched brother of yours with my brothers whom I miss so greatly.

Thirdly: I offer my condolences to the hero Tahirî, who has made his own house into a small Nur School, and to his relatives, and Isparta, and the Nur circles, on the death his father, who gave his son Tahirî, the outstanding, sincere disseminator of the Risale-i Nur, Tahirî, to its fold. May Almighty God grant mercy to his spirit to the number of the Risale-i Nur's letters.

Fourthly: İnebolu set aside three hundred copies of Zühretü'n-Nur for my account. So I said that one hundred and fifty should be sent to me, and one hundred and fifty to Isparta. Mine arrived, and as for yours, they can be in exchange for the Letters Collections you are going to give me later, and if I owe you anything, you can fix the account.

Fifthly: Convey my greetings to my brothers in 'Iraq and particularly to the keeper of Ustad-i A'zam's {[*]:} tomb and my brothers in Baghdad, and tell them that if my life permits, I desire with all my life and spirit to travel to that region.

In His Name, be He glorified!

My Dear Brothers!

I was given one of the Old Said's printed works, I took a curious and careful look at it. The following piece was imparted to my heart, which, if appropriate, may be added to the end of the Letters (Mektûbat).

Firstly: For twenty to thirty years I had been searching for a copy of Münâzarat, but had been unable to find one. It was printed forty-one years ago by the Ebüzziya Press and consists of lessons I gave in the third year of the Second Constitutional Period to the Ertuş tribe, and particularly the Kudan and Mamhuran. My intention was to explain constitutional government as prescribed by the Shari'a to the tribes thoroughly, and to induce

them to accept it. Recently, someone found a copy and sent it to me. I took the head of the Old Said and studied it attentively with the inspirations of the New Said. I understood that with a strange premonition, the Old Said felt the material and non-material events that would happen now, thirty to forty years later. Behind the veil of the nomadic Kurdish tribes, he as though saw the irreligious truly backward and treacherous true reactionaries of the present, who mask themselves with a veil of civilization and patriotism and who drive this nation back to pre-Islamic customs, and was speaking with them and striking them on the head.

Secondly: I read carefully from pages 105 to 109 of the printed work, and it seemed as though there was some sort of saint among the tribes I was instructing at that time by means of question and answer. I was unaware of it. At that point, he objected strongly, saying:

"You're exaggerating! You see the imaginary as real, and you're insulting us. These are the end times, everything is going to get gradually worse." It says the fo٩ٌءwing in the book:

"Why should the world be the world of progress for everyone else and the world of decline and retrogression for us? Is that the case? See, I'm not going to speak to you, I'm turning this way; I shall speak to the people of the future:

"O you Saids, Hamzas, Ömers, Osmans, Tahirs, Yusufs, Ahmeds and the rest of you who are hidden behind the high age of three centuries hence, and listening silently to my words, watch us with a secret, unseen gaze! I am addressing you! Raise your heads and say: 'You are right!' And it should be incumbent on you to say it. Let these contemporaries of mine not listen if they do not wish. I am speaking to you over the wireless telegraph that stretches from the valleys of the past called history to your elevated future. What should I do? I was hasty, I came in winter, but you will come in a paradise-like spring. The seeds of light sown now will open as flowers in your ground. And we await this from you as the recompense for our service that when you come to go to the past, pass by my grave, and place a few of those gifts of spring by the citadel of Van, which is the gravestone of my medrese and houses my bones, and is the custodian of the Horhor's earth."

That is to say, as it says in the Thirteenth Hope of the Treatise for the Elderly, ".... and the death of my medrese, which had flourished and been the gathering-place of friends and was the preparatory school for the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ, indicated the vastness of the immaterial corpse of all the medreses in Anatolia, which had been abolished and died; the great

monolith of Van's citadel had become a gravestone to all of them." O you who are to come three hundred years hence, plant the flower of a Nur School on the summit of the citadel! That is to say, construct a physical Medresetü'z-Zehrâ, which has not yet been resurrected bodily but lives in the spirit extensively and populously.

In any event, the Old Said lived mostly following the dream of that medrese, and from pages 147 to 157, the printed work explains the founding and vital advantages of the Medresetü' z-Zehrâ.

It is an auspicious sign that on the collapse of the ghastly twenty-five- year despotism which killed the medreses, the Education Minister, Tevfik, {[*]:} decided on the construction of a Medresetü'z-Zehrâ in Van called the University of the East, and beyond all hope in the midst of pressing affairs, the President, Celâl, even, shared Tevfik's views. This indicates that the Old Said's predictions and hopes of forty years will be realized.

Here, three truths will be explained, to elucidate the answer of forty-five years ago.

The First: With a premonition, the Old Said perceived two strange events, but they needed interpreting like true dreams. Just as if something black or white is beheld through a red filter, it appears red; so he beheld the truth of the matter through the filter of Islamic politics, and it altered it to a degree. The lofty saint who was present saw the error and objected violently in the way explained. There are two parts to the truth of it:

The First: He used to say that a brilliant light would appear in the Ottoman lands, and even before the proclamation of the constitution he many times told this to his students in order to console theme He said too that in the face of all the evils they were witnessing, it would bring happiness to this country. Forty years later, the Risale-i Nur demonstrates this truth to eyes that are blind even.

Not considering the Risale-i Nur's narrow field quantitatively, but perceiving the vast benefits it would yield in regard to quality and reality, and looking from the point of view of politics, he spoke of it as occurring throughout the Ottoman lands. The lofty saint objected because [Said] conceived of its narrow field being extensive. He was right, but the Old Said was also right. For since the Risale-i Nur saves belief, that narrow field saves through belief, everlasting, eternal life, and a million of its students become like a thousand million. That is to say, to try to secure not a million, but a thousand people's eternal life is more valuable and in effect

more extensive than working for a thousand million people's transient worldly life and civilization, With his premonition resembling a true dream, the Old Said envisaged the narrow field embracing all the Ottoman lands. God willing, with the seeds sown by the Risale-i Nur sprouting in a hundred years time, the broad field will be the Risale-i Nur's and his former view will show that his misinterpretation of it was in fact correct.

The Second Truth: Forty years ago, as written in the Old Said's works and in the Statement of Purpose at the beginning of Signs of Miraculousness, Said used to say to his students insistently and repeatedly that there was going to be a tremendous upheaval in both society and humanity that would be both material and moral and spiritual. He would say that his giving up the world and going into seclusion and remaining unmarried would be envied. In fact, when Shaykh Bakhit, {[*]:} one of the leading ulema of al-Azhar University, came to Istanbul in the first year of the Second Constitutional Period, he asked the Old Said:

"What have you got to say about the Ottoman constitutional government and European civilization?"

Said replied: "The Ottomans are pregnant with a European state and will give birth to it one day, while Europe is pregnant with Islam and one day will give birth to an Islamic state."

The learned Shaykh Bakhit concurred with this and said to the scholars accompanying him: "I can't argue with this man and defeat him!"

We have witnessed the first birth with our own eyes; in a quarter of a century Turkey is further from religion than Europe. God willing, the second birth with occur in twenty to thirty years. There are numerous signs in both East and West that an Islamic state will emerge in Europe.

The Third Truth: The Old Said repeatedly predicted due to the premonition both he and the New Said had, that there would be a momentous event, both material and spiritual, and a huge, vastly destructive upheaval in the Ottoman lands. But contrarily to the matter of the Risale-i Nur, he saw the extremely broad field to be narrow. As time and the Second World War confirm, he interpreted as follows the broad field he saw in the Ottoman lands:

It is a fact that the destruction wrought on humanity by the Second World War was enormous, but, since it concerned worldly life and transitory civilization, it was less than that wrought on the Ottomans. Since the

upheaval the Ottomans met with was destruction that damaged everlasting life and eternal happiness and was an upheaval of Islam, its significance was more terrible than the Second World War, and corrects that error of the Old Said, interprets his true dream, and demonstrates the premonition almost visibly. Apparently, the saint there was right, but in truth, it proves that those perceptions of the Old Said were more correct, and rebuffs the saint's objections.

In His Name, be He glorified!

And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise (Q 17:44).

Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!

My Dear, Loyal, Blessed Brothers!

Firstly: We considered it appropriate to tell you a summary of a lesson {[*]:} that was given at the request of the leading students of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ. The lesson's subject was the Prophet's (Upon whom be blessings and peace) - the Pride of the Universe and Result of the World's Creation - saying the following in place of the greetings on the Night of the Ascension in the divine presence, on account of all the beings in existence and in the name of humankind, indeed, of all living beings and all creatures: "Salutations, blessings, benedictions, and supplications, and good words - all are God's!" {[*]:} Since each of these words expresses a universal meaning and all the Islamic community recites them in the prescribed prayers (salât) many times every day, each of all the believers of all levels has a share in them. In connection with this and with the fact that by means of the radio the element air displays wondrous miracles of power, as was explained previously in the Addendum to the Point About the Air, the following was imparted to my heart:

"It is understood from allusions in the Qur'an that for a believer, the worship he performs in this brief worldly life produces an everlasting

domain in everlasting happiness, so when his worship becomes universal, he worships together with his private world and will receive a reward as extensive as his world." Then the universal meanings of the words: "Salutations, blessings, etc.", which are explained in the discussion about divine knowledge in the Second Station of The Shining Proof, occurred to my spirit, and when reciting "Salutations" in the tashahhud of the prayers, the four elements of my private world - earth, water, air, and light - suddenly appeared to my imagination as four universal tongues. Each tongue was reciting through the tongue of disposition millions and trillions of: "Salutations, blessings, benedictions, and supplications, and good words - all are God's!" I saw this with my imagination.

As the tongues of the element earth, living beings are all living words and declare: "Salutations!" For a handful of earth may act as a flowerpot for most flora and be a source for them. So either there has to be found in every handful of earth miniscule factories to the numbers of all the factories mankind has ever built, which is totally absurd, or this occurs through the limitless power and infinite knowledge and will of an Absolutely Omnipotent One. That is to say, in displaying this ability, the element earth utters with all its parts and particles the words, "Salutations to God!" (al-tahîyyâtu lillâh) in uncountable numbers. That is to say, all the gifts living beings offer from pre-eternity to post-eternity through their lives are the Necessarily Existent One's alone.

Then, like in everyone's private world, the second element of my private world, water, with all its atoms and particularly with regard to being the source of living beings and serving their lives, was disseminating through the universe through the tongue of disposition millions and trillions of the blessed word "blessings" (al-mubârakât). For the duties that the droplets of water perform in the awakening of seeds and grains and in the seeds manifesting their innate functions, and in the perfect, orderly duties of those most beautiful and wondrous tiny creatures and young, and in the circumstances of those blessed beings, which cause all conscious beings to exclaim: "How great are God's blessings! What wonders God wills!" - for all those tasks and duties to be performed each atom of the element water would have to possess the knowledge of thousands of Platos and the will and wisdom of thousands of Luqmans the Wise. And this is absurd to the number of atoms of water. In which case, those blessed beings manifest those countless miracles through the boundless power, mercy, wisdom, and will of a Most Powerful One of Glory, a Most Merciful and Compassionate One, and they all utter the words "All blessings are God's" (al-mubârakât li-llâh) to their number. Since this is so, on the night

of the Ascension, the Prophet Muhammad (Upon whom be blessings and peace), the Result of the World's Creation, declared "All blessings are God's!" in the name of all creatures. That is, since all these states and arts, which prompt acclaim and applause and cause one to exclaim, "What wonders God has willed! All blessings are God's!" proceed from the power of the All-Glorious One alone, the Prophet (UWBP) offered all those blessings to God Almighty in His presence.

Then, since all the atoms of a handful of the element air in everyone's private world - even those expended when uttering the word «Hû!» (He) declare, "All benedictions are God's" (al-salawât li-llâh), which signifies all the supplications, orisons, entreaties, and worship present in the duties they manifest of receiving and transmitting sounds, and since they offer those trillions upon trillions of words to their Maker and Creator with a universal tongue, the Most Noble Messenger (Upon whom be blessings and peace) offered them and their universal meaning to Almighty God, also saying, "All benedictions are God's!" That is to say, all supplications and entreaties arising from need, and thanks proceeding from bounties, and worship and prayers, are due to the Creator of All Things alone. Otherwise, as is explained in the Addendum to the Point About the Air, each atom of air in the handful expended when uttering the word «Hû!» (He) would have to possess absolute power and will with which to know all languages, and see where the speakers are located, and hear everything near and far, and understand all accents and idioms and many other things besides, and do all this without confusing them, which of course is absurd to the number of those atoms. Since this is so, without doubt and of necessity each of those atoms points to and testifies to the All-Wise Maker together with all His attributes. Simply, each testifies to Him as the great world testifies to Him, but to a lesser extent. That is to say, "All benedictions are God's!" was pronounced during Muhammad's (Upon whom be blessings and peace) Ascension, invoking blessings to the number of atoms of air.

Then, as a universal tongue, the element of light and fire - that is, the element light, physical and non-physical, with and without heat - utters with the tongue of disposition in boundless and infinite fashion and with countless tongues: "Good words - all are God's!" That is, all fine words, lovely meanings, and exquisite beauties, and the manifestations of the pre-eternal Most Beautiful Names whose splendour is seen on the face of the cosmos; and the beauties of the universe and creatures apparent through the belief of foremost the prophets, saints, and purified ones, and of all the believers, and the praise, acclaim, thanks, glorifications, and declarations of God's oneness, unity, and greatness proceeding from their belief, which,

in accordance with the verse «Unto Him arise all good words» (Q 35:10), all rise to the Sublime Throne, as do the countless beauties and fine words on the first of the world's three faces, the face which acts as a mirror to the divine names, and the innumerable good deeds and good things and spiritual fruits and beauties on its second face, which is the seedbed for the hereafter. Intending to ascribe all these beauties to the All-Powerful One of Glory, the Monarch of Pre-Eternity and Post-Eternity, the Glory of the Universe (Upon whom be blessings and peace) declared: "Good words all are God's!" offering to the All-Worshipped One of Glory in the name of all creatures this universal worship offered with the universal tongue of the element of light and fire. For all the duties the element light, both physical and non-physical, performs point to the Necessarily Existent One both all together and singly and testify to Him in countless millions of ways.

Like earth, air, and water, the element light and fire demonstrates self-evidently and decisively in all those ways that causes are merely a veil. All effects and creations are the All-Powerful One of Glory's. For similarly to existence and life, light is worthy of being touched by divine power without veil and since external causes in no way act as a screen, it displays divine oneness within divine unity. Even in an extremely minor and particular duty, it displays universal and extensive evidence of divine oneness. This has been proved very briefly in A Point About the Air and its addenda. The following are two small examples out of millions.

The First: A small manifestation of non-physical light in a person's head in the form of knowledge, were the words of the ninety books inscribed in his memory, which is the size a fingernail. He could only complete a reading of them by reciting from the page of his memory a part of them for three hours every day for three months. And the same man could refer at will to the meanings, words, and forms and sounds in his memory that he had heard and seen in his eighty-year lifetime and the things that had excited his curiosity, and could see the things preserved there, so many as to fill a library, all written out and stacked in order.

If it had not been for the vast extent of that retentive faculty, the size of a fingernail, and its all-embracing light like the sun, and its non-physical luminescence, and its pages as broad as the face of the earth, the man could not do those things. Since it would be totally impossible and absurd, the tiny faculty of memory testifies that the Absolutely Knowedgeable One creates in man's head with His knowledge, wisdom, and power a sample of the Preserved Tablet, which a page of His determining and power.

A Second, Small Example is electricity. A man studied the strange setup

of his electric lamp. He saw that although the atoms and materials of its hundreds of buttons and centres and metal wires were lifeless, unconscious, and inactive, on the slightest contact the darkness filling ten square kilometres instantaneously disappeared and in half a second the area was filled with light. The visible darkness suddenly disappearing and the light appearing certainly was not imagination. Either those lifeless, unconscious atoms that made the contact both carried within themselves a boundless power and light, and suddenly stretched out their hands to places a hundred kilometres away and chasing away the darkness, filled them with light, which all the satans, atheists, and materialists could not make even a Sophist believe, even if they all came together; {(*):} or it occurs through the power and wisdom of the All-Powerful of Glory, the One All-Knowing of the Unseen, the Absolutely Knowledgeable One, whose rule extends over the whole universe, and from whose name of Light all lights receive their effulgence, and is the Light of Lights, the Creator of Light, and the Dispenser of Light. There are countless other examples like these two.

Thus, just as "Good words - all are God's!" signifies the universe offering to the All-Glorious One through the tongue of the element light, all the lights, beauties, fine things, good words, virtues, and perfections in all beings; so too, did Muhammad (Upon whom be blessings and peace), the result of the universe's creation and the reason for the world's creation, declare on the night of the Ascension in the name of all the beings in the universe, of which he was the representative, "Good words - all are God's!"

After the Most Noble Messenger (Upon whom be blessings and peace to the number of atoms in existence) had uttered these four meaningful phrases in place of the greetings, as is explained in the Risale-i Nur, Almighty God responded by saying: "Peace be upon you, O Prophet!" as though indicating that all his community would utter the same words, and

as an order and command, and acceptance. Then by saying: "Peace be upon us and upon all God's righteous servants!", he included within the sacred greeting, both himself, and his community, and all his peers who had preceded him, and showing that it was a universal and general greeting, he included also all creatures, of which he was the representative.

When the members of his community say: "Peace be upon you, O Prophet!" in the prayers, they are complying with the command and decree contained in that divine greeting. They are also paying allegiance to him. And every day they reiterate and renew their allegiance, that is, their acceptance of his office and their obedience to the decrees he brought. Their utterance is also congratulations on his messengership. Also, with these words the whole world of Islam every day express their thanks for his having brought the good news of eternal happiness.

Just as each person feels grieved at the annihilation of his being, so he is pained at the destruction of his house; and he is harrowed at the spoiliation of his country; and he feels grievous pain at the death of his friends and at separation from them; and on thinking of the passing of his personal world, which is as wide as the world itself, and its separations, and that world finally disappearing, his spirit and conscience are seared with hellish pain. So, on condition they are not completely lacking in spirit, heart, and intelligence, all sensible persons will understand the good news of everlasting happiness that Muhammad the Arabian (Upon whom be blessings and peace) saw with his own eyes on the night of the Ascension and the glad tidings of the believers' eternal life in Paradise and that those they love and are attached to have not been annihilated and that it is certain that they will again meet with them after their disappearance. In response to this joyous gift, just as the whole world of Islam every day declares: "Peace be upon you, O Prophet!"' so too, in response to the pages and levels of the cosmos becoming letters of the Eternally Besought One through the gift he brought, and the true value and perfections of creatures becoming apparent through his messengership, all creatures declare tacitly through the tongue of this truth: "Peace be upon you, O Prophet!" Furthermore, the members of his community greeting one another with the words "Peace be upon you!" is a practice of the Prophet (UWBP) (Sunna) and one ray of this vast truth.

In His Name, be He glorified!

Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Firstly: We congratulate you on the Three Months and the holy nights, which may win an everlasting life of eighty years, and on the Nights of Regâib, the Ascension (Mirac), Acquittal, and Power (Kader); {[*]:} and we request of divine mercy that the spiritual gains and supplications of each of the Nurju brothers will be accepted for all of them; and we congratulate you on your achievements in the service of the Risale-i Nur.

Secondly: So that you will not pity me too much, I am telling you that the calamity of the total loss of memory I am suffering due to having been poisoned is in fact a bounty and instance of divine mercy for me and a key to disclosing a number of truths. But I still request your prayers with my whole life and spirit.

Yes, I have just read the invocations at the beginning of The Shining Lamp (Siracü 'n-Nur) and I saw that many wondrous truths are concealed beneath the veils of familiarity, habit, and monotony. Especially irreligious naturalists, philosophers, and the neglectful, they ascribe truths as huge as mountains to common causes as tiny as atoms, and fail to see the numerous miracles of divine power beneath the veils of the laws of divine practice. They thus block up the paths in everything to knowledge of the Absolutely Powerful One. They are blind to bounties in everything and close up the doors of thanks and praise.

For example, just as the manifestation of divine power may inscribe a single word on the page of the air as a million, or millions, of words; so, as intimated by the verse, «Unto Him ascend all good words» (Q 35:10), nonmaterial, acceptable truths are inscribed by the pen of power, all together and instantaneously, in the globe of the atmosphere, yet this extraordinary miracle of power is hidden from the view of the neglectful, although it has continued since the time of Adam. And now, it is established through the

same truth, which they call the radio, that the manifestation of an infinite pre-eternal power which comprises a limitless knowledge, wisdom, and will, is present and seeing in every atom of the air, for although the infinite numbers of different words enter the miniscule ears of each atom and emerge from their infinitesmal tongues, they do not get mixed up, nor are they spoiled or confused. That is to say, because, even if all causes were to gather together, they could in no way achieve the manifestation of sacred power in the natural duties of a single atom and could in no way interfere in the wondrous art in the infinitesimal ears and tongues of all atoms, the people of misguidance and neglect have hidden them under the veil of familiarity, habit, laws, and monotony, and attaching some common name to them, have temporarily deceived themselves.

For example, as is explained in the note to the Addendum to the Four-teenth Word, if an exceptionally skilful artisan were to make a hundred pounds of foods and a hundred yards of cloth out of a small chip of wood, then someone were to say, pointing to the chip: "All these things are natural and appeared out of this by chance," thus completely disregarding all the wondrous arts and skills of the master, it would be delirious stupidity and demented misguidance. In just the same way, to ascribe to two seeds like peas such miracles of power as the pine and fig trees, which comprise thousands of wondrous arts, and say: "They came out of these;" or to attach the name "radio" to a gift of the Most Merciful which makes the globe of the atmosphere into a conference hall and the face of the earth into a schoolroom and place of instruction and knowledge, comprising uncountable bounties and requiring endless thanks, and is indubitably an advance (muaccel) {(*):} sample of the divine favours to be bestowed in everlasting happiness for man - to merely use the word radio and talk of electricity and airwaves for what is directly bestowed from the treasury of mercy, thus drawing a veil of ingratitude over those innumerable bounties, is a grotesque adsurdity of the naturalists and materialists, as in the example above, which being an infinite crime, makes them deserving of infinite punishment.

My brothers! In truth, today I read the invocation at the beginning of The Shining Lamp with the intention of correcting it. Because my memory had deserted me completely, I was confronted with the invocation's truths as though I had newly come into the world at eighty years of age, unacquainted with familiarity and habit, so they did not act as veil. I read it with fervour and pleasure, and benefited enormously. I considered it quite marvellous. And I understood that our covert enemies had deceived certain

officials, and making a pretext of the end part of The Shining Lamp, had seized it, but in fact they were trying to prevent the spread of the Invocation at the beginning of it. That is, the Invocation is a reason for the irreligious attacking The Shining Lamp, just as with "A Point About the Air" in A Guide for Youth.

Thirdly: I give the good news with all my life and spirit that by reason of the maximum sincerity of the Nur students, and their geniune loyalty and unshakeable solidarity, all the calamities that have befallen us have been transformed into vast bounties, and beneath the veil, the Risale-i Nur is making unimaginable conquests. For example, a hundred liras were necessarily given for the car to bring me to the court here, that is, Istanbul, from Isparta. I can assure you that if I had given two thousand liras just for this question and for the resulting service which concerned only the Guide and my own person and had occurred and were beginning to occur. The results concerning people at large may be compared with this.

In connection with the discussion about the radio in A Key to the Risale-i Nur, one day when travelling by car with two university students, we were listening to a Mevlid on the wireless. I told those two Nurju students:

A proof that the manifestation of divine power is direct and without veil in light, as it is in life and existence, is that the tiny amount of air and nonphysical light in this small machine hears and speaks not only the words of the Mevlid, but also, at the same time, thousands or even millions of words. For it may hear and relate to us all the different words broadcast by thousands of radio stations, the same as it does the words we are hearing now. That is to say, the most particular becomes the most universal. Moreover, that tiny piece of air performs tasks as great as the globe of the air; it grows to the size of the atmosphere. If this is not ascribed to the manifestation of pre-eternal power, it becomes a contradiction so delusory as to surpass all imagination. Since it is precluded for something to be transformed into its

opposite, it would be a hundredfold contradiction and an inconceivable misconception and impossibility for the most particular to become the most universal, its opposite, and the smallest to become the largest, and the most lifeless, ignorant, unconscious, and powerless to become the most capable, most percipient, and most conscious with the strongest will. That is to say, it is self-evidently a manifestation of pre-eternal power. The meaning of the following Hadith depicts fully that manifestation in the globe of the air. It is like this:

There is an angel with forty thousand heads in each of which are forty thousand tongues, and each tongue utters forty thousand glorifications. The angel utters sixty-four trillion glorifications at the same time. That is to say, the globe of the air resembles the angel; "good words" to the number of the angel's glorifications are inscribed on the page of the air. The globe of the air declares: "This Hadith describes me or the angel who is appointed to supervise me, for to utter all the speech of men and all the other sounds, without confusing them although they are all mixed up, with all the sounds, accents, and idioms of all the speakers with their distinctive voices shows that it is in no way possible to ascribe this task, which every single atom of air performs with universal consciousness, to either myself, that is, to the globe of the air, or to any causes. It is, therefore, the manifestation of a pre-eternal power which is all-present and all-seeing everywhere through the manifestation of oneness, and comprises comprehensive will and all-embracing knowledge. And one of the millions of witnesses to this is the radio."

A summary of the comparison in the Thirteenth Word between the wisdom of the Qur'an and the wisdom of philosophy is this:

Humanly inspired philosophy draws the veil of the commonplace over the truly wondrous miracles of mercy and divine power. It neither sees nor shows the evidences of divine unity beneath those commonplace matters and the wondrous bounties they contain. But it sees particular freaks which have deviated from the norm and accords them importance. For example, it does not notice the miracles of power in the creation of the human being and it attaches no importance to them. But it is filled with amazement at a two-headed man or three-legged freak who opposes the natural laws, and holds him up as a spectacle with much ado. It conceals the universal, general miracles within the veils of the laws, and it exhibits for examination particular matters that have deviated from the laws and from their own species. And for example, the followers of human philosophy consider unimportant and ordinary the quite extraordinary and miraculous sustenance of the young of animals and humans, and then create a furore in America, as

was published in the newspapers, when some fishermen saw some creature that had got separated from its species and had sunk to the bottom of the sea, and then wept when it was fed some green leaves and was saved. Whereas there are thousands of miracles of mercy and grace in the sustenance bestowed to the least young from the breasts of its mother like the spring of Kawthar, and in others like this. But human-inspired philosophy does not see them that it might offer thanks and recognize the Most Merciful and Compassionate One and respond to Him with gratitude.

Yes, the wisdom of the Qur'an rends the veil of the commonplace and teaches humankind those universal, general wondrous miracles and extraordinary bounties; it makes known Almighty God and urges men to worship Him and offer universal thanks.

One of the very strangest errors of human philosophy is this: human will and choice are insufficient for speech, the most obvious and least of actions; they cannot create it; they can only emit air and articulate the sounds of the letters. Almighty God creates the words in consequence of that particular act and makes thousands of copies of them in the air. Anyone with a grain of intelligence would understand what a serious error it is to give the name of "human invention" - although man lacks the power to do that much - to wondrous, universal miracles of power which all the causes in existence are powerless to produce.

An example of this is to say about a wretched, absolutely impotent man who due to the discovery, for human advantages, of a divine law which comprises a hundred thousand marvels, that is, the radio, which was dis- covered through divine inspiration as a sort of acceptance for active prayer: "Ah! So-and-so the inventor created the radio and discovered electrical forces. And some other inventors are trying to create a substance for reading the human mind!"

Yes, Almighty God created the universe as a guest house for human beings containing all their needs and requisites; He bestows bounties on them in the form of feasts which have remained concealed down the centuries, as a consequence of their investigations aided by their joint efforts and the meeting of minds, which are a sort of active prayer, While thanks should be offered for these, it is contempt for the bounties and ingratitude to look on them as the inventions of common, powerless men, and cause those wonders, which are the result of a universal consciousness, knowledge, will, mercy, and grace, to be forgotten and to refer them to unconscious chance, nature, and lifeless matter. It is to open the door to absolute ignorance, which is opposed to the essence of humanity, created as it is in the finest of forms. It is imperative, therefore, to look on creatures as signifying

something other than themselves (manâ-yı harfî), {[*]:} in accordance with the lines: «In everything is a sign * Indicating that He is One.» {[*]:} Then human beings may be truly human.

Glory be unto You! We have no knowledge save that which You have taught us; indeed, You are All-Knowing, All-Wise! (Q 2:32)

In His Name, be He glorified!

And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise (Q 17:44)

Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!

«And from Him alone do we seek help» (Q 1:5).

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Firstly: "The parable of those who take protectors other than God is that of the spider, who builds [to itself] a house; but truly the flimsiest of houses is the spider's house; - if they but knew" (Q 29:41). Recently, when reading this verse, which has the meaning: the frailest house is the spider's; if only those who associate partners with God knew; that is, if only the unbelieving chiefs of the Quraysh knew ... ", I suddenly felt an acute anxiety that the verse's eloquence had not been given its due. At that moment I opened Zülfikar-The Miracles of Muhammad to correct it, and the following lines struck my eye:

"The First Incident: This is well-known to the degree of consensus in meaning (mânevî tevatür) and concerns the two pigeons coming and waiting at the entrance to the cave of Hira, where God's Messenger (Upon whom be blessings and peace) and Abu Bakr the Veracious hid from the pursuing unbelievers, and the spider veiling the entrance with a thick web, like a curtain holder. Ubayy b. Khalaf, one of the leaders of the Quraysh whom God's Messenger (Upon whom be blessings and peace) killed with

his own hand at the Battle of Badr, looked at the cave, When his companions suggested that they enter, he replied: 'Why should we? I see a large spider's web which appears to have been there since before Muhammad was born.'" {[*]:}

I suddenly saw a miracle in the conditional particle "if" (lau) and an elevated flash of miraculousness, which dispelled my anxiety. It was like this:

The Sura of the Spider (al-'Ankabût) was revealed in Mecca. The leaders of the Quraysh had not come to believe in the Prophet (UWBP) and were conspiring to kill him, yet the smallest and weakest of creatures was going to oppose their vicious assaults and defeat them. That is to say, by indicating this, that although the spider's web, its house, is the flimsiest veil, it was going to defeat those powerful chiefs, the verse was saying:

"If they had known they were going to be confounded by the frailest of creatures, they would not have embarked on this conspiracy."

Just as the verse, «This day We shall save you in your body» (Q 10:92) displays an historical miracle with one word, {(*):} so with the allusion in the words, «if they but knew» (Q 29:41) in the Meccan sura above, it displays a flash of miraculousness by indicating the wondrous divine protection in the incident in the cave at Hira and in the predictive prophetic miracle. I saw that to call this sura The Spider and call attention to its insignificant web was completely apt and conclusively rebuffed any doubts or uncertainty concerning the verse, I offered endless thanks to Almighty God, for I had understood that there were flashes of miraculousness in the Qur'an's suras and verses, and even in its words and phrases, and even in its letters.

In His Name, be He glorified!

Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!

My Dear, Loyal, Unshakeable, Steadfast, Devoted Brothers!

Firstly: I congratulate you with my whole life and spirit on the nights praised in the verses, «By the break of day; * By the nights twice five» (Q 89:1-2), and on the festival. And I request your prayers for my severe illness.

With the idea of hindering the shining conquests of the Risale-i Nur, covert enemies of religion are troubling us with arbitrary laws and by utilizing certain officials, and are trying to deter a few of the select Nurjus. In short, during these blessed days, they sent the experts' report {(*):} about A Guide for Youth to me from Istanbul, which was motivated by irreligion. I am referring it to you to reply to them since I am severely ill from poison.

I am referring it to the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ and its branches to silence the experts' committee concerning the work, which was written twelve years ago, has been the subject of acquittals and amnesties, has been found to contain nothing reprehensible by the five courts of law that have scrutinized it, has been beneficial for ten thousand people, particularly the youth, and caused them no harm, and together with its addenda has been proved in my main defence speech to yield enormous benefits for this country. I refer to those Nurju brothers the duty of demonstrating with evidences that the committee has acted completely illegally in the name of the law, and in the courts has been woefully unjust in the name of justice, and in response to their saying about the Guide that it exploits religion for politics, to show that they have wanted to exploit politics and their judicial duties for irreligion.

I say the following in reply to the accusation that I exploit religious emotions for politics:

I cite as witnesses my whole life and those who know me and call on them to testify that even at the time I was political I did not exploit religion for politics, but strove with all my strength to make politics serve religion and follow it. The story of my life and my friends will testify to this. Moreover, at the beginning of the Second Constitutional Period when those who wanted the Shari'a were being hanged, the chairman of the military court and its members declared in the course of the trial of that terrible court set up by the Operation Army, on the day it had condemned fifteen men to the gallows: "You're a reactionary! You clamoured for the Shari'a!" Is it at all possible that the person who replied: "I am ready to sacrifice my life for a single matter of the Shari'a! If constitutionalism consists of the tyranny of one party and it acts contrary to the Shari'a, let the whole world bear witness that I am a reactionary!" - is it at all possible that such a person, who attaches not the slightest importance to his execution and would sacrifice his whole world and everything he has for the Shari 'a, would exploit religion and the Shari'a for some political ends. Anyone who deems it possible could not be a Sophist even.

Furthermore, it can only be the result of malice and vindictiveness to accuse of exploiting religion for politics, inferring the disturbance of public peace and security, a person who considers it a serious error to violate the rights of a single innocent in this country by serving the interests through politics of ten cruel despots, and has never retaliated towards the ten tyrannous wrongdoers who have tormented him, nor even cursed them, and throughout his life has taken the avoidance of public disturbances as a guiding principle. It is obviously a grievous injustice to say about a person that he causes harm to either public order or the country or politics when despite all their investigations, six provinces and six courts of law have discovered no incident involving his hundreds of thousands of students, although they have suffered unprecedented ill-treatment, torments, and insults over twenty-eight years.

They should not suppose that in the face of these unjust accusations I am trying to absolve myself of responsibility and save myself from conviction. I can assure you, and my friends who know me well will affirm, that

during these twenty-eight years I have been quite certain that death would be much better for me than life, and the grave much more comfortable for me than prison, and prison would be ten times more advantageous for my ease and comfort than freedom of this sort. If some of my friends had not been saddened at it, I would have remained in prison permanently.

If suicide had been licit, surely a person who did not condescend to bow before the threats of the Russian commander-in-chief and the commander of the allied forces occupying Istanbul to execute him, or in the face of the fury of the President of the Republic in the president's office in the presence of fifty deputies, would have far preferred death to life on being subjected frequently to the insulting humiliations, slanders, torments, and severe provocations of common gendarmes, paltry officials, and uncouth prison guards. Death would have been sweet for him.

Since they are making a pretext of the Guide and I am being accused due to some unimaginable and astonishing delusion, I and my brothers say the following since we have saved our belief and morals from danger thanks to the truths of the Guide:

The Guide was composed fifteen years ago, and having been printed three times, thousands of copies and tens of thousands of handwritten copies have been disseminated everywhere in this country and have been read eagerly. Despite this, not one of its hundred thousand readers, friend or foe, religious or anti-religious, has said that they have suffered harm from it, nor have we ever heard any of them saying that it is harmful for the country and nation. If that had been the case, such words would have spread everywhere since it is a topical and relevant question. If necessary, we can put forward to testify to this claim of ours close on a hundred thousand witnesses who declare that they have saved their belief through it, rectified their national character, and profited from it.

If some small mistake is disregarded for a person who possesses ten virtues, how can charges be made against a work that has yielded a hundred thousand benefits and useful results due to some baseless, imaginary fault? No law in the world related to the life of society could ascribe guilt in such a situation.

The members of the experts' committee who studied the work had no knowledge of the Islamic and religious sciences; they noted the following as chargeable offences:

The First: They said it is opposed to secularism and exploits religion for politics.

The facts that its author has renounced politics for the past thirty-five years and has not read the newspapers, and has always told his students not to become involved in politics refute that charge entirely.

The Second: His support of religious education is shown to be an offence.

To this we say that there is no believer in the world who would call this an offence, especially those among them who are the wretched inmates of prison where he gave them instruction to console them. It was then that he said he was in favour of religious instruction, This shows that their accusation is meaningless. In fact, the three hundred prisoners being reformed by the Risale-i Nur in a short period of time, and their repenting of their crimes and all of them performing the prescribed prayers attracted the attention of the officials in charge. Some of them said that the Risale-i Nur yields more benefits in a fortnight than remaining in prison for fifteen years. They said this to the author of the Guide in prison, and he replied:

A person who reads even a part of the Risale-i Nur, which consists of one hundred and thirty books, and A Guide for Youth, which is a small part of the Risale-i Nur, will of course profit from it as much as from the punishment of fifteen years' imprisonment and studying in the medrese, and will be reformed and repent of his evil deeds. Could such a wish, such encouragement be deemed a crime, although it has been affirmed by those who sent me to prison?

The Third: Supporting Islamic dress, conduct, and training is shown to be an offence.

As was stated in the courts of Eskişehir, Denizli, and Afyon, and published in the Afyon Court decision, fifteen years ago the court at Eskişehir accused me of being in favour of Islamic dress for women. I replied as follows to both the court there and the Appeal Court:

"Anyone who accuses a person of expounding a Qur'anic verse about Islamic dress which has been a sacred principle in the social life of three hundred and fifty million Muslims every century for one thousand three hundred and fifty years, in line with the agreed meaning of three hundred and fifty thousand commentaries and following the beliefs of our forefathers for the past one thousand three hundred and fifty years -anyone would fiercely reject such an accusation if there is any justice on the face of the earth, and if judgement is passed in favour of the accusation, would cancel and countermand it."

The Risale-i Nur proves decisively that the command to women in this verse to veil themselves is a significant instance of compassion and saves them from abasement, just as an article of mine published in the one hundred and fifteenth issue of Sebilurreşad, entitled "To My Believing Sisters of the Hereafter," proves it.

The Fourth: Securing personal influence is shown to be an offence, and

the reason for this is the Risale-i Nur's author using such expressions as: "I am speaking in the name of the Risale-i Nur's collective personality," "it was imparted to my heart," "it occurred to my mind," "it occurred to my heart," and, "the Risale-i Nur produces the benefits of both the secular schools, and the religious schools (medrese), and the Sufi tekkes." The experts' committee cited these as offences in their charges. In reply I say this:

A man over eighty years of age is at the door of the grave, and for the past forty years has accustomed himself to seclusion, and having lived for twenty-eight years in absolute isolation, in prison and exile, is weary with the world. For thirty-five years he has neither read the newspapers nor listened to their being read. Never in his life has he accepted unreciprocated gifts, and has accepted nothing at all from his closest relatives, even his brother, without giving something in return. He has taken not meeting with people as his rule, unless necessary, so as to avoid their high regard and attention. He has never accepted his friends' acclaim for himself, and has referred it either to the Nurjus as a whole, or to the Risale-i Nur's collective personality. He says: "I am not worthy and I do not have the right. I am a servant. I have rotted and disappeared like a seed. The Risale-i Nur is a commentary on the All-Wise Qur'an and expounds its meaning."

Like just about everyone, he says "It occurred to me," or "The thought came to me," or, "It was imparted to my mind." Everyone uses expressions like these. My intention in using them is to say that my writings are not due to my own skills or intelligence, but they come to me and occur to me. And this is something that everyone says too. If what the ill-informed experts' committee mean is inspiration, scientists and men of learning are agreed that all living creatures from animals to angels and human beings, everyone, receives inspiration of a sort. To call this an offence necessitates denying science and learning.

The Fifth: "The author is of the opinion that he can save with answers to those who seek help from the Risale-i Nur, a generation which may possibly be captive to an enticing dissension." The experts deemed this statement an offence. The attentive may understand just how meaningless it is to consider it an offence his saying: "I feel certain about a truth which has been proved by one hundred thousand witnesses and is open and clear."

The Sixth: They have shown to be an offence his saying: "Let the ears ring of the politicians, sociologists, and moralists!" But he meant that the politicians and moralists should disseminate the short and easy way he had discovered to save the youth from dangers. With regard to humanity, those who say "Let their ears ring!" is an offence are themselves guilty.

The Seventh: "He says that there is a renegade collective personality which incites dissension and teaches it, and its spectre has appeared. But he does not say who it is." The experts' committee put this forward as a chargeable offence. Do the satans among jinn and men ever cease to pursue their activities in the world? They are perpetually busy doing evil and getting others to do it, so those ill-informed experts failed to understand that they are attacking us pointlessly. Since by using the word "collective" (mânevî) he meant non-physical, non-material, and he did not state who it was, those who say they will send him to court for insulting a "non-physical" man; that is, insulting a Satan, for which no court in the world could try him, are uttering complete, meaningless nonsense.

The Eighth: They show to be an offence "the author's repeatedly and insistently explaining and claiming that he relies on the bases of the Risale-i Nur, which proceeds and issues directly from the miraculousness of the Qur'an of Miraculous Exposition's meanings (i'caz-ı mânevî) and thus bases his propaganda on religious evidences and persuasion."

As affirmed by all the readers of the Risale-i Nur, and particularly by famous scholars in Egypt, Damascus, Pakistan, and the Directorate of Religious Affairs, "The Risale-i Nur is a true commentary on the Qur'an, and belongs to the Qur'an, and consists of flashes from it." In which case, the reason for this error will be sought at the supreme tribunal at the Last Judgement, from those who show the above to be infringements of the law.

«God suffices us, and He is the best Disposer of Affairs» (Q 3:173).

[The objections presented in 1952 to the court in Istanbul conducting the A Guide for Youth trial, in reply to the experts' committee.]

In connection with the printing and publication of A Guide for Youth, which is a part of the Risale-i Nur and due to which court proceedings have been opened against its author, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, we have studied the report of the experts' committee set up to investigate the work and seen that it completely distorts the facts and reflects the irreligious views of the Islam's enemies.

A Guide for Youth is one part of the Risale-i Nur, which consists of one hundred and thirty parts and is a mine of belief, knowledge, and virtue. Because we know and can prove that this nation is bound with all its life and spirit to the elevated truths that the Risale-i Nur contains and is a treasury and guide leading the nation to both material and spiritual happiness, we reject the accusations of the experts' committee and with all our strength throw it back at it. We submit the following to the judges of the court:

The report submitted by the experts' committee is an example of the conspiracy to cast aspersions on the life, history, customs, and laws of this country and nation, and on all they hold sacred. It is totally foreign, contemptuous of the present laws, belittles the government, denigrates the thousand-year history of this nation and insults all its forefathers, and attacks the beliefs of our twenty million brothers who live in this country today. It is not possible for a court of justice to consider it to be creditable.

We ask those who assumed the name of experts and put their signatures to this treacherous document, is this nation irreligious? Has this nation been depraved for centuries, without religion or belief? Did those forefathers who gilded the shining history of this nation spend all their lives tramping the roads of disbelief and scattering vice and misguidance to the world? Is it a lie that the great conquerors whose heroism fills history and the nation to which they belonged, which opened a new age on conquering Istanbul, and with its being the standard-bearer of the Qur'an, brought the light of guidance, knowledge, and virtue to East and West and instructed Europe in true civilization, and illuminated humanity with the light of Islamic civilization? Or is it a lie that with the instruction it received from Islam, this nation adorned its women and girls with behaviour inspired by the Qur'an, protecting their honour and dignity and preventing them being treated as common chattels. Could it be the case that our forefathers, male and female, who were famous as the Turkish champions of Islam and we know to have been at the pinnacle of good morals, honour, and rectitude, and whom we take pride in, on the contrary, did not follow the Qur'an or conduct themselves in accordance with its mores, but displayed themselves naked to the world?

We address the fair-minded and the present generation who take pride in their history and heroic ancestors and all they held sacred. Come and see! Express your regret and condemnation of these slanderers, who have written and signed this treacherous documents which insults your history and your religion of Islam, and disparages and affronts the name of Islam, which you know to be the very spirit of your spirit, and the Qur'an, which

has lit up the universe for fourteen centuries and with its sacred, divine rules, illuminated the millions of your forefathers for a thousand years and guided them to Paradise, and belittles your mothers, grandmothers, and sisters, who have received the light of its training and preserved their fine morals and honour, and through their dress, conduct, and lives have demonstrated the true meaning of womanhood and true beauty. Declare that you reject such a document!

And now, those slanderers have seized the work of a champion of Islam who is eighty years old, suffering severe illness due to poison, and has been subjected to torments in prison because of his services to religion the work called A Guide for Youth, which teaches belief, high morals, and virtue to the youth in order to protect them from the immorality and vice that all the intellectuals and many educationalists and patriots are now complaining of, and makes them into useful members of the country and nation, and as the most powerful force for securing public order and security, serves this nation's happiness. They have seized this work and so as to convict its esteemed author, they are saying this:

"Bediuzzaman supports women wearing Islamic dress. He depicts those women who parade the streets half naked as troops under Satan's command in the war against Islam. He considers it a sin for women to participate in social life with bare legs. He believes that the immodest dress of the present is an obstacle to marriage and encourages immorality. According to him, what beautifies women and is their true adornment in social life, is not to exhibit their bodies but to conduct themselves in accordance with the norms and training of the Qur'an and Islam. He favours religious instruction. He says that thanks to the instruction given by the Risale-i Nur, convicts in prison are reformed in a space of two weeks, as is testified to by the prisons of Denizli and Afyon and their directors, guards, and judicial authorities. It is Bediuzzaman's opinion that youth who fall victim to alluring temptations can be saved through religious truths and the Risale-i Nur's teachings about belief."

They condemn him because of these ideas and say he should be convicted. And they are the professors and lecturers in law given the name of the experts' committee who teach the young people of this country justice, right, and freedom.

Judges! You, as the representatives of true justice, defend public law and national honour! If it is accepted that the instruction in belief and fine morals contained in A Guide for Youth constitutes an indictable offence, as asserted by the experts' committee's report, and its author is deemed guilty before the law, you have to concur with their insulting disparagement of

this nation and its thousand-year history and its traditions and laws, and the sacred truths of Islam and teachings of the Qur'an, which are the cause of its pride, and of its noble forefathers, who embracing those sacred truths proclaimed Islamic civilization in all its glory to the world; and with their trampling their honour and rights, Only by condoning this serious moral crime, can the crime the so-called experts' committee impute to A Guide for Youth be deemed a crime. Only in that way can its author be convicted and his students who published it be condemned. For the principles of legal justice and freedom of thought and of conscience would not permit their conviction and trial. Such a course of action is not conformable with the laws of the republican government ensuring democracy, for it implements the principles of freedom of thought and of conscience in the broadest sense.

If the accusation is made that the religious instruction given with the publication of A Guide for Youth is contrary to secularism, what is the meaning of secularism? We ask this. Is secularism hostility to Islam? Is secularism the freedom of irreligion to attack the religion of those who embrace a religion? Is secularism the absolute despotism which fastens locks on the mouths of those who pronounce religious truths and disseminate the truths of belief, and snap handcuffs on their wrists?

Since secularism is freedom of conscience and thought, can the irreligious and enemies of religion make every sort of assault on Islam, and on the pretext of those freedoms publish their anarchic ideas, while a scholar of Islam who teaches religion in accordance with those principles within a nation which for a thousand years has been a commander of Islam and following its traditions and laws, for its happiness and on the way of preserving its morality and honour - can such a scholar be shown to be guilty of a crime because to do so is opposed to secularism? Can he be defamed and accused of wanting to make the laws of the land conform to religious beliefs? We do not consider it possible that such an impossibility be possible. We know without doubting that justice would not permit such a thing.

A Guide for Youth is one part of the one hundred and thirty parts of the Risale-i Nur which courts of law have acquitted and returned to their owners in their entirety, and is in truth the chief means whereby this country and nation may win happiness. Hundreds of Nur students have told the courts how they have read these works and through its lessons have been saved from the pitfalls of vice and misguidance. Thousands of Turkish youths have proved through their lives and the services they have performed that through these works they have become useful members of the country and nation. So we, those youths, throw back their baseless accusations in those slanderers' faces.

How regretable it is that a work that has assisted in maintaining public order and preserving morality and has proved enormously beneficial for the judiciary and police is today shown to be harmful and contrary to the law in a way totally opposed to the truth. In the face of such an obvious contradiction, we refer it to fair-minded people of conscience, and about our Master say in reply to the experts' committee accusation of his exploiting religion for political ends that they are exploiting the judiciary for purposes of irreligion.

Another imputed crime in their report is that the author speaks in the name of the Risale-i Nur's collective personality, and that he is attempting to secure personal influence by employing such expressions as "it was imparted to my heart" and "an important matter that was imparted to my heart on the Night of Power."

One can only suppose in the face of such baseless and meaningless accusations that those persons who call themselves experts are far from deserving such an epithet; one is astonished at their ignorance and lack of discernment. If only the experts of the committe had studied this side of the question carefully and with respect, they would perhaps have saved themselves to a degree from casting themselves into the pits of ignorance. All the parts and letters of the Risale-i Nur and the entirety of our Master's life form the clearest evidence that his whole endeavour and all his work and service are for truth and right alone and he speaks only for the sake of the truth. Those so-called experts displayed their bigotry in irreligion by reading only a tiny part of the Risale-i Nur Collection and wrote these calumnies in order to be able to indict it come what may. However, while explaining the Risale-i Nur's lessons, our esteemed Master says that the foremost of them are impotence, poverty, compassion, and reflection.

In truth, enduring the most vicious torments and persisting in his striving and work, our esteemed Master has smashed with his universal service and the Risale-i Nur, which is derived from the All-Wise Qur'an's truths of belief, the disbelieving way of the materialists and naturalists, and has withstood their merciless assaults. With the assistance of his hundreds of thousands of eager students, who are indebted to him for the instruction in belief they have received, he has disseminated everywhere hundreds of thousands of copies of the one hundred and thirty parts of the Risale-i Nur. He has demonstrated with decisive proofs and arguments the truths of belief, which act as a barrier before the assaults in this country of irreligion and especially of communism, and with his proofs of belief in God and divine unity - the diamond swords of the Qur'an - he has routed the fallacious ways of unbelief and misguidance. The treatises of the Risale-i Nur

are now being disseminated in the main centres of the Islamic world and are meeting with praise and appreciation. A deputy minister from Pakistan who visited Turkey last year told the forty to fifty university students he was addressing:

"My brothers! I have found in Turkey what I was searching for in the Islamic world. Bediuzzaman belongs not only to you, but to the whole world of Islam. It will soon come to know and understand him. You should take a close look at the Risale-i Nur, for I am going to publish it among our ninety million Muslims. I had numerous worries about the world of Islam and numerous questions to ask the Master. I remained with him for only an hour, and just listening to him, I received answers to all my questions and all my anxieties evaporated. Now I am returning to Pakistan with good news concerning the Islamic world's future. I have studied the history of the Turks and of Islam. Numerous heroes and champions of Islam and patriots have emerged from among them. They performed enormous sacrifices in the way of serving their country and nation, and they received the rewards and recompense they deserved. They were all awarded the honours due to them. But for the last twenty or so years, Bediuzzaman, the Master, has composed and published these works for this nation's happiness in this world and the next, suffering indescribable torments and ill-treatment, to prevent the spread of anti-religious currents, and today in his house there is nothing, not even a lamp. He abandoned everything to serve religion and religion alone. Most certainly, the Islamic world will soon come to know this esteemed person and his works."

Yes, our Master is a person who is applauded and appreciated by an Islamic scholar and thinker like 'Ali Akbar Shah; and whose services are acknowledged by some of the Democrat deputies who say, "The Nur students who read Bediuzzaman's Risale-i Nur and receive instruction from it and publish it prevent the spread of communism in this country with their work. Seeing that our government is opposed to communism, we are grateful to the Nurjus for their services." With all its thousands of words and sentences, every single copy of all the parts of the Risale-i Nur testifies and points to our Master's services and the universal benefits of his twenty-five years of composition and dissemination. He took as his way, instruction in impotence and poverty and he teaches it to his students. Thus, while this esteemed person whose universal services we have briefly outlined above is most deserving of the respect, love, and praise of all the believers and he should be accepted as such, he has consistently avoided the genuine respect and sincere applause of those coming to visit him, who reading the lessons of the Risale-i Nur have seen its knowledge and proofs to be superior in its

instruction in belief to other works this age. In numerous letters he has rejected their respect and praise for his person, saying: "I am your companion in receiving instruction from the Qur'an. These sacred truths have been bestowed on me firstly because I am the most needy for them and the most indigent. I hold no rank. I am not fond of myself, and I don't like those who like me. My brothers, I don't advertise my secret faults so as not to lose you altogether." He has made the dissemination of the truths of belief his sole aim in life. He has renounced all worldly advantages for that service.

Even the most unscrupulous would refrain from making the accusations the so-called experts' committee levelled at our Master, whose whole life without exception testifies to the above facts. They even cited as evidence their suggestion that he was attempting to arrogate unwarranted power to himself by using the word "imparted (ihtar)" in the title "An Important Matter Imparted to Me on the Night of Power" in the work, A Guide for Youth, while completely disregarding the vital truth it was explaining. Whereas the comprehensiveness inferred by the word may be understood by reading and understanding that truth. The following is part of the piece:

"Because of the extreme tyranny and despotism of this last World War and its merciless destruction, and hundreds of innocents being scattered and ruined on account of a single enemy, and the awesome despair of the defeated, and the fearsome alarm of the victors and their ghastly pangs of conscience arising from the supremacy they are unable to maintain and the destruction they are unable to repair, and the utter transitoriness and ephemerality of the life of this world and the deceptive, opiate nature of the fantasies of civilization becoming apparent to all, and the exalted abilities lodged in human nature and the human essence being wounded in a universal and awesome manner, and man's innate love and desire for immortality being aroused and awakened, and heedlessness and misguidance and deaf, lifeless nature being smashed by the diamond sword of the Qur'an, and the exceedingly ugly, exceedingly cruel true face of world politics becoming apparent, which is the widest and most suffocating and deceptive cover for heedlessness and misguidance, most certainly and without any shadow of a doubt, since the life of this world - which is the metaphorical beloved of mankind - is thus ugly and transient, man's true nature will search with all its strength for eternal life, which it truly loves and yearns for ... so long as humankind does not altogether lose its mind and a material or immaterial doomsday does not erupt over its head, the broad masses and great states in the world will search out the Qur'an of Miraculous Exposition, and having grasped its truths, will embrace it with all their lives and spirits, just as

there are now famous preachers in Sweden, Norway, Finland and England working to have the Qur'an accepted, and the important community of America is searching for the true religion. In view of this fact, the Qur'an by no means has - nor can have - any equal. Absolutely nothing can take the place of this greatest miracle." {[*]:}

Respected judges! Could the use of the word ihtar at the head of this important piece, a short section of which we have included above, be an indictable offence? Could it have been used to secure personal influence? Or by showing that humanity has started to search out the Qur'an's truths, does it predict and prove that the Qur'an will prevail over humankind in the future? We refer this matter to your elevated judgement.

The Risale-i Nur's author describes the purely true warnings he has received from the Qur'an's instruction, as proof of the veracity of the subjects he is explaining. Anyone who studies them attentively may see that they are pure truth. Anyone may perceive how this Marvel who rejoices in the oceans of belief and treasuries of divine unity and wisdom will live triumphantly in the millions of hearts of forthcoming generations, and will be applauded by them. He may discern that similarly to its thousand years of proud deeds, the Turkish nation will again embrace the truths of Islam in place of its heroic forefathers, who were an example to all the world, and assuming the duties of standard-bearer of the Qur'an, dominate the lands of the future. To understand this most elevated and important truth, one has only to read the sermon Bediuzzaman delivered in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus forty years ago in 1327 (early 1911) to a congregation of ten thousand among which were one hundred religious scholars. He is at present translating the work into Turkish, for at that time when the Islamic world was wretched and captive, it gave the good news that in the future through the strength of Islam the virtues of civilization would prevail, although then its evils predominated, and the sun of Islam would shine over whole nations and continents. It predicted this, and explained and proved it.

Since the so-called experts' committee were unable to penetrate to the meaning of the sentence "a matter imparted to my heart" and misinterpreted it, and the matter is related to the truths concerning the Islamic world's future which are explained in The Damascus Sermon, we present here to the court a translation of the work, including here only a few sentences from the end of the questions proved in the work:

In consequence of the lesson I have learnt on my own account, I say: O congregation of Muslims! I give you this good news: the first signs of the true dawn of Arab happiness are just appearing. This will occur through the kindling of the worldly happiness of all Muslims, in particular that of the Ottomans, and especially through the progress of Islam. The emergence of the sun of happiness has drawn close. In order to rub despair's nose in the dust, I say what is my firm conviction so that the world will hear: The future shall be Islam's and Islam's alone, and it shall be ruled by the truths of the Qur'an and belief. Therefore, we must submit to divine determining and our fate of the present, for ours is a brilliant future, while the Europeans' is a dubious past. {[*]:}

If we were to display through our actions the perfections of the morality of Islam and the truths of belief, without doubt the followers of other religions would enter Islam in whole communities; some entire regions and states, even, would take refuge in Islam. {[*]:}

O my brothers in this Umayyad Mosque as well as those in the vast mosque of the world of Islam! You too take warning. Take warning from the dreadful events of the last forty-five years. Come to your senses right away! O you who are wise and thoughtful and consider yourselves to be enlightened! We Muslims, who are students of the Qur'an, follow proof; we approach the truths of belief through reason, thought, and our hearts. We do not abandon proof in favour of blind obedience and imitation of the clergy like some adherents of other religions. Therefore, in the future when reason, science and technology prevail, of a certainty that will be the time the Qur'an will gain ascendancy, which relies on rational proofs and invites the reason to confirm its pronouncements. {[*]:}

For sure, even if not now then in thirty to forty years' time, in order to fit out and equip to perfection the three forces of science, true knowledge, and the virtues of civilization, and to rout and put to flight those eight obstacles, the desire to search for the truth, equity, and love of humanity will be despatched to the eight fronts of those eight enemy squadrons. They have already started to drive them back. God willing, in half a century they will scatter them completely. {[*]:}

So, supported by the fact that the clever fields of Europe and America have produced crops of brilliant and exacting scholars like Carlyle and Bismarck, I say with all assurance: Europe and America are pregnant with Islam; one day they will give birth to an Islamic state. Just as the Ottomans were pregnant with Europe and gave birth to a European state. {[*]:}

Moreover, the veils that have eclipsed the sun of Islam, hindered its emergence and prevented it illuminating mankind have begun to disperse. Those things that were hindering it have begun to fall back. The signs of the dawn appeared forty-five years ago. Then the true dawn broke in 1371/1951, or it will break. Even if it is the false dawn, in thirty or forty years' time the true dawn will break. {[*]:}

O my brothers who are here in the Umayyad Mosque and those who are in the mosque of the world of Islam half a century later! Do the introductory remarks, that is, those made up to here, not point to the conclusion that it is Islam that will be the true, and spiritual, ruler over the future, and only Islam that will lead mankind to happiness in this world and the next; and that true Christianity, stripping off superstition and corrupted belief, will be transformed into Islam; following the Qur'an, it will unite with Islam? {[*]:}

Respected panel of judges! The most decisive, legal reply to all the slanders and accusations against the Risale-i Nur's author is the fact that three courts of law and three experts' committees have returned his works after scrutinizing them.

Moreover, although our Master's twenty-seven years of exile and the one hundred and thirty treatises of his works and his letters have all been studied by three courts and by government officials, and although those officials were forced to convict him by the tryannical apostates and dissemblers opposing him, and secret orders had even been given for his execution, they could find not even the slightest sign that he had exploited religion for political ends, which proves categorically that he has not done so. We Nur students who know him closely are astonished at this extraordinary stance of his and consider it to be evidence of the true sincerity of the Risale-i Nur circle.

We await from justice and your consciences that with your just decision

you will overturn the plans of the covert, cruel enemies who are opposed to his services to this country and nation's happiness, and seek to destroy him with slanders, and that you will throw back in their faces the false accusations of the calumniators. And we offer you our respects.

As is written at the beginning of A Guide for Youth, fifteen years ago a few youths visited me so that they might learn how to preserve their lives in this world and the next. So, for God's sake, I gave them instruction in the lesson from the Guide.

The importance of A Guide for Youth and there being no legal impediments to its free publication are proven by the following facts: with the exception of one or footnotes, its being acquitted by both the Isparta authorities, and Denizli Court, and Ankara Criminal Court, and the Appeal Court after having remained with it for two years, and the entire Risale-i Nur Collection, including the Guide, being returned to its owners; and as is written at the beginning of the Guide, with one copy of it coming into the hands of the Ankara police chief, although objections were raised about a single word, the truth of the matter being understood when the sentence at the end was read so no ruling was given preventing its free dissemination; and no harm being suffered anywhere nor objections raised although thousands of copies have been published; and in the town of Tarsus in Mersin Province, even, although several books from the Risale-i Nur were confiscated including A Guide for Youth and sent to Ankara for scrutiny, an official document being given on the orders of the governor's office saying the books were free; and when they were printed in Istanbul and in accordance with the law sent to five or six government departments where they remained for five or six months, no objections being raised to them.

Then more than a thousand youths in the schools in Ankara and other provinces profited from it in respect of country, nation, and morality, and no one at all suffered any harm. Yet suddenly, they misinterpreted one or two words that in no way could be deemed reprehensible, for instance, they laid charges concerning the title A Guide for Youth.

On the other hand, the work's author did not print it; some youths had it printed when he was lying sick in bed. They nevertheless said it was written to secure personal influence and declared this an offence, and wanted to send him, not those who printed the work, to the criminal court and have him brought there by force, although it was written fifteen years ago and was covered by the general amnesty and had been acquitted. This being the case, they harass its author completely illegally and as a consequence of some grudge or animosity.

So I say that very possibly the reason they so insistently summon me to court when I am ill and it is beyond my power, in a way that is illegal in ten respects, is to serve anarchy and irreligion because the Guide affords huge benefits for the country, nation, and public security.

To now bring me by force to Istanbul to the court, maliciously on account of illegality in the name of the law, although most certainly medically and scientifically my extreme old age, weakness, and severe illness from poison should excuse me, and on four occasions I have obtained reports to that effect which I have sent them, to still persistently compel and coerce me, afflicts my spirit grievously. It is beyond my power now to speak in the presence of the court and the authorities. If I do speak, I shall be obliged to throw it in the faces of those who strive to harm the country, nation, and public order, and illegally send me to trial. I can no longer endure such tyranny. This is another sort of illness. It is also possible that this non-physical illness may cause harm to the country.

My request now from the Public Health Committee: Those who know me and are closely connected with me and serve me know that my covert enemies have poisoned me on numerous occasions. I am unable to eat and cannot speak with my assistant even for more than five minutes. I have a persistent and severe cold in my head, and my eyes ache from it and water. I suffer from chronic lumbago and am ill from its acute pain. I am also extremely weak since I have remained in exile for twenty-eight years and do not accept the assistance of others and have lived in penury and deprivation. Unless there is no pressing need, I cannot speak for five minutes even; I get tired.

Previously I endured the trials and court cases for the sake of the Risale-i Nur and the Nur students, and did not divulge the truth entirely. I endured their oppression to an extent and did not throw their injustices in their faces. I practised patience so that no harm should come to the innocent and to public order, and I put up with all their various torments and persecution. But now the world of Islam has adopted the Risale-i Nur. And the Nur students no longer need my tolerance and my not attacking my enemies

and my remaining silent in the face of their oppression. So now when I am severely provoked, involuntarily and outside my will I am going to speak the truth frankly and openly to those who strive to punish me, utilizing the harms my covert enemies have caused me. (Silence ... this is not going to be disclosed for now.)

Since the fact of the matter is this, and since the Public Health Committee has knowledge of both my physical, spiritual, and nervous indispositions, and my coronary illness and sicknesses in my head, and my lumbago and pain, and my inability to speak in court, and since my official representatives are there, and those who printed the work are there, I request that a report be given describing medically my dangerous illnesses so that my evidence may be given in absentia.

My Esteemed, Blessed, Kind Master!

I am sending this letter with my brother Karakoçanlı Haji Sabri, who has connections with the Risale-i Nur and was one of my companions during the Hajj.

Firstly: I kiss your blessed hands and request that you include this powerless, faulty brother and student of yours in your acceptable prayers.

Secondly: I request that you also include your brother Haji Sabri and the rest of the new devotees in your prayers.

Thirdly: Praise be to God, I am apprised of the situation since my brother Husrev continues to send the letters of both your esteemed self and his other brothers, as you have ordered.

Fourthly: I have given the works sent by both my brother Husrev and Ceylan to the brothers, and I have sent them the money. I asked Urfa for a few more. Haji Sabri bought one set of them.

Fifthly: We beseech divine grace that the good news relayed by the President of the Republic's speech will be realized.

Sixthly: All praise be to God, we continue to be employed in the dissemination of the Risale-i Nur and in its conquests, in so far as our Compassionate and Munificent Lord permits.

Every evening, instruction from the Risale-i Nur continues for the people from the enlightened Nur community who come to our house.

During my trip to Malatya I explained the method of service to the people

there who are attached to the Risale-i Nur, When the adherents of Büyük Doğu {[*]:} proposed that I join them, I asked them whether or not their association was political. When they replied in the affirmative, I said the following: "With the help of the Risale-i Nur, I can only try to solve any problems you may have concerning questions of belief and the Qur'an, or to elucidate them. I am employed within the domain of the Risale-i Nur outside my own will and consciousness. That is my way. We are in agreement concerning the matters of belief and the Qur'an, but I cannot become involved in politics." There are some members of their group who take an interest in the Risale-i Nur. So I requested that we should work together, and that they should read the works, ask about the places they do not understand, and try to learn the Qur'anic script. With my poor writings, I encourage the people in Malatya, Urfa, and Antep to get hold of the works and increase their concern with it. My present work with the Risale-i Nur is thus.

Endless praise and thanks be to Almighty God that despite my countless faults, He deemed me worthy to be employed in this service of the Qur'an and belief. For sure, through the blessings proceeding from the prayers of our blessed, compassionate Master, I continue to be an impotent member of the Nur community, and in consequence will be one of those who gather under the banner of the Prophet (Upon whom be blessings and peace).

Again and again I respectfully kiss your blessed hands and offer my greetings, prayers, and respects to my brothers. I send my respects too to all the friends in your vicinity, who are near physically and spiritually. I constantly beseech our Lord, the Most Merciful of the Merciful, that He should be perpetually pleased with our esteemed, revered, and kind Master, and that all his wishes be achieved.

My Most Beloved, Compassionate Master!

Firstly: I congratulate you with my life and spirit on both the blessed Ten Nights and the holy festival, {[*]:} and respectfully kissing your hands, implore that you forgive my faults.

Secondly: I offer endless thanks to the Most Merciful of the Merciful that He has bestowed on this sinful, common, powerless, faulty, unworthy, wretched, and lazy student of yours the sacred truths of belief and the Qur'an found in the Risale-i Nur, and the material and spiritual training of our beloved Master, All praise be to God, this is from the grace of my Lord!

My beloved Master! However much I offer thanks to my Compassionate Lord for continually making us aware of the effects of your spiritual training, it is insufficient. I would like to say the following, to make known the bounty: I do not complain about my illness for it was the cause of learning in fact and in practice the truths of the Risale-i Nur, which is the light of my eye, the joy of my spirit, and sustenance of my heart,

Such pieces as the Treatise for the Elderly, every Hope of which sprinkled thousands of lights of divine unity and gleams of solace on my spirit and heart, for the terrible physical and spiritual sicknesses I am suffering in this fortieth year of my life; and the Treatise for the Sick, every Remedy of which contains infinite cures; and the Twentieth Letter, which with its eleven sacred Words, discloses in wondrous and unparalleled fashion the sacred secrets of divine unity and from each sentence of which the lights of divine unity pour forth; and the Twenty-Fourth Letter, which solves the most difficult, profound, and abstruse mysteries of the truths of belief, which left all the philosophers and even the sages of Islam in bewilderment; and the Seventeenth Word, which is a sacred panacea for all the wounds of the heart - these treatises came to my aid and began to cure my ills. They also made me feel certain that I had been made ill by divine mercy so that both I myself and those who came to visit me because I was sick, could receive those lessons from the Risale-i Nur and the above treatises. It was as though our beloved, compassionate Master had written the Treatise for the Elderly for the youth and the Treatise for the Sick for the healthy.

Thirdly: I send greetings to every one of our worthy friends who are

there and are in the service of our beloved Master, and I congratulate them on the festival. I kiss our beloved Master's hands, and the eyes of our brothers.

In His Name, be He glorified!

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Someone wrote me a long letter in the new letters, but did not say who he was. He was doubtful about three points and had given them a wrong meaning, which inferred criticism, so was as though alerting us to them. Since according to our way we do not engage in dispute and argument, and since we are grateful to those who correctly point out our faults, I wanted to explain the truth concerning those three points and correct his error.

First Principle: On the wishes of some of the students, a number of Qur'anic verses which are the Risale-i Nur's master and source and for a long time past have been an invocation of Said were written out and put together in the form of a hizb. {[*]:} It was later printed, and neither the scholars of the experts' committees appointed by four or five courts, nor the committees of the Directorate of Religious Affairs and of the Istanbul fatwa office which scrutinize religious publications, nor any religious scholar have objected to it. They rather approved of it and applauded it. For foremost the Prophet's (UWBP) Companions and Usama, {[*]:} who is mentioned in Majmû'ât al-Ahzâb, {[*]:} had collections of Qur'anic verses (hizb) of which they read a portion every day. In the same book and in the same volume of Majmû'ât al-Ahzâb is a hizb of Imam al-Ghazali, and as is well-known, numerous saints (ehl-i velâyet) collated their own hizbs of suras and verses, suitable to their ways and outlooks.

Some of the Nur champions like the late Hâfız Ali, who died as a martyr ten years ago, wanted to collect together my personal invocations and the main verses that were the Risale-i Nur's masters and sources. I subsequently sent them to them and they had them printed. For not everyone can always find the time to read the whole Qur'an, but if they can get hold of such a Qur'anic collection (hizb), they can profit from it at any time. With this idea, verses and suras were included in it that yield the greatest merits. In fact, one of the Qur'an's miracles is that all the people of reality and of perfection who have their own ways, can find in the Qur'an a Qur'an and a collection of verses and a master which is apposite for their ways. It is as though there are thousands of Qur'ans in the single Qur'an.

The inner meaning of the above miracle is this: the All-Wise Qur'an's verses and phrases have relationships not only with those contiguous with them but with numerous other verses, phrases, and words. This profound matter has been demonstrated to an extent in the commentary Ishârât al-I'jâz (Signs of Miraculousness), which is part of the Risale-i Nur. That is to say, the Qur'an does not resemble other speech; every one of its verses has a face and an eye that looks to thousands of other verses.

This characteristic of the Qur'an is the basis of numerous truths. Some of the followers of the Sufi paths and the people of reality have had their own particular hizbs from within the universal Qur'an. The Qur'anic hizb of the Risale-i Nur is one such collection. The late Hâfız Ali, who was one of the saints, wanted to print it without delay so as to disseminate it. For there was a sort of miracle of the Qur'an in the coincidences (tevâfuk) disclosed by the Risale-i Nur in a handwritten Qur'an, so they printed this hizb preliminary to printing that Qur'an, giving the good news of it. Yes, for the past fifteen years we have been trying to print our Qur'an, which was written by Husrev and is quite wondrous and miraculous with respect to the coincidences. But since most of the Nurjus are not wealthy and twenty-five thousand liras were needed to print it photographically, our Qur'anic hizb was printed first as a precursor, bearing the glad tidings of our miraculous Qur'an. The Directorate of Religious Affairs examined it and very much approved of it. And the scholars who scrutinize written Qur'ans in the fatwa office in Istanbul considered it to be very fine, and studying it with due attention returned it to us with the necessary corrections. God willing, it will soon be printed and will be published throughout the world of Islam as the gift of the Risale-i Nur.

The Second Matter about which that anonymous person entertained doubts:

A hundred times I have rejected the praiseworthy attributes which, far

exceeding my due and owing to their inordinately good opinions of me, many Nurjus imagine in me, and I have offended them. But because for twenty-eight years the politicians have considered the Risale-i Nur's way, which pertains only to belief and the hereafter, to be incompatible with their ideas of civilizing the population, and because they have attempted to prevent the Risale-i Nur's spread for twenty-eight years by intimidating the Nurjus with imprisonment, court cases, surveillance, and baseless accusations, and maligning my person, I have fallen into unprecedented circumstances. Semi-literate and the object of false allegations, I reject the acclaim of my person and so as not to lose the Nur students completely, tell them that it may be due to the Risale-i Nur. It is a commentary on one true aspect of the All-Wise Qur'an. And just as renewers have appeared every century who have served religion and belief to the full, so at this strange time of aggressive secret societies and the collective personalities of misguidance, a renewer is needed in the form of a collective personality. The present does not resemble former times. However wondrous an individual person is, he may be defeated in the face of a collective personality. Since there is a strong possibility that the Risale-i Nur is a sort of renewer in this respect, those attributes could not be mine; rather, as I have written repeatedly, my life may be a sort of seed of the Risale-i Nur. Through the Qur'an's emanations and divine grace, out of that seed the Risale-i Nur became a fruit-bearing, valuable tree through divine creation. I was a seed; I rotted and departed. All the value belongs to the Risale-i Nur, which is the All-Wise Qur'an's meaning and is a genuine commentary on it.

The Third Doubt of that person who neglected to make himself known:

As published by Büyük Cihad {[*]:} and Sebilürreşad, {[*]:} I stated that I have not exploited the services we have performed for religion and belief and the Risale-i Nur for world politics, or even for elevated spiritual ranks and attainments, or making it a means of winning eternal happiness and being saved from Hell, which everyone deems licit. I was compelled at this time to make it a tool of nothing save the seeking of divine pleasure and complying with the divine command, so that we might preserve the essence of true sincerity, which is the Risale-i Nur's true strength. As Abu Bakr, the supremely veracious one (May God be pleased with him), said: "I beseech

Almighty God that my body so expands in Hell that no room will remain for the believers and that it suffers torments in their place!" So that I myself might attain an atom's worth of his holy self-sacrifice, I said that I would agree to Hell to save, through belief, a handful of people from its fire. In any event, worship may not be performed to enter heaven or be saved from Hell; to do so invalidates it. It may only be performed as compliance with the divine command and to seek divine pleasure.

To return to discussion of our collection of Qur'anic verses:

Usama (May God be pleased with him), one of the Most Noble Prophet's (Upon whom be blessings and peace) leading commanders, compiled a collection of verses from various of the Qur'an's suras, and one day recited those about praise of God (hamd), one day those about seeking forgiveness, one day those about glorification of God, one day those about reliance on God, one day those about greetings of peace, one day those about the affirmation of divine unity, one day those about the phrase: "There is no god but God," and one day about the word Lord and Sustainer (Rabb). He made this an invocation for himself. That is to say, the Messenger (Upon whom be blessings and peace) gave his sanction to such collections (hizb).

Furthermore, since this hizb of ours has been collated of verses about the truths of belief and particularly of verses from the beginnings of suras, "In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate" is written at its head. The collection fires enthusiasm to read the whole Qur'an; it does not diminish it. Also, since some of the desired verses about belief that could be recited only in twenty days, may be read in this collection in one or two days, I took some of those verses as an invocation for myself together with other verses from the beginnings of some of the suras, and they only subsequently assumed the form of a hizb.

That anonymous person imagined to be egotism my defending the dignity of learning against some arrogant little egotists. He fancied that my being unable to completely destroy the Nur students' good opinion of me to be self-conceit. And because, with the idea of securing the confidence of the students in my expositions of the truths of belief, I felt compelled to disclose the nearly one thousand signs and indications of the saints and of a number of verses, he supposed my explaining a part of these to my closest brother to be a form of self-advertisement.

Yes, it is a great crime and treachery at this time in our defensive position to display modesty and humility in the face of those whose egos are as swollen as the pharaoh's and who attack belief and the Risale-i Nur on

account of irreligion. Such modesty would be shameful abasement. Could it in any way be self-advertisement to display in the face of them heroic fortitude and moral strength in order to preserve religious pride and the honour of learning? Could it be fame-seeking or love of self, so that person imagined it to be thus? Also, of those who need the Risale-i Nur and seek it in order to strengthen their belief and to save it, three or four out of ten look not to my person but suffice with the decisive proofs of the Risale-i Nur, and five or six look to me because they do not know the value of those proofs. So is it egotism if I draw a veil over my hidden faults and do not destroy their good opinion of me, so as to prevent them from wondering whether or not I am deceiving them or saying what is true?

In accordance with the verse, «Nor do I absolve my own self [of blame]: the [human] soul is certainly prone to evil» (Q 12:53), I do not trust my evil-commanding soul. The soul is always faulty. But in my defence, at this time when secret atheistic societies like dragons and demons are on the attack, to dwell on the faults apparent in me that have the importance of a fly's wing means assisting in their destructive assaults. It also means depriving five or six out of ten needy people of the remedies of the Risale-i Nur. Relying not on my own strength and virtues in this matter, but solely on the truth of the Qur'an and on the truths of belief which expound it, I proclaim to the whole world that were all irreligious people to gather together, I would not shrink back from them but would challenge them. I would not bow before them, nor violate the honour of learning. Even if this was egotism, it would in no way pertain to me; it would not be egotism. It would be firm strength of belief. Just as I deny nature in respect of creative power, and the Risale-i Nur has proved this decisively; so I deny the holding of power that drives men to pride, egotism, and arrogance. Human beings possess only an insignificant acquisition (kesb) due to genuine need, which is a sort of active prayer and sort of acceptable supplication. Almighty God accepts this. That He bestows the wonders called discoveries which are necessary for humanity has been proved by the scholars of the science of the principles of religion in their discussions of divine determining and human choice (kader ve cüz'-i ihtiyarî). Similarly, because I have become absolutely certain through the effulgence of the Qur'an and proofs of the Risale-i Nur that the sense of self and power in firstly myself and then in others is only a veil for divine creativity, bestowal, and assistance, I have proclaimed to my brothers and the Risale-i Nur that I was merely a seed; I rotted, and in consequence of powerlessness, need, sincere seeking, and active prayer, the Most Merciful of the Merciful created

the Risale-i Nur from that seed, and bestowed it. All the sections in the Letters of the Risale-i Nur describing the reasons for praise pertain to that illuminating tree. My share in it could in no way be pride; it could be thanks and thanks alone. So, All thanks be to God! All praise be to God to the number of beings in existence!

In His Name, be He glorified!

Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Firstly: Owing to numerous signs and a number of incidents it is now certain that the enemies of the Risale-i Nur and of the Nur students have d shsed numerous plans in order to induce the some of the select students to give up their service of the Risale-i Nur or to weaken their resolve by discovering some of their weak veins of character, We shall describe one or two of them as a warning lesson.

First Example: So as to turn the attention and thought of a few of our select brothers who are unshakeably attached to the Risale-i Nur in another direction, or to occupy them with a pleasurable, spiritual way and impair their devotion to their duties in serving belief, some people are preoccupying these brothers with phenomena like communicating with the dead and with jinns, which is known as spiritualism, and even conversing with the great saints and even prophets, which formerly was the realm of the soothsayers (kâhin), who are now known as mediums.

This phenomenon proceeds from philosophy and from Europe, and can be extremely harmful to the believers. It is open to exploitation of many sorts, and if it contains one truth, this is mixed with ten falsehoods. For since there is no touchstone, no criterion, to differentiate between truth and falsehood, the jinns which assist evil spirits and Satan may possibly cause harm both to the hearts of those who busy themselves with it, and to Islam. For there are disclosures which they call spiritual matters but which are contrary to the truths of Islam and general beliefs. Evil spirits present themselves as good spirits or even as great saints and may attempt to cause harm to the basic principles of Islam by saying things opposed to them. They may twist the truth and deceive ingenuous people completely.

For instance, the sun appears in a fragment of glass with its light, heat, and shape. But if the tiny image of the sun in the fragment were to speak and say: "My light floods the whole world, my heat warms everything!' And if it were to say that it was a million times larger than the globe of the earth, it would be understood just how contrary to the trۨأ it was. In exactly the same way, while a prophet resides in his true station which is like the sun, the appearance of a manifestation of it that accords with the fragment-like capacity of a spiritualist or medium cannot speak in the name of that reality. If he does, it would be contrary to it a hundred times over. The insignificant manifestation reflected in spiritualism or mediumship can in no way be compared with the sacred nature of the non-material Sun that is the recipient of revelation. For a fragment of glass at the lowest of the low cannot be brought side by side with the reality of that non-material sun at the highest of the high, To attempt to do so is utter disrespect. Only, drawing close to the station of prophethood by progressing through spiritual journeying, some of the saints like Jalal al-Dîn al-Suyuti {[*]:} were graced with the Sun's conversation. But as is proved in the Risale-i Nur, such progress, a sort of conversation through the sainthood of the Prophet (UWBP), occurs in accordance with the saints' degrees and their capacities.

The reality of prophethood is far higher than sainthood; the communications and conversation experienced by means of spiritualism or spiritual advancement, can in no way approach communication with true prophets and so cannot be a basis of new rulings of the Shari'a.

The calling up of spirits does not come from religion but from the sensitivity of philosophy, and is an action that is opposed both to truth, and to good conduct. It is a grievous insult and lack of respect to attract those at sacred stations at the highest of the high to the Ouija boards, the seat of lies, at the lowest of the low. It is just like summoning the king to a hovel. What is pure truth, decency, respect, and benefit is such persons as Jalal al-Dîn al-Suyuti, Jalal al-Dîn Rumi, {[*]:} and Imam Rabbani {[*]:} rising through

their spiritual journeyings like the journeyings of spirit beings, and their drawing close to those holy prophets and profiting from them.

Evil spirits and Satan cannot assume the form of prophets in true dreams. But when spirits are called up, evil spirits may say that they are prophets and may speak in a way that is contrary to the Prophet's (UWBP) Sunna and the Shari'a's injunctions. If what they say is contrary to them, it is clear evidence that the ones speaking are not good spirits. They are not believing and Muslim jinns; they are evil spirits, and imitate them in this

Secondly: The Nur students are not now in need of instruction in such matters. The Risale-i Nur explains the truth about everything and leaves no need for other expositions. The Risale-i Nur is enough for them. It is, however, imperative that people other than the Nur students do not heed the suggestions in those communications that are contrary to the Shari'a and Prophet's (UWBP) Sunna. For to do so may lead to serious errors.

A Warning: The fierce warnings in this letter against communicating with spirits, are against an approach that purports to be spiritual, and has appeared from the West, and from philosophy, spiritualism, and mesmerism. The criticism is not of the Sufism of a very few Sufis which proceeds from Islam and tasawwuf and other followers of the Sufi path, and resembles somewhat the communication with spirits, and has been exploited to some extent with the interference of the outsiders. It is true that they can harm others in some ways, but they do not deceive like the others and they harbour no intentions of harming Islam. As for that approach of foreign provenance, it is opposed to both Islam and the Sufi paths, and it attempts to obstruct the way of the Sufis mentioned here, and devalue it, Those Sufis who are weak and do not adhere to the Sunna should be careful not to allow themselves to resemble them.

In His Name, be He glorified!

I request that you listen to this very brief statement about the very lengthy story of my life of persecution. The following are the reasons they have given for the last twenty-eight years of unprecedented ill-treatment, surveillance, and imprisonment:

The First: They accuse me of being opposed to the regime. We say in reply:

Every government has opponents. On condition they do not disturb public order or infringe security, no one is answerable for an idea or way of conducting themselves which they believe in with their hearts and consciences. For although the more than one hundred million Muslims who were under the rule of the English and their tyrannical, religiously bigoted government for a hundred years, rejected their infidel regime due to the Qur'an and did not accept it, up to the present the English courts have not bothered them in that respect. And although the Jews and Christians who since early times have had a place among our nation and in its governments, and have been opposed to its religion and sacred regimes, and have held contrary, critical views, at no time have the courts of law interfered with them in any way. Furthermore, during his own caliphate, 'Umar (May God be pleased with him) was tried by a court together with a common Christian. The fact that the Christian's [religious] views were not taken into consideration by the court despite his being opposed to both the Muslims' sacred regime, and their religion, and their laws, shows that a court of law cannot be partisan, but has to be unbiased. For the vicegerent of the earth was tried together with a common infidel.

Thus, relying on hundreds of verses of the Qur'an, not only myself but all people of conscience are opposed to a temporary regime that has replaced the Qur'an's sacred laws, and on account of the anarchy of corrupt civilization and behind the screen of the liberties of the Republic is an absolute despotism, and may be used as a tool to tyrannize religious people. Moreover, opposition to any government can never be deemed a crime.

The Second: They have inflicted punishments on me for thirty years on the pretext of the possibility of disturbing the peace and breaching security. I say this in reply:

Although according to the investigations of the court there are both five

hundred thousand devoted Nur students, and for twenty-eight years we have been subjected to this cruel ill-treatment, the six provinces and six courts of law that have been concerned with the Nurjus have been unable to record any incident involving them. This proves that the Nurjus are the protectors of public security. Through their instruction in belief, they instil a prohibitor in everyone's head and preserve public order. The fair-minded police of three provinces have affirmed this.

The Third: They have declared me guilty saying, He wants to exploit religion for political ends. A decisive reply to this is my article entitled, "It is Only the Truth that Speaks," in the one hundred and sixteenth issue of Sebilürreşad. A summary of it is as follows:

The Answer: Those who accuse of exploiting religion for politics a person who is over eighty years of age and at the door of the grave, and whose whole life testifies that he is ready to sacrifice his whole world for religion and if necessary his personal life in the hereafter, who has absolutely nothing in this world, and has given up politics for thirty-five years, and concerning this matter five courts have found no certain evidence - those making this accusation are totally wrong, unjust, and unfair. In addition to these slanders, they say that he wants to disturb public order and security. But the lesson in truth he has taken from the Qur'an and he has taught to his students, is this:

If one innocent man is found in a house or on a ship together with ten criminals, the justice of the Qur'an forbids the burning down of the house or sinking of the ship lest harm comes to the innocent man. To burn or sink them in order to destroy one criminal when they hold nine innocent people is therefore a grievous wrong, cruelty, and perfidy. In consequence, since divine justice and the truth of the Qur'an severely forbids harming or placing in danger by disturbing public order and security, ninety innocent people due to ten criminals, owing to that lesson of the Qur'an we consider ourselves compelled religiously to preserve public order with all our strength.

There is no doubt that our covert enemies who accuse us of these three or four matters and preoccupy the courts with us unnecessarily, want either to exploit politics for irreligion or under the veil of communism, either knowingly or unknowingly, to establish anarchy in this blessed country. For any Muslim who leaves the fold of Islam becomes an apostate and anarchist, and spreads poison in the life of society. For anarchy recognizes no rights and transforms human nature into that of savage animals. The Qur'an alludes to the fact that the secret society of Gog and Magog, which will appear at the end of time, will be composed of anarchists.

In His Name, be He glorified!

Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Firstly: Our miraculous, gilded Qur'an, which was written in such a way as to show at this time the miraculousness in the ordering of the letters, has been sent first of all to Germany to be printed. Efforts were made to have it printed in Istanbul, but this was abandoned due to such obstacles as the expense of printing in three colours. One section of it has been sent to Italy as a sample, since printing techniques there are highly developed. Attempts have again been made for its printing in Istanbul, and for now steps are being taken to have it printed in a single colour while preserving the concidences (tevâfuk). Later, God willing, it will be printed in three colours and with full gilding in either Egypt, Germany, or Italy.

Secondly: To be duplicated are an Arabic Qur'anic commentary (Ishârât al-I'jâz) and a collection, the Arabic Mathnawî of the Risale-i Nur, which is the size of Zülfikar and deserves to be written in gold, God willing. These works, which were written forty years ago and are quite wonderful and of the greatest importance, and every discussion of which is the equivalent of a book or treatise, were approved of and applauded by the leading shaykhs and ulema of the time. Speaking of just one of the treatises, they indicated its unprecedented worth and their powerlessness to comprehend it, saying: "This not a mere droplet (Katre) but an ocean!" We herewith give the glad tidings of these tasks of the Risale-i Nur, and await your prayers for their success. We send our greetings to all of you and wish you every success.

[This letter was published in the newspaper Büyük Cihad, in Samsun. It was the cause of court proceedings being opened there, incited by calumniators. The court case resulted in acquittals.]

Our Master, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, the Saviour of the World of Islam, Chief of the Believers, and Interpreter of the Risale-i Nur!

The fact that, on the indication of the religious Democrats, Afyon Court has given the decision for the Risale-i Nur's liberty and the return of all its treatises, letters, and collections since they contain nothing reprehensible, is clear proof of the truth you proclaimed years ago. You said: "The Risale-i Nur belongs not to me but to the Qur'an and proceeds from its effulgence. No force will be able to tear it from the heart of Anatolia. The Risale-i Nur is bound to the Qur'an and the Qur'an is bound to the Supreme Throne. Has anyone the power to uproot it and tear it away from there?" Knowing this to be shining evidence that this elevated service of yours is in the way of God and the Qur'an, and that the decision for its acquittal marks the dawn of happiness for the world of Islam and particularly of this Islamic nation, we offer our congratulations to our beloved Master, who expectantly awaits such victories, and is the head of the Nur family, has been appointed captain of the seas of truth and guide of humanity revolting in the darkness of disbelief. We congratulate too the religious Democrats who in this way have won the love and support of the believers, and also the just panel of judges and offer them our endless thanks.

Today, the Qur'anic truth which for years you have striven selflessly to advance and uphold is unfolding vastly and filling the hearts of the believers throughout the country with joy. This proves as clearly as the sun just how elevated and brilliant are the sacred cause and work which you have been appointed to strive for and which you have sucessfully accomplished,

Notwithstanding the difficulties and obstacles of the last twenty-five to thirty years, all your patience and fortitude, and labours and exertions in publishing the Risale-i Nur, which occurred to your illumined heart from the Qur'an, furnish a fine example for the heroic mujâhids of Islam. Dispelling the darkness of ignorance and misguidance with the Rays of the inextinguishable Lights of the sun of the Qur'an and their everlasting Flashes, you have illumined millions of hearts and made the believers grateful to you. This country and nation, this history and land, will never forget this service of yours, this devoted self-sacrifice. If you travel to the eternal realm, your service will form a seed from which will sprout a lofty tree which will encompass everywhere. The large communities which will

gather around that tree of light and the rising everlasting rays of the Risale-i Nur will perpetuate your work in even more brilliant and magnificent form.

As the Risale-i Nur's interpreter, with the services you have performed for belief shining on the horizons of Islam, you are the chief guide of the present age!

Esteemed herald of the Noble Qur'an in the fourteenth Muhammadan (UWBP) century! Supreme devotee who has responded with the Qur'an's light in the face of the awesome darkness of this ghastly age! Our beloved heroic Master, who has published everywhere with the pens of his hundreds of thousands of students the hundreds of thousands of copies of the Risale-i Nur and has erected a Qur'anic barrier against irreligion and absolute disbelief!

With this sacred service of yours, which is a mercy for all the worlds and brings solace and deliverance to humanity, you give the good news to the believers of the great festival of Islam's supremacy which will embrace all the continents and the signs of which are just appearing. We congratulate you on this with all our spirits, and beseech Almighty God for your long life, and kiss your hands respectfully.

There are now four parties in this country: one is the People's Party (Halk Partisi), another the Democrat (Demokrat Partisi), another the Nation (Millet Partisi), and the other Islamic Unity (İttihad-ı İslam Partisi). In the event of sixty or seventy per cent of the people being completely religious, the Islamic Unity Party may assume a leading role in present politics. But due to the deficient Islamic training of recent times the latter party would have to exploit religion for politics in the face of the malpractices of present politics, and should therefore not assume such a role.

As for the People's Party, since behind the screen of the law it has in truth given extraordinary, pleasurable, and widespread bribes to officials, and since together with all its own crimes of twenty-eight years the crimes of others and the evils of the Unionists (İttihadçılar) and their Masonic

members have been loaded on it, they appear to predominate over the Democrats in some ways. For egotism is strengthened by the lack of worship and the numbers of little Nimrods increase. Despite in reality officialdom being service, with such domination, mastery, and little dictatorships, it has given certain officials powerful positions as bribes. From this and from the treatment meted out to me and from newspaper reports and all their crimes, I perceived that they are prevailing over the Democrats in a sort of way. Whereas, a fundamental law of Islam is the Hadith, "The ruler of a people is its servant," {[*]:} according to which, the task of officialdom is not to act as ruler or chief, but to serve the nation. Democracy and freedom of conscience may be based on this law of Islam, for if power does not reside in the law, it passes to individual persons and despotism becomes absolute and arbitrary.

As for the Nation Party, if it is Islamic nationhood, the basis of Islamic Unity, in which Turkism has been dissolved, it is the equivalent of the Democrats and should join them. Racism and racial prejudice, which we call Europe's disease, was inculcated in us by Europe in order to split up the Islamic world. But this sick idea produces a state of mind which people find gratifying and enthralling, so every nation embraces it enthusiastically to a greater or lesser extent, despite its many harms and dangers.

If the Nation Party was to win a majority and gain power, due to deficient Islamic training and the predominance of secular education (terbiye-i medeniye), the true Turks, who comprising only thirty per cent of the population do not form a majority, and the other elements, who form seventy per cent, would be obliged to take up a front against Islamic rule. For another fundamental law of Islam is the verse, «No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another» (Q 6: 164), no one is answerable or may be punished due to another's sins. Whereas, due to the vein of racialism, a person supposes he has the right to kill an innocent brother because of another man's crime, and even his relatives and the members of his tribe. In such cases, there is no true justice and it opens up the way to extreme injustice. For the dictum "the rights of an innocent person may not be sacrificed for even a hundred guilty people" is a fundamental law of Islam. This is a matter of the greatest importance for this country. It also presents a serious danger to Islamic rule.

Since the truth is this, O religious Democrats and Democrats who are respectful towards Islam! In the face of the powerful, pleasurable, attractive

supports of these two parties, you are obliged to take the truths of Islam as the basis of your support, for they are even more of a drawing force, both materially and spiritually. Or there is the possibility that the crimes committed down the years which you did not commit will be loaded on you as they were on the former party, and the members of the People's Party will adopt racism and defeat you completely. I felt this and am worried for Islam.

Postscript: In my view, the following is the only way the religious Democrats may be saved from having inflicted on them the serious penalties which were dealt out following the Ticânî incidents. {[*]:} For those incidents resulted from the unnecessary, arbitrary laws of the former party and their exploitation, and even due to its incitements. In this way they may also be saved from losing face in the view of the Islamic world:

Just as the Democrats' power was increased tenfold by restoring the Arabic call to prayer, so it would be increased by returning Aya Sophia to its position of five hundred years. The religious Democrats should therefore announce officially the Risale-i Nur's freedom, for it has made a very favourable impression in the Islamic world as well as winning the Islamic world's regard for the people of this country, and nothing harmful has been found in it by courts of law over twenty years and five courts have ruled for its acquittal. They should apply a salve to this wound, They would then both win the good opinion of the Islamic world, and the tyrannical faults of others would not be ascribed to them.

For the sake of the religious Democrats and particularly persons like Adnan Menderes, {[*]:} I have dwelt on politics for one or two days, although I have given them up for the past thirty-five years.

Firstly: The President of the new government has understood the necessity of building the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ in the province of Van, a large Islamic university similar to al-Azhar University, which I have been pursuing for forty years. Sultan Reşad gave twenty thousand gold liras for its construction and the former despotic government's Parliament allotted one hundred and fifty thousand liras, signed by one hundred and sixty-three deputies. It is a matter of paramount importance for the world of Islam, for the east, and for this nation. The President has evidently understood this for among all the pressing affairs of state, he made this announcement, which I am sending you. Even if it does not come to fruition, it is truly auspicious that the very fact of its necessity has been understood. The President, Celâl Bayar, said among other things in his key speech in the Parliament, that the Ministry of Education is conducting investigations preliminary to founding the Eastern University in Van. He said:

"All obstacles must be overcome to found such a learned establishment in Van, which is one of our eastern provinces. Initial steps must be taken in the next fiscal year."

That is to say, the young university students who presented the President with a copy of our biography gave him to understand the Risale-i Nur's value.

Secondly: These most significant words of the President are a sign that the invaluable services that the Risale-i Nur has performed and will perform for this country have been understood. The Nurjus should offer thanks for all the difficulties they have suffered and the confiscations of the Risale-i Nur, and not complain, since they have yielded this significant result.

[Our Master, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, used this defence speech, which was published in Samsun by the newspaper, Büyük Cihad, after having been read in the court there, in the court in Istanbul and the case resulted in an acquittal.]

Our covert enemies again prompted the judiciary to move against us this Ramadan. The matter concerns a secret communist society.

One of them: While taking some air in the countryside and sitting alone on a hillside, three armed gendarmes and a sergeant approached me in a way that was completely outside the law, and accused me of not wearing a peaked cap. They took me by force to the police station. So I say to all the courts of law whose purpose is the administering of justice:

While those who act illegally in five respects and break the laws of Islam in five ways in the name of Islam, should be accused of illegal behaviour, they will surely be punished by the Supreme Tribunal on the Last Day for trampling the law in that way and using it as an excuse, and causing me torments of the conscience for two years. Which law in the world would permit someone who has been a recluse for thirty-five years and goes neither to any market or town to be censured for not wearing a European-style hat? These last twenty-eight years, five provinces and their police and five courts of law have not interfered with his headgear, and no police interfered during this last court case in Istanbul, even, under the eyes of more than a hundred police and for two months making trips everywhere there on foot. And since the Court of Appeal ruled against the prohibition of the beret, and also, none of the women, including those of them who do not wear the veil, and none of the private soldiers are obliged to the wear the brimmed hat like some officials, and since there is absolutely no advantage in wearing it, and I have no official post - seeing that it is an item of official dress - and those who wear berets are not prosecuted, to propose that he wears the hat and resembles foreign priests and to threaten him with court proceedings would certainly disgust anyone with a grain of conscience. For he is a recluse and does not mix with people, and so as not to busy his spirit with this ugly, illegal matter during Ramadan, and in order not to preoccupy his heart and spirit with his body, does not take medicines or call the doctor although he is seriously ill.

For example: The person who was proposing this said that he has to obey orders. But how can you have orders with the force of arbitrary laws? Yes, in the Qur'an, there are verses like: «O you who believe, obey God, and obey the Messenger, and those charged with authority among you» (Q 4:59), which command obedience to leaders so as not to resemble the Jews

and Christians. On condition it is not contrary to obedience to God and His Prophet (UWBP), a person may act on the understanding that he is complying with that obedience. Whereas in this case, although the laws of Islamic tradition command compassion to the sick, and to strangers, and not to cause trouble or distress to those who serve the Qur'an and the sciences of belief for Allah's sake, they propose that a hermit who has renounced the world wear a hat like a foreign priest, which is contrary to the law not ten but a hundred times over, and is opposed too to the traditional laws of Islam and tramples those sacred laws on account of some arbitrary orders. Treatment of this kind of someone like me who is extremely ill, extremely old and at the door of the grave, is alone, a stranger, impecunious, and who for thirty-five years has abandoned the world so as not to act contrarily to the Prophet's (UWBP) Sunna, is without any doubt one foot of a ghastly conspiracy on account of anarchy and under the veil of communism, to harm this country, nation, Islam, and religion. It is also a conspiracy against the religious deputies and Democrats who intend to serve Islam and this country and have formed a front against the awesome destruction coming from outside. The religious deputies should be beware. They should not leave it to me to defend against this serious conspiracy on my own.

Postscript: For no advantage and illegally, to order a devotee of Islam and self-sacrificing servant of the Qur'an who did not condescend to rise to his feet before the commander-in-chief of the Russians although the commander deliberately passed in front of him three times, and in order to preserve the dignity of Islam, did not bow before him despite the threat of execution; and in order to defend Islam's honour, attached not the slightest importance to the threats of execution of the commander-in-chief of the British occupying forces Istanbul and those who had issued fatwas, and opposed them in the press saying: "Spit in the shameless faces of those tyrants!"; and who, in the presence of fifty deputies, declared: "Those who do not perform the prayers are traitors!" and disregarded Mustafa Kemal's wrath; and did not toady to the military court and replied to its intimidating questions: "I am ready to sacrifice my life for a single matter of the Shari'a!"; and who has chosen solitude these last twenty-eight years in order not to resemble non-Muslims - if it is said to such a person: "You have to resemble the Jewish or Christian priests! You have to wear a hat like they do! You have to oppose the consensus of all the Islamic ulema, otherwise we are going to punish you!" certainly a person who has sacrificed all he has for the truth of the Qur'an, would sacrifice a hundred lives if he had them, as his biography testifies, even if he were to be decimated with knives and thrown into Hell, let alone worldly prisons, penalties, and torture.

What is the reason for this self-sacrificing devotee's endurance and his not retaliating negatively and with material force to the tyrannical injustices of the covert enemies of this country and religion, although he has considerable non-material forces? I proclaim the following to you and to all people of conscience: The All-Wise Qur'an has taught him the lessons of the Risale-i Nur, which instil a prohibitor in everyone's heart so that with all their strength they preserve internal order and security, lest harm should come to ninety innocents on account of ten irreligious atheists. I could otherwise take my revenge in one day on my cruel enemies of twenty-eight years. Thus, on the way of preserving public order and for the sake of innocent people, he does not defend his honour and dignity against those who insult him, and he says: I shall sacrifice not my worldly life, but if necessary my life in the hereafter for the Islamic nation.

The Baghdad newspaper ad-Difâ' asked the following about the Risale-i Nur students:

Is there any connection between the Risale-i Nur students in Turkey and the Muslim Brothers? Do they have any relations? And what are the differences between them? Are the Risale-i Nur students in Turkey an independent group or society like the groups called the Muslim Brothers working for Islamic unity in Egypt and other Arab countries? Are they attached to those groups or to any one of them? My reply is this:

The aim of both the Nur students and the Muslim Brothers is to serve the truths of Qur'an and belief and to work with the overall aim of securing Islamic unity and the happiness of Muslims in this world and the next. However, the Nur students differ from the Muslim Brothers in five or six respects:

First Difference: The Nur students are not involved in politics; they avoid theme If they are obliged to concern themselves with politics, they make them a tool of religion, so that they may demonstrate the sacredness of religion in the face of those who exploit politics for irreligion. They are

in no way a political society. Due to the situations in their countries, the Muslim Brothers, however, are involved in politics, in order to support religion, and they are a political society.

Second Difference: The Nur students do not meet with their Master and they are not obliged to do so. They do not feel themselves compelled to meet with him. They do not consider it necessary to be together with him in order to receive instruction. Rather, the whole country is like a place of instruction; on their obtaining the books, they are taught by them instead of by their Master. The treatises are each like a Said.

Moreover, as far as they possibly can, the Nur students write the treatises out for no wage and distribute them free of charge {(*):} to the needy, so that they may read them and listen to them. In this way the whole country has become a vast place of learning.

The Muslim Brothers, however, meet with their guides and leaders in general centres, and go to visit them in order to receive instruction and orders. They also meet in the branches of that general society with their supreme Master and those who are the equivalent of his deputies and successors, and receive instruction and orders. And they obtain for the required price the newspapers and books produced in the centres, and receive instruction from them too.

Third Difference: Just like the students of an elevated medrese (religious school) or university, the Nur students learn through scholarly exchanges. A large province becomes like a medrese. They teach each other and learn together although they do not see one another or know each other, and although they far apart.

However, due to the circumstances of their countries, the Muslim Brothers produce books and magazines and distribute them everywhere; they come to know each other through them, and receive instruction.

Fourth Difference: The Nur students have now spread to most of the Islamic countries, and they are numerous. In spreading in this way, they are present in various countries but they do not need to obtain permission from the governments to meet together and do their work. For their way is not a political way and they are not a political society, so they do not consider themselves obliged to obtain permission.

However, due to their circumstances, the Muslim Brothers are involved in politics and need to organize a society and open centres and branches, and are therefore obliged to obtain permission from the authorities

wherever they are found. And they are not unknown like the Nur students. In this way they have opened numerous branches in their general centres, including Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Sudan, the Maghrib, and Baghdad.

Fifth Difference: There are numerous different levels among the Nur students, from seven or eight-year-old children who are learning the Arabic alphabet in mosques to learn the Qur'an, to elderly men and women of seventy to ninety years old; and from villagers and porters to prominent members of the National Assembly; and from private soldiers to high-ranking officers. The sole aim of all these many levels of Nur students is to become illuminated by the guidance of the Noble Qur'an and truths of belief. All their endeavour is to spread knowledge, learning and the truths of belief. They are known for not being involved with anything else. The fearsome trials these last twenty-eight years and their cunning and jealous opponents have been unable to discover any aim apart from this sacred service, and have therefore been unable to convict them and rout them. The Nur students do not feel themselves compelled to search for customers and sup- porters; they say: "Our duty is to serve. We do not seek customers; let them come and seek us out and find us." They attach no importance to quantity. They prefer one person who is truly sincere, to a hundred others.

For sure, like the Nur students, the Muslim Brothers encourage and urge others to adhere to the sciences and learning of Islam and the truths of belief, but due to their situations and countries and their involvement with politics, they attach importance to quantity and increasing their numbers, and they seek supporters.

Sixth Difference: Just as true, sincere Nur students attach no importance to material benefits, so some of them, with their maximum frugality and contentment and poverty, and fortitude and independence, they abstain in some respects with true sincerity and devotion in serving the Qur'an from the advantages of society. This is so that they will not be defeated in the face of the numerous, violent people of misguidance, nor give rise to doubts when calling the needy to the truth and to sincerity, nor make that sacred service the tool of anything other than divine pleasure.

Although essentially the Muslim Brothers follow the same aim, due to place and circumstances and other causes, they cannot give up the world like the Nur students. They do not consider themselves obliged to make that supreme self-sacrifice.

['Isa 'Abd al-Qadir, a writer on the political newspaper, ad-Difâ', which is published in Baghdad, says the following:]

Readers of ad-Difâ' are asking me about Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, the guide of the Nur students. They ask for information about him and the Nur students in Turkey. So I am replying to them briefly. For the Master, the Risale-i Nur, and the Nur students are concerned with the Arabs, and the Arabs are taking a serious interest in them, for as the main grouping of Islam, they have begun to see great benefits from the Risale-i Nur.

With the Risale-i Nur, the Nur students form an effective barrier against communism, both in Turkey and in the Arab world.

... ... ...

This article was written considering conditions previous to the coming to power of the Democrats when according to the public prosecutor, the Nur students numbered five hundred thousand. But now there are now millions of them in Turkey, and every day they increase in number,

... ... ...

As for the Risale-i Nur, it is spreading to such an extent that it is being sought eagerly not only in Turkey and the Islamic lands, but also in Europe and the West. Nothing can destroy the Nur students' enthusiasm. The Democrat government is to be highly commended for permitting the considerable services the students have performed for the Qur'an with the Risale-i Nur, so that the Islamic movement in the blessed Islamic world meets them with applause and appreciation. All the Muslim peoples of Iraq - the Arabs, Kurds, Turks, and Persians - have greeted this sacred, Islamic service and endeavour joyfully, and they hold the view that their brothers in Turkey are resisting the harmful effects of Westernization.

[A letter written by our Master to the Prime Minister, Adnan Menderes, who approves of and appreciates the services rendered by the Risale-i Nur\to the country, nation, and Islam.]

In His Name, be He glorified!

I would have liked to speak with a champion of Islam like Adnan Menderes, but my circumstances do not allow it, for I am very ill and not concerned with politics. I have therefore written this letter to speak in my place, instead of a face-to-face conversation.

I am going to elucidate a few very brief principles for Adnan Menderes, the champion of Islam:

The First is one of Islam's many fundamental laws and is a true meaning of the verse, «No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another» (Q 6:164 etc.). It is as follows:

No one, neither friends nor relations, can be held responsible for another's crime. Whereas the partisanship of present party politics causes people to acquiesce in and consent to numerous innocents suffering harm on account of a single criminal. Due to a single criminal's crime, the supporters and relatives of the innocent are also maligned and humiliated; and because this multiplies the crime a hundredfold, it gives rise to terrible hatred and enmity; and breeding malice and rancour, it forces retaliation in kind. This a poison that completely overturns the life of society and prepares the ground for the intervention of external enemies. It is understood that the events and crises experienced in Iran and Egypt arose from action of this kind. But the situation with them is not the situation here; with us, it is comparatively less severe, only one per cent. God protect us! If it had been like that here, it would have been terrible indeed.

The sole solution for this danger is to make Islamic brotherhood and primary Islamic nationhood the foundation of that force, for the protection of innocent people and to ensure that the crimes of criminals remain restricted to themselves.

The above fundamental law is also the foundation of public peace and security. For example, true justice and the fundamental law of public order and security demands that if one innocent person and ten criminals are found in a house or on a ship, the house or ship should not be attacked so that the innocent person may be saved and no harm comes to him. But when he is saved ...

Thus, according to this Qur'anic fundamental law, the disturbance of

internal order and violation of security thus casting into danger ninety innocents on account of ten criminals, is a means of attracting divine wrath. Since in these uncertain times, Almighty God has paved the way for a number of truly religious people to come to power, present circumstances warn that they should take this fundamental law of the Qur'an as a basis of action for themselves, to shield themselves against their malicious enemies.

Islam's Second Fundamental Law is the Hadith, "A people's ruler is its servant," {[*]:} which means that officialdom is service and should not lead to oppression and egotistical domination. But at the present time egotism has burgeoned due to the absence of Islamic training and deficient worship. And because officialdom has been made into ranks for the practice of arbitrary domination rather than service, justice cannot be administered and is in essence corrupted, like performing the prayers in any direction without the ablutions. And the people's rights are totally violated. The people's rights (hukuk-u ibad) do not become hukukullah (that is, they are not sanctioned), that they may be rights. On the contrary, they are the cause of selfish injustices.

Adnan Menderes has now said that they are going to enact whatever is required by the religion of Islam. But there is a strong possibility that in absolute opposition to the two above-mentioned fundamental laws, two awesome currents will go on the offensive in order to deceive the people with substantial bribes and will pave the way for foreign intervention.

The First Assault: In opposition to the first fundamental law, this has slaughtered forty innocent people due to one criminal and set fire to a village. Such absolute despotism bribes officials, granting them power and control and gratifying their souls, while religious lovers of freedom are persecuted.

The Second Assault: This is apparently a sort of nationalism which renounces the sacred nationhood of Islam, and like the previous one is able to trample the rights of a hundred innocents due to one criminal, but in reality, with its streak of racialism, strives against both the religious, freedom-loving Democrats, and the members of other races who constitute seventy per cent of this country's population, and the wretched Turks, and the policies followed by the Democrats, producing only a racist brotherhood as an inauspiciously pleasurable bribe for good-for-nothing egotists. Out of their drunkenness they do not perceive the extraordinary danger of

turning into enmity the true brotherhood which is a thousand times more beneficial than the thrills they get from that racist comradeship. For example, racialism causes to be lost for the trivial worldly benefits of four hundred useless loafers, the moral and spiritual assistance received every day from the universal prayer, "O God! Forgive all believing men and women," which is recited by four hundred million true brothers with a sense of Islamic nationhood. This is a grave danger for both this country, and the government, and the religious Democrats, and the Turks, and those who pursue it are not true Turks. The noble Turks avoid such errors. It is quite clear from their actions that these two groups are attempting to take advantage of everything and to overturn the religious Democrats, and they are being made to do so. The sole solution in the face of these opponents and the internal and external enemies and their destruction, which absolutely has to be implemented, is to rely on the unshakeable power of the Qur'anic reality, with which forty Companions of the Prophet (UWBP) challenged and prevailed over forty states and which for one thousand four hundred years has had three or four million students, and to depend on the worldly pleasures and pleasures of everlasting happiness in the hereafter yielded by that reality. Otherwise those pitiless internal and external enemies of yours will magnify one error you commit, and adding to it the crimes committed by the supporters of the former regime, will load them all on you, just as they did to others before you.

This constitutes a danger for both you and the country and nation the harms of which would be irreparable. In return for your services and your accepting these facts, I myself and our Nurju brothers will pray to Almighty God for your success in your works for the good of Islam and for your preservation from the above-mentioned dangers.

The Third: Another fundamental law related to the social life of Islam is the Hadith, "The believers are like a well-built structure with one firmly supporting the other." {[*]:} That is, to forget internal hostilities in the face of the aggression of external enemies and to support one another. Even the most primitive tribes have understood the advantages of this fundamental law, for when attacked by an enemy from outside, they desist from fighting against one another until the enemy is repulsed, even if the member of one tribe has killed the father or brother of someone belonging to another tribe, and they support one another. So it is with a thousand regrets that we say that incidents occur in which, as a consequence of the partisanship that

arises from egotism, self-advertisement, arrogance, and cruel politics, people shower blessings on Satan if he assists their side, and curse angels if they help the opposing side. In fact, I saw one righteous religious scholar speak so badly about another righteous scholar as to accuse him of disbelief, while enthusiastically praising an atheist who was inimical to Islam yet held the same ideas as himself and supported him. It was because of this that I have given up politics this last thirty-five years, as though fleeing from the Devil.

Furthermore, now it appears that when someone perpetrated a serious misdemeanour towards both Ramadan, and the marks of Islam, and this religious nation, his opponents were pleased at the situation. Whereas, just as consenting to disbelief is disbelief, so agreeing with misguidance, vice, and wrongdoing is misguidance, vice, and wrongdoing. I understood from this extraordinary situation that with the idea of exonerating themselves from their crimes in the nation's eyes, they want to show their opponents to be more irreligious and guilty than themselves and to see them thus. Awesome injustices of this sort both have perilous consequences, and overturning social morality, resemble a serious conspiracy against this country and nation and Islamic supremacy.

I was going to write more but for now I am sufficing with explaining these three essential points for the religious promoters of liberty.

[We present an addendum to some facts we wrote previously about the life of our society with the intention of sending it to Adnan Menderes.]

Addendum: In my view, the sole way of preventing the Ticanî question {[*]:} being loaded on the religious Democrats, which resulted from the unnecessary, arbitrary laws of the former regime, indeed, due to their provocations, and so that they do not lose face in the sight of the Islamic world; is to restore Aya Sophia to its sacred function of five hundred years, just as they were strengthened tenfold by restoring the Arabic call to prayer, and to announce the Risale-i Nur's freedom officially. For at present the Risale-i Nur is yielding very favourable results in the Islamic world and

has won its good opinion for the people of this country, and five courts have acquitted it, and twenty-eight years of court cases have found nothing harmful in it. The religious Democrats should apply a salve to this wound. Then they will both win the good opinion of the world of Islam, and the injustices and errors of others will not be ascribed to them. For the sake of the religious Democrats and especially such persons as Adnan Menderes, I have dwelt on political matters for an hour or two despite having renounced them for the past thirty-five years, and have written this.

In His Name, be He glorified!

A summons arrived from Samsun Criminal Court which stated that the examining magistrate and prosecutor had opened a case against me in connection with a complaint I had written which was published in the newspaper, Büyük Cihad. They read it to me and I saw that it contained only four points that were worthy of consideration.

The First: The editor of Büyük Cihad had evidently told the public prosecutor: "Said Nursi sent me the article so I published it,"

The fact of the matter is this: when I was ill in Emirdağ, my brothers there came to visit me and we spoke about an unpleasant and inhumane incident that had occurred involving me. I was both ill and angry and said a few things complaining about Ankara. The person who assists me was with me and he wrote them down, With the approval of the Nur students, he sent the note to one or two students in Ankara for them to show to some religious deputies so that, seeing that I was ill, difficulties should not be inflicted on me. It was sent and some deputies saw it. It pleased a person we are not acquainted with and he evidently sent it to the editor of Büyük Cihad. But I swear that neither then did I know who sent it nor do I now. A copy was sent here after it was published and someone read it to me since I do not know the new letters. I was pleased and called down God's blessings on the publishers. It's true that I have given up politics for thirty-five years, but for the sake of religion I was grateful to the owner and writers of Büyük Cihad, a newspaper which serves religion sincerely. "May God be pleased with them!" I exclaimed. After that, the blessed paper was then sent to me regularly, but without my knowledge and without it being paid for.

The Second Point is about my being sent to the Criminal Court in Samsun.

Concerning this point, I say with all certainty that I would have liked to go to Samsun to visit my brothers of the hereafter who are linked to the Büyük Cihad and the Nur students in the region, but as stated by the doctor's report, my infirmity is so advanced that for one and a half years I have been unable to attend for five minutes even the court that was holding the trial, although it had summoned me, The public prosecutor and examining magistrate who was acting as judge were compelled to come to me. They brought with them the newspaper that was the subject of their questioning. The paper had mixed in some of its own words with mine. I gave them the necessary replies. If the Criminal Court attaches so much importance to this case, it should allow my trial to be transferred to Eskişehir, for there I can appear in person since I have a two-month report from the health committee stating that I am severely ill from poison. It is otherwise quite impossible.

Third Point: Basing it on Article 163 of the Criminal Code, the prosecutor and examining magistrate accuse Said Nursi of exploiting religion for politics and disturbing public order. The truth about this point is that five or six courts over the past twenty-nine years and the police of five or six provinces have found nothing indictable apart from two matters in the one hundred and thirty-three parts of my books and all my thousands of letters which they had seized, despite the provocations of some irreligious secret societies and their deceiving certain naive officials. Evidence for this are the facts that Denizli Criminal Court and Ankara Criminal Court and the Court of Appeal all agreed on my acquittal and the return of all my books, and in five or six provinces only one court wanted to impose a light sentence on the pretext of my expounding a Qur'anic verse about Islamic dress. In the face of my decisive and powerful reply, they were obliged to alter the verdict into one of discretion, That is to say, they could find nothing to convict me of either. For further elucidation of this point, I am sending you also the petition I sent to the chairman of Afyon Court.

In Short: The same palaver was repeated in five or six courts yet they could find nothing that constitutes an offence, Now the Samsun prosecutor and examining magistrate are repeating the same palaver of twenty-eight years: "He is conducting campaigns of propaganda to secure personal influence and is exploiting religion for political ends," I refer them to my unrefuted defence speeches of four hundred or so pages which I have delivered during five trials. Let them take a look at them rather than making me speak.

In His Name, be He glorified!

Having received a summons from Samsun, I am presenting my brief reply to its panel of judges:

First: I did not send the article. All my friends here know that.

Second: By reason of my severe illness due to being poisoned, which was an assassination attempt by my covert enemies, I have been able to attend only once the mosque next to me here. I therefore tender the legal request to have the trial transferred from Samsun Court to Eskişehir, which is near here.

We have been given a magazine called «as-Siddîq,» which is published in Pakistan. We saw that nearly half of the fifty-page magazine consisted of articles from the Risale-i Nur. On the front page and given pride of place was the First Topic of the Twenty-Second Letter, written as an invitation to the verse: «Indeed, the believers are brothers!» (Q 49:10) and to Islam. The Turkish original of the treatise, which the Arabic magazine translated, was presented a year ago to the public, and especially to the leaders of this Islamic government and its deputies. There are three or four reasons for again presenting it for their information:

The First: It is now established through the hundreds of certain signs and evidences in The Ratifying Stamp of the Unseen Collection from the Risale-i Nur which have been affirmed by numerous events, that by performing fully the function of a Qur'anic barrier against the moral and spiritual devastation of anarchy, communism, naturalism, and materialism, and doubts, suspicions, and absolute disbelief, the Risale-i Nur is a means of preserving this country within the perilous storms that shake the world, like acceptable almsgiving. It has become abundantly clear that it forms an immaterial shield against the calamity of the Second World War, preventing the disasters that are occurring in other countries from entering this country. The most obdurate scientistic philosophers, even, who have studied the Risale-i Nur have had to affirm this fact. With its five hundred thousand students and the six hundred thousand copies of its treatises and with its instruction in belief its placing a prohibitor in everyone's hearts

and ensuring the maintenance of public order; and with its striving to apply the Qur'an's fundamental law, «No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another» (Q 6: 164 etc.), that is, no one is answerable for another's sins; and with none of its millions of readers having received any harm; it has been proved to be a miracle of the Qur'an at this time and a means of repulsing calamities from this country and nation. Despite this, although for the past twenty-five years secret, subversive societies that act on account of anarchy have attempted through their intrigues to incite the courts against us, and five major courts in five provinces have been unable to find a single indictable point having studied all the parts of the Risale-i Nur in the greatest detail and have acquitted it; and although twenty judiciaries in twenty places have also been involved with it, they decided that it contained nothing which constituted an offence, and Afyon Court twice ruled that the treatises should be returned to their owners; for five years due to the deceptions, stratagems, and excuses of secret societies, that same court has postponed returning them, despite their return and free publication are required legally. For, as has been noted by some of the major police headquarters and members of the policeforce, no harm has been observed in the hundreds of thousands of copies of the Risale-i Nur and no disturbance or incident involving the Nur students has been recorded, which proves that like acceptable almsgiving, the Risale-i Nur serves as a foundation of public order and security, and proceeding from the essential truth of the Qur'an, is a means of preserving this country from material, moral, and spiritual dangers.

A Guide for Youth is a most beneficial part of the Risale-i Nur that has trained and instructed thousands of youths to the advantage of this country, nation, and public order. In connection with its trial, during which one hundred and twenty police tried to disperse the crowd, and despite his illness, our Master twice attended the court which unanimously ruled that both himself and A Guide for Youth be acquitted. But then, although all the treatises among which was the Guide had been acquitted by five courts and it should have been returned in fifteen days, fifteen months later it still has not been returned. It may therefore be said that the present events, which have caused the country losses of one and a half thousand million liras, have come about due to the above and due to Afyon Court delaying for five years the return of the treatises in spite of the decisions of the criminal courts of Denizli and Ankara, and due to the seizure of the personal copies, paid for by himself, of a person who in respect of belief, religion, and public order, is more beneficial than a hundred preachers for the region of Diyarbakır and the eastern provinces, thus preventing his useful services to the

country and nation. Such services resemble acceptable almsgiving and are a means of repulsing disasters, and their being obscured in this way has resulted in the calamity finding a way and occurring. If, following the decisions of the five courts and Istanbul for the acquittals, A Guide for Youth had been published, the Muslim youths would have taken lessons from it and would certainly not allowed the corruption of the revolutionaries or others, and would have displayed every effort to save the nation from these huge losses, They would not have permitted the blot of this loss.

Yes, indeed, our Master understood while a prisoner-of-war in Russia during the Great War that the dangers threatening the youth with moral and spiritual corruption would be visited on our country. He was alarmed and since that time has written numerous works like A Guide for Youth to shield them from it. He has published numerous lessons from the All-Wise Qur'an, which, all thanks be to God, have been instrumental in saving very many young people. Since the politicians are now seeking general reconciliation and national unity, they should permit the publication of the treatise printed in the magazine as-Siddiq, to which Pakistan has attached so much importance.

In His Name, be He glorified!

According to an inner meaning of the verse, «No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another» (Q 6:164 etc.), no one is answerable for another's error, even the perpetrator's brother. So is there any law in the world that could lay charges against one hundred and thirty books with their hundred thousand pages on account of one page of a hundred-page treatise, even if in the view of the obdurately unfair it contained an error? In any event, five courts of law have acquitted the same books over the past thirty years. Also, twenty courts were involved with them due to the Malatya Incident. Those twenty courts said they could find nothing reprehensible in them. Also, no one has been in any way harmed by the six hundred thousand copies that have been disseminated both in this country and abroad, and even Christians have read them in the place they call the Nur Study Centre inside one of Europe's leading schools, and they have been regarded highly in the Islamic world and have spread there, and a treatise from the Risale-i Nur printed in the Pakistani magazine as-Siddîq was even sent to the Directorate of Religious Affairs, and although it has been published so widely no religious scholar has objected to it. All this shows that

to protect the Risale-i Nur is a genuine duty of the Religious Affairs Directorate. For like the Office of the Şeyhülislam, the Directorate is the religious instructor not only of Turkey but of all the Islamic world, with which it has relations and connections. It is essential at the present time especially, that the world of Islam looks completely favourably on it and does not entertain doubts about it. Furthermore, the Risale-i Nur has been met favourably everywhere in the Islamic world and even in Europe and effectively disallows the Islamic governments which are not allied with Turkey looking negatively on the Directorate, and thus defends the Directorate's honour. It is therefore imperative that the Directorate publishes the Risale-i Nur as one of its own works. The experts' committee should give due consideration to this point. For these reasons, the members and hojas of the Directorate should be concerning themselves with the Risale-i Nur a hundred times more than wretched Said Nursi and Nur students, so that it may be protected and preserved in the face of the assaults of the irreligious. The intriguers should be silenced who are preventing its publication despite its numerous acquittals.

In His Name, be He glorified!

Peace be upon you, and God's mercy and blessings!

In Ankara, on the pretext of The Staff of Moses and A Guide for Youth, they came to take all the Risale-i Nur off one of our brothers. He showed them the Criminal Court's acquittal of The Staff of Moses, so they did not take it. Without being aware of it, they put some books on top of the ten copies of A Guide for Youth which they had found and placed before their eyes. When they were set to go, they searched everywhere for the Guide, but could not find it. In this way, the Guide protected itself as an instance of its own wonder-working. The copies they took of one each of the treatises and collections other than the Guide and The Staff of Moses were subsequently returned by the police.

{[*]:}

We told our Master about your invaluable service with the University of the East, and he said:

If I had not been ill, I would have gone to the eastern provinces for the university. I congratulate the Minister of Education with my whole life and spirit. Fifty-five years ago, before the proclamation of the Second Constitution, {[*]:} I went to Istanbul to work for the founding of a university in the east called the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ; there were to be three universities, one in Van, one in Diyarbakır, and one in Bitlis, or at least one in Van. The Constitution was reinstated and the matter was neglected. Then, when the Unionists were in power, I went to Kosova in connection with Sultan Reşad's visit. The attempt was being made there to found a large Islamic university. I said to both the Unionists and Sultan Reşad that the east had far greater need, for it was like the centre of the Islamic world. They gave their word concerning it, but then the Balkan Wars broke out and Kosova was invaded. So I requested that the twenty thousand gold liras assigned to it should be given for the university in the east, They accepted. I went to Van and with a thousand-lira advance laid the foundations at Artemit on the shores of Lake Van, But then the First World War broke out and again it was abandoned.

Having escaped from captivity during the War, I returned to Istanbul. Later they summoned me to Ankara due to my services for the national movement. I went and told them there: "Throughout my life I have been trying to found a university in the east. Sultan Reşad and the Unionists assigned it twenty thousand gold liras; you add the same amount to that." They agreed to allot it one hundred and fifty thousand liras and I insisted that the deputies should put their signatures to it. Some of the deputies pro- tested that I intended to found a medrese-style, solely Islamic, institution, while imitation of the West was now needed. So I told them:

"The eastern provinces are a sort of centre of the Islamic world; it is essential that both the modern sciences and the religious sciences are taught. For the fact that most of the prophets have appeared in the east and most of the philosophers in the west shows that the east will progress

through religion.

{(*):}

Even if only the modern sciences are taught in other provinces, in the east, for the good of the country and nation, the religious sciences should be made the basis. Otherwise, the Muslims who are not Turks will not feel themselves to be true brothers to the Turks. We have to co-operate in solidarity now in the face of so many enemies."

Now, due to my extreme incapability arising from illness from poison and old age, I am deprived both of following this, my life's aim of fifty- five years, and seeing it, and of going to Ankara to congratulate in heartfelt manner those who are working at the project, which is the key to the east's progress.

Certainly, my works entitled Münâzarat and al-Saykal al-Islâmiyya, which were printed thirty-five years ago by the Ebüzziya Press, have not escaped the notice of the Education Minister. They should speak in my place. I have just about given up hope for life. But I appoint as deputies, the one hundred and fifty treatises of the Risale-i Nur, which may form the foundations, principles, and sort of curricula for the university's consequential education. I present this to this country and nation's self-sacrificing young university students and Education Ministry, and beseech from divine mercy that Tevfik İleri, who has been granted success in this question, will take on himself the Risale-i Nur in place of this wretched Said.

In reply to an article about Atatürk University which appeared in the newspaper Ulus on 1.4.1954, written by a fiercely critical member of the opposition party, we are here explaining the truth about the university. It is as follows:

Our Master, Said Nursi, spared no effort over the last fifty years to found the university which is now called Atatürk University. Although he was opposed to them, the Unionists and Sultan Reşad assigned nineteen thousand gold liras for its construction, and its foundations were laid in Van. Then, with the outbreak of the Great War, it was abandoned. At the beginning of the republican period, our Master again made attempts, presenting the matter to the deputies in the National Assembly in Ankara. There, although he was completely opposed to the leadership and had renounced politics and was in some ways opposed to them, saying that he had given up the world; and although he told Mustafa Kemal that those who fail to perform the obligatory prayers are traitors and he refused his offer of important posts such as general preacher in the eastern provinces, with its salary and perks; the decision was still taken for the founding of the university in the east and it was allotted one hundred and fifty thousand liras and the bill was signed by one hundred and sixty-three deputies out of two hundred and ratified by Mustafa Kemal. That is to say, at that time, the university was the most pressing question concerning the east. And now the need is twenty times greater, Finally, the decision has been taken by the present Islamic government for its construction, again as a result of our Master's initiative and encouragement.

We are presenting one or two points - only a drop from the ocean - describing the universal importance of the Eastern University.

The First: The university is like a heart at the centre of Iran, Arabia, Egypt, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Anatolia. It is both an al-Azhar University and a Medresetü'z-Zehrâ.

The Second: All humanity is now seeking ways to secure universal peace, that is, to prevent the corruption of humanity. Pacts and agreements are being signed. The Islamic government here is trying to establish friendly relations with countries from Yugoslavia to Spain, for general peace and reconciliation and its own benefit. The sole solution for this is the Risale-i Nur, a book of instruction of the person who first proposed the projected Eastern University, which reconciles the positive sciences with

the sciences of belief, and is approved and praised by the official religious scholars despite its offending them and challenging the former government, and has been acquitted by the courts. Evidence for this is the general peace and security it has ensured for this country and nation due to which the internal disturbances that have occurred in the Islamic countries, especially Morocco, Egypt, Syria, and Iran, have not happened here. Thus, the fact that the Risale-i Nur ensures public security despite there being more reasons for disturbances here, shows that the founding of the Eastern University will be a step towards bringing peace and reconciliation to humanity. For since at the present time the damage is moral and spiritual, a moral and spiritual atom bomb is needed to repair it. Decisive evidence for this is the fact that the Risale-i Nur - the source and seed of the university - has formed a barrier these last thirty years against the assaults of misguidance, scientistic philosophy, and irreligion. It has acted as a moral and spiritual atom bomb repairing the moral and spiritual destruction.

The Third: As a centre that will attract the world of Islam and all Asia, the eastern university is of paramount importance and if expenditure on its construction was sixty thousand million liras rather than sixty million, it would still be worth it.

Since the Yeni Ulus is a paper of the opposition, it wants to conceal this matter and smear with accusations of reactionism some of the leading officials of the new government who are working at it. The question, however, is one of progress, development, and general peace. Similarly to such marks of Islam as the Arabic call to prayer and religious instruction, an educational institution of that kind will strengthen this Islamic government considerably. Indeed, because of it, the government will be applauded in the future and praised in the history books.

This great service and the enlightenment that will result from the project's realization will afford an unprecedented brilliance to the Democrat government that will shine for all eternity and will gain for it international recognition.

It was indeed a good thing that our case was postponed and transferred to Ankara Court. Now, both Isparta Court, and the return of Molla Hamid's books in Van and Mehmet Kaya's in Diyarbakir, and Afyon, all are looking

to Ankara. With a good result in Ankara, all our business everywhere will be resolved, God willing, It evidently had to be, especially in Ankara, that at this time attention is turned towards the truths of belief in the Risale-i Nur. God willing, our case being transferred there will lead to a significant raising of awareness.

I am obliged to explain a matter to all my friends and especially to visitors:

Most of my life has passed in solitude, and since for the past thirty to forty years I have been the object of surveillance and assaults, I am averse to meeting and conversing with people unnecessarily and feel disinclined to do so. Also, since my early life, gifts both material and otherwise, have made me uncomfortable. Also, at the present my visitors and friends have multiplied, and they expect something from me. Just as a physical sweet given as a gift now makes me ill, so is being visited a non-material gift, as is meeting with people. Especially if the visitors come from other places and take trouble just to shake hands; to do so is a significant immaterial gift, But I have nothing to give in return. Moreover, such gifts are not cheap; indeed, in effect they are expensive. I do not consider myself worthy of reverence and respect; I cannot respond to that in kind either. So for now I have been prevented from unnecessary meetings and conversations, which are like immaterial gifts for me, just like material gifts. They sometimes make me ill, just as material gifts do when I cannot give their full equivalent in return. So no one should feel offended or upset.

Reading the Risale-i Nur is ten times more profitable than meeting with me. In any event, if anyone meets with me, it is on account of the hereafter, belief, and the Qur'an. I have severed all relations with the world, so to meet with me on its account is meaningless. As for the hereafter, belief, and the Qur'an, the Risale-i Nur leaves no need for me. Especially the letters in the biography. I do not speak unnecessarily even with my select brothers who attend on me. If I meet with certain people to discuss some of the conquests of the Risale-i Nur and its dissemination, it may be permissible and does not distress me, I say this to those who come to visit me without

knowing this point, that for the past few years I have been putting announcements in the papers informing those who come to visit me, especially from distant places and have to return without seeing me, that I include them in my private prayers. I pray for them every morning. So they should not feel upset either.

Our Highly Respected Brother, Sâlih!

Our Master sends you and the two religious, true deputies many greetings; he prays for you and calls down God's blessings on you and on them. Our Master says:

"Long ago I used to expect some strong hands to appear in Urfa who would lay claim to the Risale-i Nur. For it is a sort of centre between Anatolia, Arabia, and the east. If the Risale-i Nur was to become established there, it would spread to all those lands, I offer endless thanks to Almighty God that the religious and zealous of the region have started to embrace the Risale-i Nur. I am sending a number of my own collections there which I bought with my own money, and have corrected while suffering serious illness from poison. I have chosen Urfa although prominent people from elsewhere have requested them. I am giving them to the Urfa Nur School. God willing, I shall send further copies to them, for there they will serve the Qur'an and belief to the full. I hope from divine mercy that they will be instrumental in a small version of the Isparta Medresetü'z-Zehrâ and of Egypt's al-Azhar University being established there, and of a small example of the Islamic medreses of Damascus and Baghdad.

"Also, since the Risale-i Nur's way is the way of friendship and Urfa is the seat of Abraham, the Friend of God (Peace be upon him), God willing, our way of following in the footsteps of Abraham will shine out there. "Also, there is a strong possibility that I shall go to Urfa this coming winter if I can be saved from this terrible sickness from poison. I have a powerful desire to do this."

This is what our Master said. We too send you many greetings and respects,

I pray every morning for all the people of Urfa, including the women and children and those lying in their graves. I send my greetings to them all. Urfa is blessed with its very stones and soil. I am very ill. Let them pray for me too.

In His Name, be He glorified!

And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise. (Q 17:44)

Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

On the twenty-seventh night of Ramadan, which in the Islamic world is reckoned to be the Night of Power I felt both a sort of poisoning and ghastly stomach upset, and another terrible illness that was as though suffusing my nerves, conscience, and heart. Together with these two sicknesses, physical and spiritual, I suddenly felt a sympathy for all living creatures and their pains. I experienced a mental state far more grievous than my illnesses. Then I felt a sorrowful despair more severe than the other two illnesses at my being unable at the end of my eighty-year life to strive at worshipping in a way fitting to its final Night of Power, which gains a lifetime of worship of eighty years. Then just as a feeling of pain produced by the nerves and performing the function of the evil-commanding soul was crushing me, an inner meaning of the verse «For us God suffices, and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs» (Q 3: 173) came to my assistance. It dispelled those three illnesses, and endless thanks be to Almighty God, in a way outside the customary I was able to bear it. It also healed the three illnesses. As proved in the Treatise for the Sick, for the patient who trusts in God, one hour of physical illness is the equivalent of at least ten hours' worship, and on the Night of Power even more than that. So with the illness I was suffering on the Night of Power replacing the worship I was unable to perform due to my weakness and incapacity, it became a fully healing salve. Then the sickness of the grief I felt out of pity for the pains and sufferings of living beings, was transformed into spiritual joy and pleasure through the manifestation of divine compassion. That is to say, since the compassion, clemency, and mercy of the Creator for creatures are the most appropriate and sufficient, their suffering is turned into a sort of pleasure or

reward for them. This transforms the pain arising from compassion into pleasure, for to demonstrate compassion greater than divine mercy is meaningless and unjust. This was not merely a salve for me, but a healing remedy. Moreover, in the face of the pain at losing at the end of my life an invaluable spiritual treasury, I shared in the mystery of the spiritual partnership of all the select Nur students with all their good works and prayers in the name of all; and I participated in the supplications and expressions of divine unity uttered by the congregations of all beings and living creatures, in the Fatiha and tashahhud in the prayers (salât), as explained in The Shining Proof (el-Hüccetü'z-Zehrâ) and A Key to the World of Light (Nur Anahtarı); and since the elements earth, air, water, and light are all tongues, I joined in the gifts of life that emerge from the earth and water, and the praise and worship proceeding from the air, the beautiful words, material and otherwise, uttered by the light, and the thanks and praise for all the bounties in the universe and the universal worship and seeking of help of all creatures, especially living creatures, in the Fatiha and tashahhud in the prayers; and I accompanied all the people of truth and the believers who travel the right path and declared "Amen!" to their prayers and supplications. The universal mystery of participating in all the above came to my assistance that night and was such a panacea for the grievous spiritual sickness I was suffering at being unable to perform my worship in my sick, weak, despairing state, that I experienced a spiritual joy that in truth I had not found in my healthiest states in the time of my youth and in my most pleasurable invocations. I offered endless thanks and was resigned to that awful illness. I exclaimed: "All praise be to God to the number of all the seconds and minutes of Ramadan in all time!"

In His Name, be He glorified!

Our Master says:

"I tell my dear brothers who wish to meet with me: As long as there is no necessity, I no longer have the endurance to meet with people, and cannot speak much owing to being poisoned, weakness, old age, and illness. But I tell you with all certainty that every part of the Risale-i Nur is a Said.

Whichever book you look at, you will profit ten times more than meeting with me face to face, and will meet with me in reality. I have decided that every morning I shall include in my prayers those who wanted to meet with me for God's sake but were unable to, and I shall continue to do so."

For the past month or two now our Master is unable to speak with his helpers even. His temperature rises when he starts to speak. He explained the wisdom in this as follows as a result of a warning he received: "The Risale-i Nur leaves no need for me. No need remains for me to speak. Also, I can speak with only twenty or thirty out of the thousands of my friends. There is a powerful possibility that I have been prevented from speaking so as not to offend thousands of people for the sake of twenty. They should excuse me for not meeting with them personally. I could not endure to shake hands at the festival even and be looked at. So no one should feel offended.

{(*):}

[We present again to you and to the respected deputies the attached letter, which we sent to some of them when, due to his illness, our Master sent me to Ankara four years ago to deal with the matters related to the Risale-i Nur trials there. The reason for my again sending them is that the same matters continue, especially the moves to found the university in the eastern provinces.]

The extraordinary spread of the Risale-i Nur both at home and abroad these past thirty years and its positive results, and the renewed efforts to found a large university in the east, which have continued for fifty-five years, are two vital matters that follow on from and complement one another, and are of crucial importance for the Islamic world at this time. They are two events that are a source of pride and concern both for this nation, particularly the eastern provinces, and for the four-hundred-million-strong Islamic nations, and for the Christian world, which is needy for general peace. And they are two universal disseminators and proclaimers of the Islamic religion and the truths of the Qur'an.

For the past fifty-five years, our Master has exerted himself in numerous

ways and made the very greatest efforts to found in eastern Anatolia an Islamic university called the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ which would correspond to al-Azhar University. He always insisted on the absolute need for it. As it says in the piece our Master wrote to the President and Prime Minister congratulating them on this question, the University of the East would win a place of pride among Muslims as a sort of centre of the Islamic world. The highly valuable, sacred work for religion of the past and the enduring moral qualities of the thousands of esteemed, blessed scholars and gnostics, martyrs and people of reality who are our ancestors and are buried there, would be personified in this university, where they would persist in serving the cause of belief in a wider field.

The basis of instruction in the University of the East, and of its curriculum, would be the Risale-i Nur, which expounds the All-Wise Qur'an's truths of belief, and proves all the questions it deals with with the rational and positive sciences and logical arguments, and addresses the reason, and is suitable to be taught in the universities and schools of the present era.

The Risale-i Nur appeared through the mediation of a student of the masters and medreses scattered over eastern Anatolia, which for centuries have acted as sources of the water of life for that region. With these latter-day illumined fruits of theirs, those esteemed masters will once again take up their duties, expanding them and their service of the Qur'an to embrace the whole world. We hope for this with all our spirit and beseech divine mercy that it will be realized. The present time and place and conditions of life and the need for general reconciliation all say: "Amen! Amen!" to this, and so they will say it.

As a fruit and universal result of the activities in the east related to knowledge and its acquisition, and as the programme of the Eastern University in respect of Islam, the Risale-i Nur closely concerns those who strive to serve this nation and the Islamic world. And the fact that the Risale-i Nur is now being sought in America and Europe and is spreading there, demonstrates the paramount importance of what we say.

They read me a newspaper the articles of which I saw consisted of lies and slanders. Such slanders are extremely harmful for both Isparta and the publishers of the Risale-i Nur.

First Lie: It accuses me of giving instruction in Sufism, calling the readers of the Risale-i Nur "disciples" (murid) and the Risale-i Nur, a Sufi path (tarikat).

Whereas those who know me know that I teach the truths of belief and the Qur'an, not the Sufi way, as has been established in courts of law. The people who listen to my teachings are called Nur students. Our way is not the Sufi way; it is the truths of belief.

Its Second Lie: The calumniating paper mixes in some erroneous statements from another newspaper, saying: "The young people of Eğirdir have begun to combat Said and his disciples." All the youths of Isparta and Eğirdir know that this is absolutely baseless. In fact, when they heard about it, they protested angrily. It was just that a man from Eğirdir who is not young wrote somewhat critically that he had met with me thirty years ago. So to say that the youths had started to combat them is a clear lie. The fact is I always look on all young people whoever they are as brothers, I have not heard of any youth in either Isparta or Eğirdir who is working against me or my students.

Its Third Calumny: The libellous newpaper says quoting someone else: "Said and his disciples are secretly engaging in politics. They are trying to change this country's system by breaching public peace and security." The fact that five courts in twenty-eight years have acquitted me on this proves that it is a lie and that I have no connection with politics. And the fact that there has been not even the slightest sign of this shows just how defamatory it is. All my friends know that for the past thirty-five years I have completely withdrawn from politics, as has been established by the courts.

Its Fourth Calumny: Said Nursi called some women devils. What I actually said was: "In the former (pre-republican) period in the large cities, especially Christian girls who were immodestly dressed, or even half naked, were damaging Islamic morality under the leadership of Satan." It is a clear and most ugly falsification to distort these sentences about a few immodestly dressed girls as though they refer to all women. I accord women the greatest respect, importance, and value in my treatise entitled, A Conversation with the Women, and since they are ahead of men in respect of compassion and one of the Risale-i Nur's key principles is compassion, I refer to them as "My Esteemed Sisters," and am more than aware of their genuineness and sincerity.

Its Fifth Libellous Calumny: Its using the term "an accursed idea" to refer to reactionism and retrogression, meaning, returning to the injunctions and morality of Islam, is a disbelieving slander that would cause the globe of the earth to tremble, and is an insult to not only the people of Isparta and the Nur students, but also to the world of Islam.

[A reply to the fabricated news that our Master was touring the villages; it is nothing to worry about.]

A statement we presented to the police in Isparta, where our Master Said Nursi has been staying as a guest for the last two years.

1. Our Master Said Nursi has considered himself to be a guest of the police in all the provinces and towns of Anatolia in which he has stayed over the past thirty years, and the members of those police forces have always treated him kindly and protectively. Our Master began to compose the Risale-i Nur, a genuine, brilliant commentary on the Qur'an, thirty years ago in Isparta, and initiated a truly effective way of serving the truths of belief. One benefit of this service, which is turned to the hereafter, is its instilling in the heart by reason of belief, a permanent sense that restrains from evil. It is due to this that it is a means of maintaining public order. He also disseminated everywhere the Qur'anic principle which ensures true justice and is derived from the verse, «No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another» (Q 6:164 etc.), meaning that no one is answerable for another's errors. According to this and the principle that the rights of one innocent person may not be sacrificed for even a hundred wrongdoers, it is completely opposed to the Qur'an's injunctions to cause harm to ninety innocents because of ten criminals. And despite the injustices visited on himself, he stated that for the good of the Islamic nation he would sacrifice his life in the hereafter, let alone his life in this world, and he does say this.

As affirmed by those patriotic persons who are concerned with social tranquillity, by reason of both the Risale-i Nur's instruction in the truths of belief and the Qur'anic truths in his court defences which resulted in acquittals, our Master, who teaches those truths - which guide society to happiness in this world and the next - is the chief means of preserving public order and ensuring general security. He has been scrutinized in every respect by numerous investigations these last thirty years, yet absolutely nothing pertaining to him has been found to be indictable. Indeed, following the acquittals and his works being granted complete freedom, the works are spreading everywhere and meeting with approval and applause in Anatolia and in the centres of the Islamic world and some places in the West.

In the face of such aggressive, corrupting currents as communism, which opposing religion, morality, and tradition, have overrun with their destruction half Europe and China and which threaten the whole world and force governments to take preventative measures, and faced too by covert,

criminal societies which strive to create anarchy, our Master Said Nursi's works, the Risale-i Nur, have performed a disinterested, effective, and widespread service. Holding up as witnesses the good conduct of its readers, which with the spread of its hundreds of thousands of copies, have reached similar numbers, and citing the fact that, as affirmed by the police, not one of the Nur students has disturbed public order, we say that the Risale-i Nur is a Qur'anic barrier which will halt those destructive currents. Fair-minded members of the police attest to this. Let alone the benefits of service to belief that look to the hereafter, at one time our Master explained as follows a vital benefit for the nation, and time has shown just how right he was. He said then that there were two awesome currents that were threatening the happiness of this country and nation in respect of both this life and the afterlife.

The First was the irreligious current that had appeared to the north and was threatening to overrun this country; it had to be countered with the Qur'an's truths and the lights of belief, For since its destruction was moral and spiritual, the struggle against it had to be conducted by moral and spiritual means. The Risale-i Nur, which consists of flashes from the Qur'an's truths, could oppose that current of misguidance as a repairer of the force of an atom bomb, and it did oppose it.

Secondly: In order to dispel the Islamic world's hostility towards the Turkish nation, which for a thousand years was the standard-bearer and heroic army of Islam, it is to re-establish the idea of the Turks being its standard-bearer, as they were in former times. It is to perform a crucially important service for this nation's happiness by in this way winning for it four hundred million true brothers. By disseminating the truths of belief in this country, the Risale-i Nur has demonstrated this tremendous benefit in fact.

A Risale-i Nur student halted the Russians' propaganda in the eastern border regions with the treatises of the Risale-i Nur and the homilies he derived from them. In this way, a single student performed the services of an army for the country, nation, and public order. Since the aims and purposes of the Risale-i Nur look only to the hereafter and serve belief seeking divine pleasure alone, it is also most beneficial for the life of society by reason of the worldly benefits it reaps.

2. The following facts leave no need to say anything further: due to the thirty to forty years of isolation, solitude, illness, and imprisonment he has suffered, our Master cannot endure to meet with people unnecessarily and from the evening to the following morning does not allow even his assistants to approach him, and so has offended his friends who have come to

visit him from far off. Ever since his youth, it has been characteristic of our Master Said Nursi to be solitary and not to meet with people unnecessarily. He did not even invite his only surviving brother to visit him, although he lived in a nearby town and he had not seen him for thirty years. The people who attend to his needs even cannot enter his room from evening to morning unless there is some compelling need. Due to his severe illness and his being unable to endure meeting with people, he has wounded many of his friends who have come from distant places by refusing to see them. Since all of our Master's extraordinary contributions with the Risale-i Nur to maintaining civil order are known to the police, who for thirty years have displayed a friendly attitude towards him and everything about him has been scrutinized by them and by the courts, it is their duty as the defenders of the public's rights not to spoil their favourable view of him which is based on observation, due to the fabrications of a few atheists and enemies of religion.

3. Our Master is ill and cannot attend the Friday prayers even. Sometimes he feels an overpowering need for fresh air. He goes to Barla - but only rarely - where he lived for ten years and where he as a room and he stays for some time. Sometimes in the summer he visits places that are far from habitation and there is no one. He remains for a few hours, then returns. He travels by car due to his advanced years, inability to walk, and indisposition, and so that the people's adulation does not discomfort him. He goes nowhere apart from this, to no village or inhabited place, and for the above-mentioned reasons does not even visit places where his friends of thirty years are found.

These, then, are his circumstances, and this is his true situation.

[A statement which has been widely spread and shows the falsity of the public prosecutor's accusations of causing popular unrest, and which has been given to the police headquarters in Ankara.]

The Nur Students are Preservers of Public Order

Decisive evidence that the six hundred thousand Nur students preserve public order is the fact that in twenty-eight years, the six police forces of six provinces have not recorded any incident involving them, despite their suffering unjust treatment. In fact, our Master asked the Afyon prosecutor when he made such accusations: "Have you been able to show any one such incident this last twenty-eight years? Since you haven't been able to do so, how can you make such accusations? Apart from a very minor incident involving a young student, six hundred thousand students have been involved in none, which proves that the Nur students preserve public order." He said this to the Afyon prosecutor, and silenced him. [Authors]

In His Name, be He glorified!

My Dear Brothers!

I am giving you some good news: while travelling by motor boat from Eğirdir to Barla, an awesome, unprecedented sea-storm removed all the difficulties and led to the appearance of a great instance of mercy, as with the serious illness on the Night of Power, We were on the point of being drowned together with the six friends who were with us, which would have made us martyrs, and the sea, a wide grave for us. Then as a sign that the behind the storm, the rain had a connection with the Risale-i Nur, as repeated experiences have shown, and that at this time of extreme need for rain the Risale-i Nur will be delivered from the dangers of its covert enemies and their extensive schemes, and as a sign that that perilous situation was made into acceptable almsgiving for us, the lake, which is a source of the rain that eagerly complies with the dominical commands coming from divine mercy, caressed our faces of us, the Nur students, with rain and dealt us also a compassionate slap with its enthusiastic compliance with the commands of divine mercy. We understood that while the situation was apparently one of ire, in reality it was an instance of compassionate caressing. I felt before the storm broke and the rain fell that a calamity would occur and that it would be a key to the treasury of mercy, so I continuously read the Jaushan and the invocations of Shah Naqshband. In the middle of that awesome storm, I happily accepted that the lake would be our grave. People who die in such circumstances are martyrs, so I did not pity my six companions since they would be both martyrs and saints. I only felt some pity for the child who was with them. The boat's motor broke down and its sail was useless as the wind was blowing in the opposite direction. The waves were enormous, and though initially it appeared that they would overwhelm us and the boat, they did not, and we beheld them in patience and offered thanks, till finally we reached the shore safely. We exclaimed: "All praise be to God for all circumstances!'

Our Master says:

"In order to serve belief in the face absolute unbelief these last fifty to sixty years and to save the nation from anarchy, which results from unbelief, and, by preserving with all my strength public order - a consequence

of the sincerity present in serving belief - to save ten innocents from suffering injustice due to one criminal, I have sacrificed my comfort, honour, and dignity, and if necessary my life, and have endured patiently all the harassment and oppression, and meaningless, unnecessary things. Solely to serve belief these last thirty to forty years, I have patiently withstood their making mountains out of molehills and storms in teacups and their assaults on me, and to preserve public order, a consequence of that service. An example:

"My dress was not interfered with in any of five courts of law, and although in Istanbul for two month I made trips around the city and there were even one hundred and twenty police at the court there, they did not interfere with my dress, which was the same. No one raised objections and anyway, they had no right to do so. For I am both a recluse, and go neither to the mosque, nor to the crowded market and other places. I only go out in the car. I speak to no one if there is no need. I wander the hills and lonely places to take the air. So the worldly have no right to interfere with me and bother me."

Now, having made the journey to Istanbul by car in connection with some important matters concerning belief, a number of officials there were sent to our Master, who has millions of devoted students, completely illegally and making mountains out of molehills concerning a matter that held the importance of not even a fly's wing. But our Master responded, saying: "Since in serving belief, complete sincerity, and patience and forbearance are essential so as to halt anarchy and preserve civil order, I have sacrificed my comfort and honour for that service, and I forgive them."

When our Master visited Istanbul this time, he told the two officials who were sent to him by the public prosecutor to take his statement: "I have already made my statement in court concerning this matter, and the court conducted its investigations and acquitted us. I have nothing else to say." He repeated the statements he delivered in the Istanbul court and which were sent to Samsun Court. He also has a number of reports he obtained previously, saying that he is obliged to wear scarves on his head because of his ailments, and that he has to rest due the severe colds and other illnesses he suffers, and that he is need of a change of air. His remaining permanently in the same place is detrimental to his health. He does not condescend to show them these reports because it was not necessary before, and now he does not deem it necessary.

The capital of both myself and of the Risale-i Nur's collective personality should be given as subsistence to those who dedicate themselves to the Risale-i Nur's service, and especially those who have no means of subsistence themselves.

For several years now, the Nur students who have been given subsistence have been the select (has) students. I am now making my brothers who are with me my heirs; they should strive to perform my duties. And they should preserve their solidarity.

Our Master understood from his being prevented from conversing with people at this time during his last years that some situations are harmful for people in respect of the personality. The illness was given him owing to the maximum sincerity of the Risale-i Nur's way. For since hypocrisy lies beneath the veil of fame and renown at this time, egotism has to be entirely renounced by attaining maximum sincerity, [He said:] Let my friends recite a Fatiha for my spirit from afar, and pray for me and visit me in the spirit. They should not visit my grave. The Fatiha will reach my spirit, no matter how far off it is recited. I feel that this is a way of renouncing egotism completely in line with the maximum sincerity of the Risale-i Nur. Some of the students who have remained with me and have dedicated themselves to the Risale-i Nur should take turns to remain singly near my grave and tell anyone who comes to visit it unnecessarily what I have said here.

The Prime Minister says that his words have been deliberately misinterpreted. (From our private correspondent.)

Ankara: Prime Minister Adnan Menderes replied as follows to a question asked by the newspaper Zafer concerning press reports of his speech in Konya.

"I too have regretfully seen how the part about secularism (laiklik) in the speech I delivered to my esteemed fellow citizens in Konya, who had gathered in a large crowd in Government Square, has been misrepresented by certain ill-willed journalists. They wrote that some of things I said would pit brother against brother, that they challenged right-wing politicians, and had raised the ban on certain sacred matters, therefore infringing one of the main principles of the reforms.

"What struck my attention in all these articles, was that my speech in Konya had been distorted and misrepresented in line with the aims they were following and the results they wished to obtain. So that this question should be properly understood, I want to firstly to take a look at what I said in Konya, and then to repeat what the Anadolu Press Agency released that day. That day I said this:

"I now want to speak to you about my understanding of secularism. On the one hand, secularism means the separation of religion and politics, and on the other, it means freedom of conscience. We have not the slightest doubt or hesitation that religion and politics should be separate. As for the question of freedom of conscience: the Turkish nation is Muslim and will remain Muslim. It is an undeniable fact that if it is to remain Muslim in perpetuity, religion must be taught to it and to the coming generations, and the rules, injunctions, and principles of religion be taught to them. How- ever, when there is no religious instruction in schools, the citizens who want their children to be taught their religion are bereft of this opportunity. Muslim children should not be deprived of the entirely natural right of learning their religion. It cannot be said that such deprivation and lack of opportunity is congruent with freedom of conscience. To have religious instruction in our middle schools is an apt and appropriate measure.

"We do not believe that an irreligious society and nation will be stable and enduring. We know how even the most advanced nations persist in their attachment to religion after they have separated religion from the questions of politics and this world. It is not permissible that our noble nation be deemed bigoted when it has reached the level it has today. Just as

our nation is firmly attached to its religion, so generally its religious feelings are of the purest kind. Religious feeling has reached the purest level in the nation's conscience. Efforts will be made to train instructors to teach Islam and its beliefs, obligations, and rules correctly. It is will be appropriate that the Konya School for Imams and Preachers (Imam-Hatip Mektebi), which next year will produce its first graduates at high-school level, will be made into an institution for teaching religion at an advanced level and the numbers of similar institutions will be increased.

"Having repeated this part of my Konya speech for the esteemed Turkish public opinion, I want to emphasize and make clear the following: what I said was so clear as to disallow any possibility of misinterpretation. It is imperative that reports of it or comments on it remain faithful to it. Nobody has the right to distort and misrepresent what I say, nor do they have the right to impute to me intentions and aims that have never even crossed my mind."

I was going to write some congratulations in the name of all the Nur students and innocent school children on the Prime Minister's Konya speech, but then it occurred to my heart that behind our defence speeches mentioning the Risale-i Nur's freedom and the leading laٔ٥ژr's reply to the experts' committee, the Prime Minister's speech was a reason for its freedom, for it made all the Anadolu Muslims and all the Nur students a moral strength for him and well-wishers. Just as the reinstatement of the Arabic call to prayer afforded the Prime Minister a moral strength, so also he won a moral strength with this speech and the Risale-i Nur's being left free. So rather than sending him congratulations, we made this a footnote to our defence lawyer's justified defence.*

The Prime Minister's speech in Konya consists of true facts rebuffing those pretexts, just as the lawyer Mihrî's defence speeches refuted the pretexts put forward for A Guide for Youth's seizure.

* The lawyer's defence speech has been included in the short biography of Said Nursi written by Eşref Edip. [Author]

In His Name, be He glorified!

Our Master Said Nursi says:

Isparta is my true home. Since this is so, I want the best for it and for its people, and an important instance of good is this:

By returning the whole Risale-i Nur Collection, Afyon performed a good act of paramount importance for the world of Islam and indeed for humanity and reduced to nothing and had forgiven its errors of the last eight years. So too, by displaying in the view of Islamic world the blessedness

of Egypt's al-Azhar University and the old Damascus, Isparta will not lag behind Afyon regarding the high honour it won by returning the Risale-i Nur to its owners. Indeed, it will surpass it twentyfold. Isparta's just judiciary, patriotic democrats, and religious people should make efforts for the return of the Risale-i Nur, which is the product of blessed Isparta, so that they may win this great instance of good for their region and gain for themselves honour a hundred times greater than that won by Afyon. Just as the Isparta deputy, Tahsin Tola, was more useful than a hundred men in securing the return of the Risale-i Nur by Ankara and Afyon, and won for the people of Isparta half of this most signficant advantage.

In order to preserve the dignity of learning, since his early youth our Master never demeaned himself even before the loftiest leaders, nor did he ever accept the people's gifts. And now, even though he is weak and powerless, he cannot accept the gifts which religious scholars may receive, for they make him ill. Without giving something in return he is able to eat nothing we give him, his assistants, even. If he does not give something in return, it makes him ill. We are of the opinion that this condition has taken the form of an illness in order to preserve the maximum sincerity of the Risale-i Nur, which can be the tool of nothing, for by it he is prevented from breaking his rule. Indeed, he felt intensely discomforted by the customary shaking of hands and meeting with scholars in connection with the splendid festival celebrating the Risale-i Nur's spreading everywhere, and even by conversing with his closest students and brothers at the religious festival, and by people looking at him, all of which betokened an illness visited on him to preserve that maximum sincerity. During the festival, we witnessed him telling his students: "My grave has to be unknown; no one must know its whereabouts except one or two of my students. This is my last will and testament. For surely a truth that prevents me from meeting with people in this world obliges me to enjoin the same after my death."

So we asked our Master: "Visitors to your grave will recite the Fatiha and gain merit. Why are you preventing them from this?"

He said in reply: "In ancient times, desiring worldly fame and renown, the pharaohs attracted the attention of the people towards themselves with statues, pictures, and mummies. So too at this dreadful time, due to the heedlessness arising from egotism and self-love, the worldly attract all the

attention towards themselves through statues, pictures, and the press. They deflect attention from the other-indicative way of looking at things towards the self-referential, {[*]:} and because they imagine a worldly future rather than the future of the hereafter, they accord excessive importance to the dead person's worldly fame and renown in opposition to the former practice of visiting graves solely for God's pleasure. They visit graves in that way. So I enjoin as my last will and testament that in accordance with the true meaning of sincerity, my grave should not be made known, so as not to damage the maximum sincerity of the Risale-i Nur. Whether in the east or the west, the Fatihas recited by everyone will go to the spirit intended. A truth that prevents me from conversing with people in this world will surely enjoin this, not in respect of merit, but of this world.

I have come to Afyon today to thank and congratulate you. I thank you for holding our books for so long so that they did not get lost, and congratulate you on now sending them to Ankara. A number of private letters which were written ten years ago by unknown persons to other unknown persons, and some of which were written in my name but were not signed by me and were not published, have been scrutinized by your court and disregarded since they contained nothing reprehensible, So to again take into consideration unpublished letters written long ago about which I know nothing and are covered by the Amnesty Laws and which have nothing to do with the Risale-i Nur, is to preoccupy both the judiciary and the experts' committee unnecessarily. So to avoid that and not to delay our case, I request that those private letters are not associated with the books of the Risale-i Nur.

The judiciary here has twice acquitted those books and handed down the decision to return them, but despite this, for a number of reasons, they have remained in captivity. I inform you that sometimes in their entirety and sometimes in part, five courts of law have given the decision for their return and five police headquarters have handed them over to their owners. God willing, your justice and good will will ensure that they are returned this time too.

In His Name, be He glorified!

Esteemed Adnan Menderes!

Although our Master Bediuzzaman has given up politics these last thirty-five years, we members of the Democrat Party and Nur students are certain that he is now working with all his strength, his students, and his teachings to keep the Democrat Party in power, for the sake of the Qur'an and Islam and this country. We asked him why he is doing this and he replied:

"If the Democrat Party falls, either the People's Party or the Nation Party will come to power. But because of the crimes of the corrupt section of the Unionists (ittihadçılar) and because the greater part of the policies that the Republic's first leader was compelled by the Treaty of Sıvres and other political machinations to enact over fifteen years have been blamed on the People's Party, the noble Turkish nation will on no account voluntarily bring it to power. For if the People's Party comes to power, the communists will gain dominance over the country under cover of it. But Muslims can never be communists; at most, they become anarchists. Muslims cannot be compared to the Westerners. Hence, so that that party which thus forms a serious danger to our society and country, should not come to power, I am trying to protect the Democrat Party in the name of the Qur'an, Islam, and this country.

"As for the members of the Nation Party, if they take only Islam as the basis of their programme, {(*):} they would assist the Democrat Party, and not oppose it and object to it and try to win power themselves. And if they take

racism and Turkism as the basis of their policies, only three out of ten people in this country are true Turks; the majority are of mixed descent. Then as at the beginning of the Second Constitutional Period, a nationalistic partisanship will arise in opposition to this noble and innocent Turkish nation, and the true Turks will be compelled to enter under the yoke of foreigners. Or composed of the other Turkified nations (elements) and impelled by the racialism and racism that exists in this country, relying on foreigners, they will gain supremacy over the innocent Turkish nation. Because such a situation would be fraught with dangers, I teach on account of the Qur'an and the country and nation, that they should ensure the Democrat Party's remaining in power, since it is religious and respectful towards religion."

Respected Adnan Menderes!

Our Master Bediuzzaman's sole purpose is to strive for the well-being of the country and nation and and to teach this. We are quite certain that members of the People's Party and Nation Party who are jealous of the assistance for the Democrat Party of such an esteemed person oppress him on every sort of pretext as though he had brought it to power, and they devise every sort of scheme to make him withdraw his support for it.

We request you with all due respect that as a Prime Minister who has stated: "We shall do whatever religion requires" and "religion presents no problems for this country," you ensure that our Master, who has done so much for our party for the sake of this country, nation, and Islam, is left completely free together with his books, and that he is never again disturbed.

There are now three currents harming Islam and this country:

The First is the irreligious communist current, It may cause harm to thirty or forty people out of a hundred.

The Second is a secret society that for has a long time past corrupted the Turks with a view to spreading irreligion in Turkey so as to sever relations

between the Turks and their own colonies. It can corrupt ten or twenty people out of a hundred.

The Third is an association of politicians who are lacking in religion, and being in favour of westernization, are trying to resemble Christians and instil a sort of Protestantism in Muslims. This current can turn only one in a hundred, or even one in a thousand, against the Qur'an and Islam.

We Nurjus and servants of the Qur'an have always tried to defend the truths of the Qur'an against the first two currents. Our way obliges us not to consider the world and politics as far as it is possible. But now we are obliged to consider it. We saw that the Democrats may assist us against those two fearsome currents. Owing to their outlooks, the religious among them have always been opposed to them. It is only those who are not religious at all and who follow the path of westernization and aping Westerners that assist the third current. The third current may convert only one in a hundred or a thousand into Protestants and Christians, for in the course of two hundred years the English were unable to convert to Protestantism even two hundred of the two hundred million Muslims they ruled, and they still could not do so. Also, at no time in history has it been heard that any Muslim has voluntarily become a Christian or chosen another religion instead of Islam, So even if a very small section of the party in power assists the third current in the name of politics and to the detriment of religion, since by reason of its outlook that party, the Democrat Party, is obliged to perform the duty of halting and repulsing the first two awesome currents, it is of the utmost benefit for this country and for Islam. In this respect, we know ourselves compelled to keep the Democrats in power, for the good of the Qur'an. We expect nothing from them; rather, since with their policies they oppose the first two currents, we consider them to be a means of our being saved from extensive harms - despite the insignificant harm caused to religion by a very few of their number, which resembles cutting off a finger to prevent a whole body being decimated. And we warn those careless in religion and advise them that the life and happiness of this country and nation and of themselves are to be found only in adhering to the truths of the Qur'an, and making the whole world of Islam a support and reserve force, and finding through Islamic brotherhood four hundred million brothers, and by making a vast state like America which works seriously for religion a true friend for themselves. All this is possible only through Islam and belief.

We Nurjus and servants of the Qur'an tell them that we pray for their success in serving Islam, and we request that they save from confiscation the Risale-i Nur, which is a valuable product of this country and of enormous

benefit for here and the Islamic world, and that they work for its publication. They will then win the support of the religious people of this country and it will be for their own good.

With all their plots and intrigues, the inimical secret societies which for fifty years have opposed me, have, for the last twenty-nine years, tried to incite the government and judiciary against me, and employing every device, have attracted the attention of the courts, to induce them to investigate and scrutinize my one hundred and thirty books and thousands of letters. Although five of those courts ruled for definite acquittals and the return of all the books since they contain nothing reprehensible, and although in connection with the recent Malatya Incident, our covert enemies again tried to direct the attention of the government and judiciary towards us, twenty-three courts stated that they could find nothing that constituted an offence.

{(*):}

Nothing was found despite there being so many hostile people searching for pretexts in the one hundred and thirty books of a person like me who has very few relations with the worldly and sacrifices nothing for a truth like the Risale-i Nur. And apart from a single matter, Islamic dress, in Eskişehir Court, it was taken to be a discretionary matter after an explanation had been given. Whereas certainly something would have been found in the ten letters of a single person like a Nur student who practises God-consciousness (takvà) if they were to be studied for ten days. Thus, the fact that the courts have been unable to pinpoint anything indictable in so voluminous a work infers that it is not devoid of two things:

Certainly, it is either divine providence and protection, which shows its mercy and compassion for the Nur students, the servants of the Qur'an, so that all the courts that have dealt with us have acted with wondrous justice

and not unjustly, and despite all the thousands of causes opposed to us, have assisted in serving that sacred Qur'anic truth. So for our part, we thank them with all our lives and spirits.

In olden times, sultans and the poor were tried side by side by the courts. In the time of the Caliph 'Umar's (May God be pleased with him) justice, he was tried together with a common Christian, and 'Ali (May God be pleased with him) was tried with a common Jew, which shows that the judicial system was the tool of nothing except right and truth. Thus, the courts that have been concerned with us - in their dealings with us - have manifested this great mystery of the judiciary's justice, It is because of this that despite the torments, imprisonment, and oppression I have suffered these last eight years, I have not felt offended at or cursed any member of the courts; on the contrary, I have sincerely felt indebted and a sort of gratitude, and have applauded them.

In His Name, be He glorified!

And there is nothing but it glorifies Him with praise. (Q 17:44)

Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!

My Dear, Loyal, Faithful, Devoted Brothers!

Firstly: I congratulate you with my whole life and spirit on your exceptional, luminous work for the cause of belief.

Secondly: At the Democrat Congress in Ankara, they wanted to assign me a post in the Directorate of Religious Affairs and to induce the Nur students of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ to persuade me to accept it. So I say this: I offer my thanks to the deputies who made this proposal at the meeting and to their religious friends, and I send them my greetings and pray for their success. But I am extremely weak, ill, and elderly, and at the door of the grave and wretched, and I do not have the strength to perform such sacred duties. So just as in my place and upto now the collective personality of the Nur students and of the select, sincere, true devotees of Islam have been carrying out that duty unofficially and unobtrusively; so too, God willing, they will be able to perform it officially. We refer it to them.

In His Nllo, be He glorified!

[Concerning the fact that belief has afforded me paradisaical pleasures in my life in this world too.]

I have not seen my kindly mother since I was nine years old and so have been unable to talk with her. I have been deprived of her respectful love, and because I have not seen my three late sisters since I was fifteen, and they have departed for the Intermediate Realm together with my mother, May God have mercy on them, I have been denied the compassion and respect of their delightful, pleasurable sisterly conversation. And because I have not seen two of my three brothers for fifty years, May God have mercy on them, I have been deprived the conversation of those two valuable, religious, learned brothers, and the joy of their respectful love and kindly compassion. However, just as the Risale-i Nur shows that a seed of Paradise is found in belief; so today, when making a trip with my four spiritual sons who devotedly serve me, a tiny part of the seed of Paradise found in belief was imparted to my spirit.

I have always remained single and have had no children in this world, but have never felt the lack of this despite being deprived of the tender pleasure and gratification enjoyed with children. In the face of these four wounds, Almighty God today bestowed a most pleasurable idea on me. It healed them in three ways.

The First: In accordance with an inner meaning of the Hadith: "Practise religion as elderly women do!" {[*]:} which is explained in the Risale-i Nur, in place of the pleasure of my late mother's solicitous personal compassion, divine mercy bestowed on me in general fashion the wondrous benefiting from the Risale-i Nur of thousands of mothers and elderly women and their spiritual pleasures. Similarly, in place of the caring, sisterly joy and pleasure of my three late sisters, it gave me through the Risale-i Nur hundreds of thousands of young women as sisters of a sort, and their prayers and attachment to the Risale-i Nur, and thousands of spiritual benefits in place of the three I had lost and a joyousness in my spirit. My brothers are aware of the numerous signs and evidences showing this second part to be true. Also, in place of my being deprived on my brother's death of devoted material and moral assistance in this world, and of his love and affection,

divine mercy bestowed on me instead of my two or three brothers hundreds of thousands of devoted brothers, in order, like true brothers, to assist me with true compassion, and to help me in the work of the Risale-i Nur, the capital of not only worldly life, but also of the life of the hereafter. It made up for my missing the pleasurable loving of children - since I had no children in this world - and multiplied a particular, personal kindly condition hundreds of thousands of times. For in the future hundreds of thousands of innocent children would be nurtured by the Risale-i Nur. There are numerous signs of this. In fact, those who attend on me know that the respect and attachment innocent children have shown me in Bolvadin and on the roads of Emirdağ, which is greater than what their parents show, has multiplied a particular, personal, private pleasure and kindly respect a thousand times over, and made it universal and general. There are numerous examples of this. Like some blessed spirits experience premonitions, the spirits of the innocent children had a premonition that the Risale-i Nur would train and protect them as would a worldly and otherworldly father, for they showed respect to the Risale-i Nur's servant greater than that they show their parents. In fact, a three-year-old girl whom I had never seen before and did not know came racing over thorny ground to me with bare feet. Indeed, we have so many friends in Bolvadin, we cannot escape them even though we travel swiftly in the motor car. Their everywhere showing attachment for me as they do their parents although they have never before seen or heard me prompted me to see that for myself, a seed of Paradise is found in belief, even as regards my soul, my feelings, and corporeally.

In His Name, be He glorified!

We are obliged to explain a secret, extraordinary mental state of our Master so that no offence is felt by those who come to visit him and cannot see him, and those who have to return without us letting them see him. Today, even, because we were a little inattentive, he decided to put an end to our service although he is in much need of it, but then he recalled what we are now going to write and he forgave us. It was this:

We have understood quite clearly that just as our Master has passed most of his life in solitude, so he has never accepted unreciprocated gifts and to do so makes him ill; so too, he now finds it most oppressive to be treated over-respectfully and to meet with friends. We have on many occasions

seen that shaking hands with people and having his hand kissed afflicts his spirit as though receiving a blow. And he is intensely discomforted if he is looked at and studied. We, even, cannot look at him if there is no necessity although we serve him. We have understood that the reason for this is as follows:

Since the fundamental way of the Risale-i Nur is true sincerity, at this time of egotism, conversing with people and showing excessive respect smacks of self-love, hypocrisy, and artificiality and this distresses him extremely. For he says: "If those who come here, want to see me for the hereafter and the Risale-i Nur, the Risale-i Nur leaves absolutely no need for me; each of its millions of copies are more beneficial that ten Saids. And if they want to discuss the world and worldly matters, I have renounced the world completely and cannot waste time on its meaningless affairs. And if it is about the work and dissemination of the Risale-i Nur, my true, devoted students who serve me and my spiritual sons and brothers will meet with them on my behalf; they are adequate for this and leave no need for me." So our brothers who come from afar and the others should not feel offended, because for the past ten years when reciting his invocations every morning, he bequeathes the merits to them, saying: "O Lord! Let the merits of these be written also in the books of good works of those who come here to see me but have to return without doing so!" He bequeathes them to their spirits. We are making clear for our brothers this state of mind of our Master.

[A passage from the newspaper, İleri, dated 13 April 1957]

Üstad Bediuzzaman lays the foundations of a new mosque.

Üstad Bediuzzaman Said Nursi applies the first cement to the foundations of the mosque being built for the Third Military Training Division

(From our private correspondent in Isparta)

A splendid ceremony was held in Isparta to mark the laying of the foundations of the mosque being built there for the Third Training Division, which has been formed in recent years. Üstad Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, the author of the Risale-i Nur, who is in Isparta, was invited to the ceremony. He had an enthusiastic reception and then applied with his own auspicious hands the first cement to the foundations, and offered prayers.

Especially recently, our Master Said Nursi has been afflicted with a condition due to which he will speak to absolutely no one, If he speaks with us, his assistants, for more than two minutes even, he is overcome by thirst. Some days he goes out into the countryside for fresh air and to find relief from this extraordinary condition. He goes nowhere where there are other people. He cannot go the mosque, even. On leaving his room he immediately gets into his private car {(*):} together with one or two of his helpers. Sometimes, once or twice a week, he goes to the house in Eğirdir he has rented, and remaining several hours, he returns to his house in Isparta.

Today we again went to Eğirdir. We had just come to his house there when we encountered someone. He ordered us to return to Isparta immediately. We did not know who the person was. Later we understood that it was the new kaymakam, who a few days previously had arrived from a town in Van Province. Just when we were going to demand, "What law or instructions allow you to block our way and prevent our entering the town?" and to protest at his arbitrary, illegal move, our Master Said Nursi prevented us. He also ordered us to turn back in order to prevent an incident occurring due to this illegal act, for it was market day and crowded, and the people of the town and local villagers are devoted to him and hold him in the greatest respect.

Our opinion concerning this is as follows: although our Master Said Nursi has in no way been involved in politics and does not even meet with people, the facts that the Risale-i Nur is extremely popular in Anatolia and the eastern provinces, and also in the Islamic world, and its large collections have been printed in Ankara with the government's permission and backing, and it has been acquitted by all the courts, have all led the large numbers of people who are attached to the Risale-i Nur to support the Democrat Party. Since this is particularly open and obvious in the eastern provinces, certain covert atheists and supporters of the former party laid plans to poison relations between the Nur students and the government, and they used the new kaymakam here to incite such an incident and to cause a disturbance of the peace.

Formerly, in order to preserve the dignity of Islam, our Master would never bow before even the most ruthless tyrants and to uphold the honour of religion did not rise to his feet before the Russian commander-in-chief when he was a prisoner-of-war and even preferred execution. But despite this, so that public order and security in this blessed country should not be disturbed, he remains silent in the face of the disrespectful, rude treatment of the lowliest gendarme, and meets it with patience. The reason for this is that in accordance with the fundamental rule of the Qur'an, "No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another (Q 6:164 etc.), no one is answerable for another's crime, not even the perpetrator's brother.

With the lessons of the Risale-i Nur, Said Nursi tells those who read it, especially those in the eastern provinces: "Disturbing public order means causing harm to ninety innocent people because of ten criminals, and is tyranny. Therefore, those who read the Risale-i Nur must preserve public order, not disturb it." It is for this reason that he does not interfere in politics and endeavours to preserve public order with all his strength. Also, today he was not angry with the kaymakam because of that regretable incident, On the contrary, he sent his greetings and said he had forgiven him. Before everyone, the Isparta authorities and the Democrat Party here should recognize the value of their elderly guest who is a revered champion of Islam so heroic he is ready to sacrifice his pride to preserve public order and security, and his own world and even his hereafter for this nation, and they should defend his rights.

Since we Nur students are in the service of our Master and we follow his way, we are in no way involved in politics. But because the Democrats permitted the Risale-i Nur's publication and they have not suppressed or obstructed it as formerly, we have taken an interest in the elections for their sake. As previously, in these elections the Nurjus' support was a considerable advantage for the Democrats. But when the former Minister of Justice,

Hüseyin Avni, and the former Senirkent deputy, Tahsin Tola, both of whom had assisted our Master and the Risale-i Nur more than anyone, did not win although they should have done, we were very sorry and we told our Master. He replied to us as follows:

"Don't be sorry! We should all congratulate them, for certain proof that in the space of two years they performed the services of fifty years for the government, the country, the nation, religion, and public order, was their wondrously wanting to save A Guide for Youth without our Master requesting this from them and at that very time, their giving orders that the two hundred copies of it that had been seized be returned to us, due to which they received the prayers of the two hundred thousand people who had benefited from it. Proof, too, were Tahsin Tola's notable efforts to have The Words Collection (Sözler Mecmuası) printed officially in Ankara, and his thus securing benefits for both public order, and the Democrats, and this country and nation greater than those that could be secured by a deputy in a hundred years. For now, these great moral, true profits are sufficient for them together with the enduring profits of the hereafter. They should not exploit their services which resemble everlasting diamonds, by working for a year or two as deputies and officials, which resembles ephemeral, frangible glass. I therefore congratulate them, You do the same, and pray for them. In fact, I wanted Tahsin Tola to be re-elected so that he could serve the Risale-i Nur, but the services he performed before are sufficient. He opened the door. Now no need remains."

{(*):}

In His Name, be He glorified!

A seventh characteristic of Said, following the six listed on page 30 of the biography published by Eşref Edip, is his lifelong rule of not accepting unreciprocated gifts, and, with the idea of contentment and frugal living, his for sixty or seventy years paying for his students' livelihoods himself. Now the time has come to record at the end of his last will and testament a present example of this, the reason for which has for several years been understood.

Notwithstanding the fact that with his independence our Master does not accept gifts despite his extreme penury, all thanks be to God, the capital the Risale-i Nur produces by being copied out by typewriter, which is not prohibited, is extraordinarily plentiful and sufficient for the livelihoods of the devoted Nur students in four or five provinces who have dedicated their lives to the Risale-i Nur and cannot find the time to work to support themselves. These provinces may be deemed the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ. I enjoin as my will that after my death the blessed capital which accrues from the sale of copies of the Risale-i Nur be allotted to those sincere, dedicated students of mine and that they apply scrupulously the sixty-to- seventy-year-old rule of mine to my present principles, seventy years later. If, God willing, the Risale-i Nur is printed freely, the principle will be enacted more effectively. It is astonishing but the Old Said in Van in the former era received from Ministry of Pious Foundations the subsistence for five students, and although the numbers of students sometimes rose to twenty, thirty, or even sixty, he provided for them all himself. Through the plenty arising from frugality and contentment, he did not break his rule even when he bought five or six Mauser rifles. He never at that time broke this rule although there were many people to help him like the famous Tahir Pasha. In accordance with a hidden sign, one fruit of that frugality and contentment - his rule of sixty to seventy years - was bestowed through divine providence, which is that for several years now the Risale-i Nur has itself given the dedicated students of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ their subsistence, despite there being so many court cases, prohibitions, and confiscations, and the lack of permission to print in the old letters. I am absolutely certain that although a large proportion of those copies have been distributed gratis as gifts and have been sent to the Islamic world and to

Europe and the cash in hand has been spent on duplicating copies, their being sufficient in extraordinary manner both for the Risale-i Nur itself and its dedicated devotees is a fine fruit of that prediction in the former era, and one purpose of it. Since this is so, I am making this declaration to be put at the end of my will:

Let this last will and testament be put among the money that remains when I die so that certain unjust persons should not say: "Said lived on five or ten kuruş a day and never took money from anyone, so how is it that he is leaving a legacy of hundreds of liras? Where does it come from?" To do this will be appropriate.

I now enjoin that this rule of mine be preserved under the supervision of my spiritual sons and devoted assistants like Zübeyir, Ceylân, Sungur, Bayram, Hüsnü, Abdullah, and Mustafa, and the select, sincere heroes of the Risale-i Nur like Husrev, Nazif, Tahirî, and Mustafa Gül.

[We are sending this for your information, to refute the libellous statements that have appeared in some newspapers.]

We have seen that a number of opposition newspapers are again accusing the Risale-i Nur students of founding a Sufi order. This accusation does not contain even a grain of truth as has been established by the ratified decisions of the nearly ten criminal courts that have tried cases involving the Risale-i Nur. Also, not the slightest sign of Sufism has been found in the books and letters of the Risale-i Nur when they have previously been seized and then unconditionally returned to their owners. In fact, it states explicitly in our Master Said Nursi's letters and defence speeches that "the present is not the time of the Sufi orders, but the time to save belief. There are many who enter Paradise without Sufism, but none who enter it without belief." Despite this open and explicit statement and the fact that not a shred of evidence has been found concerning Sufi practices, a clandestine group which is religiously lax or anti-religious, and wanting to extirpate religion is unable to abide the present flowering of Islam, calls true Islam "Sufism" in its attempts to prepare the ground in this country to sow its own ideas. Certainly, as always happens, the present campaign, instigated by the covert atheists and their intrigues, will finally be to the advantage of

the country and nation. And following their predecessors, the courts of Aydın and Nazilli will exonerate the Nur students.

At present there are numerous positive and relieving developments: the Risale-i Nur being very favourably received everywhere in this country and also in the Islamic world and Europe, and the Turks' moves towards rebuilding unity with the Islamic world successfully producing worldly results unintended by the Nur students, and the government according a high value to Islam, religion, and freedom of conscience and its endeavouring to repair the destruction caused by the former government, and to pass a law dismissing those who aggress against sacred matters. We have absolutely no doubt that this baseless matter, which has appeared at the same time as the above, has been instigated by persons opposed to the government and to Islam.

The evidence refuting some of their lies:

Those unprincipled persons clearly calumniated our Master Said Nursi by saying that he "lives like a king on charity and donations." Whereas he is someone who refused his uncle's soup even, has never become indebted to anyone, and attaching no importance to the five thousand liras he was given, refused it and returned it, and has never in his life broken his rule of independence even when suffering the severest oppression and deprivation, in this way intending to preserve the dignity of Islam and honour of religion.

Yes, our Master's rule of not accepting gifts has been established by both his eighty-year lifetime, and the documents presented in numerous courts of law over thirty years. It has been clearly observable by friend and foe alike, We leave it to everyone with conscience to judge just how malicious and ill-willed are those who make such accusations at a time everyone has become aware of this clear fact.

Thanks to the justice of the Ankara Court, our Master Said Nursi's Risale-i Nur is now being printed. He gives as subsistence to those Nur students who have dedicated their lives to the Risale-i Nur and are unable to support themselves, a share of the profits gained from the sale of its books. As everyone now knows, he himself lives with the maximum frugality and contentment. We put forward his eighty-year lifetime as truthful evidence that he has always lived extraordinarily thriftily and frugally.

Another obvious lie given out by those newspapers which pursue plans to turn the people against the Democrat government is their distortion of a conversation between two innocent men in Nazilli about Ramadan and their twisting it into something political like "establishing an Islamic state." It was a naive calumny cooked up by those political imposters that

could not deceive a child even. Everyone knows what they are trying to achieve by employing such fictions.

It is lacking in conscience a hundred times over to put in the public eye with politicking fabrications an Islamic author who has never been to Nazilli and knows no one there, and for forty years has declared: "I seek refuge with God from Satan and politics" and has severed all relations with politics; has dedicated his life to the cause of saving belief through the Qur'an and the truths of belief and is quite unconcerned with any worldly affairs outside that; and who is eighty-seven years old and virtually bedridden, and having been poisoned on numerous occasions has come close to death and declares himself to be at the door of the grave, and is in great need of rest and peace of mind. It is terrible cruelty to invent such lies, and a low-minded iniquity.

To impute prophethood to any religious scholar on false pretexts is a direct attack on Islam and treachery towards the Qur'an.

Throughout his life, our Master Said Nursi has adhered to the Prophet's (UWBP) practices (Sunna) and has defied the death sentence so as not to act contrarily to it and has composed a work of one hundred and thirty parts in order to revive the Sunna and preserve belief. Risking his life, he engaged in the struggle against the vicious enemies of religion, and was finally victorious. Yes, thousands of copies have been published of a work he wrote about following the Prophet's (UWBP) practices. And his book, The Miracles of Muhammad (UWBP), is an outstanding work about the Most Noble Messenger (UWBP), the Glory of the Universe, and his being the true and final prophet. While that is the truth, it is understood just how far from truth and right, and fairness and conscience are those who level such accusations at Said Nursi.

There is a strong possibility that another reason for this affair was that because the Risale-i Nur gives great importance to family life and ensures that women pass their lives chastely, honourably, modestly, and happily, it is very popular with them, For example, some people hostile to religion saw a few articles for women that had been published and they launched an attack on account of communism on some cooked up pretexts. But they will in no way succeed. For contrary to their expectations, the Risale-i Nur is spreading wondrously among both men and women.

In His Name, be He glorified!

"A Complaint to the Supreme Tribunal," my last word in a most important court case, has been published several times in the biography, and during the trial was sent to various offices in Ankara, the Court of Appeal, and to the chief judges. Now, because a strange, minor example of the incident that was the reason for the complaint has again happened to me, I am describing it as a short addendum to the complaint.

For three reasons, two days ago I visited Konya, which formerly was the medrese and learned centre of Anatolia, and I was very eager to go there. But this gave rise to a number of false allegations.

One: Despite their impecuniousness and the expenses, two of my true Nur brothers went to the court in Izmir. On their return, they visited me. So partly in order to save them from further expense, I took them in my private car as far as Konya.

The Second Reason: I intended to visit my brother and his children, who of all my brothers and relations is the only one still alive. He studied with me for fifteen years and worked as a mufti for nearly twenty years, and apart from once, I had not seen him for forty years.

The Third: I went to visit Mawlana Jalal al-Dîn, who, like Imam Rabbani and Imam al-Ghazali, is one of the chief masters of both the Old Said and the New Said and with whom I am closely concerned since his disciples, the Mevlevis, everywhere take an interest in the Risale-i Nur. However, as is written in the piece in the biography about my not meeting with people, just as Almighty God makes me ill to prevent my accepting gifts, so since visiting and being treated with great respect is a sort of gift, I lost my voice and through divine providence was prevented from speaking. As a result I did not go to my brother's house even, that I could have spoken.

I should have remained in Konya for at least two or three days, but in an hour I performed the prayers, and returned. While there, as though some- thing had happened, they published it in the newspapers. I was treated as though I had met with thousands of people, although I had not even been able to go to my brother's house to visit him and had anyway been unable to speak.

It is true that the orders given to the police were a serious mistake, because of that situation. But because those orders were congruent with my serious indisposition, I was not upset by the police; on the contrary, I for- gave them. "May God be pleased with you!" I said, and I thanked them.

I am very much in need of fresh air and in the summer I have to take trips around the mountains, and in the winter I stay in the various houses I have rented. I cannot remain in one place, because to do so aggravates my illness. I had intended to visit Konya again from time to time. I have two houses I rent in Emirdağ, and one in Eskişehir, but I felt that that meaningless situation in Konya was the reason I was prevented from visiting them for a change of air. I can meet with absolutely no one. I am subject to much illegal ill-treatment like this, contrary to my habits. These words of mine describing the situation there may be published as an addendum to the previously written "Complaint to the Supreme Tribunal."

As a wretched elderly stranger who is eighty or so years of age and at the door of the grave, is sick with several illnesses and sees himself close to death, I shall explain two facts to you:

Firstly: I congratulate you with my whole spirit and with complete sincerity, happiness, and joy on your most successful alliance with Pakistan and Iraq, which you have concluded for this nation. I feel in my spirit that, God willing, this alliance of yours is the certain introduction to universal peace and general prosperity among the four hundred million Muslims of the Islamic world. I was compelled to write this to you due to a powerful admonition I received while reciting the tesbihat following the prayers. The reason for this warning of the heart and extreme concern, despite my having abandoned the world and given up politics for the last thirty to forty years, is this: the Risale-i Nur, which for fifty years has found a direct way to save belief and is a miracle of the Qur'an in these times, is showing its effect and being accepted in Arabia and Pakistan more than anywhere, and even, according to information we have received, students of the Risale-i Nur are three times as numerous in those places than here, as has been established by courts of law. Having seen these momentous consequences while at the door of the grave, I felt compelled to make them known.

Secondly: Just as racialism gave rise to a perilous situation in the Umayyad period, and great harm was caused by it at the start of the Second Constitutional Period in the form of clubs and societies, and harm was caused to the mujâhid Turks by their blessed brother Arabs during the First

World War again through the exploitation of racialism; so too it may now be utilized against Islamic brotherhood, for there are signs that covert atheists, the enemies of public peace and security, are again trying to cause harm through racialism. It is the character of racialism to be nurtured by negative action and causing harm to others, but throughout the world the Turkish nation is known to be first and foremost Muslim, and their racialism is blended with Islam and cannot be separated from it. Turk is synonymous with Muslim. And any who are not Muslim have cast off their Turkishness. Like the Turks, the Arabs and Arabness and Arab nationalism have combined with Islam, and it has to be like that. Their true nationality is Islam. That is sufficient. Racialism is altogether a grave danger. God willing, your most valuable alliance with Iraq and Pakistan at this time will repulse this dangerous harm and will be the means of gaining for this nation and country four hundred million brother Muslims in place of four or five million racists, and the friendship of eight hundred million Christians and members of other religions, who are in extreme need of peace and general reconciliation. I am telling you of this since it is a conviction I feel in the depths of my spirit.

Thirdly: Sixty-five years ago a governor read me a piece from a newspaper: an irreligious secretary for the colonies was speaking, He had taken the Qur'an in his hands, and had said: "As long as this remains in the hands of the Muslims we will not be able to truly dominate them and gain mastery over them. We shall have either to discredit the Qur'an or to make the Muslims lose their love of it."

Thus, with these two ideas, a fearsome secret society bent on corruption tried to cause harm to this unhappy, self-sacrificing, innocent, patriotic nation. So sixty-five years ago I sought help from the All-Wise Qur'an in the face of this current. With a short way to the truth and the idea of a large Islamic university, I found two means to save our lives the hereafter, and as a resulting benefit of it, to save also our lives in this world from absolute despotism and the destruction of misguidance and to increase and develop brotherhood between the Muslim peoples.

The First Means: This was the Risale-i Nur. Certain evidence that it has served the unfolding of brotherhood based on belief through the strength of belief are the unprecedented conditions and the persecution and powerlessness, under which it was written, and the effect it has shown in most places in the Islamic world and in America and Europe, and its victories these last thirty years over revolutionaries and atheistic philosophy and such schools of thought as materialism and naturalism, and the fact that no court of law or expert has been able to refute it. God willing, sometime those like you

who have found the key to Islamic brotherhood will make heard to the Islamic world this manifestation of the Qur'an's miraculousness.

Second Means: Sixty-five years ago I wanted to go to the University of al-Azhar. I said to myself, it is the medrese of the Islamic World, and I intended to study there. But it was not to be. However, in his mercy, Almighty God imparted an idea to my spirit: just as al-Azhar University is a universal medrese in Africa, however much larger Asia is than Africa, a place of learning, an Islamic University, proportionately larger is needed in Asia, It would both prevent racialism corrupting the Muslim peoples; for example, the nations of Arabia, India, Iran, Caucasia, Turkestan, and Kurdistan; and through Islamic nationhood, which is real, positive, sacred, and universal, true nationhood, it would manifest the total unfolding of the fundamental principle of the Qur'an: «Verily, the believers are brothers» (Q 49:10); and it would reconcile the sciences of philosophy and those of religion, and make peace between European civilization and the truths of Islam. It would also unite the people of the secular educational establishments and those of the medreses, the religious schools, so that they should assist each other. In the same way that I have worked for a full fifty-five years for the truths of the Risale-i Nur, so also have I worked for such a university in the centre of the eastern provinces between India, Arabia, Iran, Caucasia, and Turkestan - a university in the style of al-Azhar called the Medresetü'z-Zehra, which would be both a modern secular school and a religious school. The first to appreciate its value was Sultan Reşad (May God grant him mercy), who donated twenty thousand gold liras, just for its construction, Then when I returned from captivity in the Great War, in Ankara one hundred and sixty-three deputies out of the two hundred present agreed to allot one hundred and fifty thousand liras to the university at that time when funds were so scarce, and put their signatures to it. Mustafa Kemal was one of them. That is to say, through assigning to it what is almost equivalent to five million liras at the present time, the deputies demonstrated the surpassing importance of founding such a university. A number of them signed it, even, who were extremely negligent in religion and were in favour of westernizing and stripping off all traditions. Only two of them said: "We are now in greater need of westernization and civilization than traditional learning and the sciences of religion." I replied to them:

"Even if to suppose the impossible you were in no need of them, as is indicated by the fact that most of the prophets have appeared in Asia and the East and most of the philosophers in the West, it is the sense of religion rather than the effects of science and philosophy that will be the spring of true progress of Asia. If you do not take this natural law into consideration,

and in the name of westernization abandon the tradition of Islam and even base your ideas on atheism, it is necessary and imperative for the security of the nation and the country that you give definite support to Islam and the truths of religion in the eastern provinces, which are the centre of four or five large nations. Of thousands of examples, I shall tell you the following one:

While in Van, I asked a patriotic Kurdish student of mine: "The Turks have performed great services. What do you think of them?" He replied: "I prefer a Muslim Turk to a Kurdish brother who is depraved. I am closer to him than to my own father. For the Turks serve the cause of belief wholeheartedly." Some time passed and that student (May God have mercy on him) entered a secular school in Istanbul while I was being held as a prisoner-of-war. I saw him when I returned; influenced by some racialist teachers there, in reaction he had taken another path - due to Kurdish nationalism. He said to me: "Now I prefer a depraved Kurd, or even an atheist one, to an upright Turk." Later I was able to save him after speaking to him on several occasions. He was persuaded that the Turks are the heroic army of the Islamic nation.

Deputies who asked the questions! There are close on five million Kurds in the east. There are nearly one hundred million Iranians and Indians. There are seventy million Arabs. There are forty million Caucasians. I wonder, which is more necessary for these brothers who are neighbours and brethren and in need of one another, the lesson from religion that my student received in the medrese in Van, or was his second state better, which casts those nations into chaos and considers no one apart from people of the same race and studies only the sciences of philosophy, which do not recognize Islamic brotherhood and ignore the Islamic sciences? I ask

After hearing this answer of mine, the deputies who were opposed to tradition and supported the idea of westernization in every respect rose and signed the bill, I shall not say their names. May God forgive them their faults; they are dead now.

Fourthly: The President has attached great importance to the Eastern University amid other pressing political matters and has performed the great service of passing a law specifically allotting it sixty million liras, which will be a source of pride for it. And giving the start to this Islamic University out of his feelings for his former profession of teaching, he has earned the gratitude of all the teachers of the east. It will be the cause of great honour for himself. His again placing under consideration this university - a foundation stone of universal peace in the Middle East and its main

citadel - is an act of service which will produce far-reaching, beneficial results for this country, this state, this nation. The sciences of religion will be the basis in the university, for the destruction of the external forces is moral and spiritual; it is through unbelief. The atom bomb to counter such moral and spiritual destruction can only acquire force and halt it through moral and spiritual matters, in that respect. Since in this matter the opinion and ideas should be sought of someone who has dedicated his life to it for the last fifty-five years and has studied it minutely in all its details considering all the consequences, and since you have felt yourselves compelled to hold consultations about it in America and in Europe, I too certainly have the right to speak concerning it. We await this from you in the name of the whole patriotic nation.

In His Name, be He glorified!

My Dear, Loyal, Devoted, Sincere, Earnest Brothers and True, Serious, Steadfast Friends in the Service of the Qur'an!

I am going to describe to you a state of mind of great significance and an illness I suffer from which is apparently extremely troublesome but in fact comprises a considerable instance of divine mercy and providence, and affords an ease of the spirit and is a sign that my task is completed. So I do not complain but offer thanks. I nevertheless request your prayers so that I may endure it. That state of mind is as follows:

If I say something, I am suddenly overcome by a tremendous thirst and am as though prevented. Formerly, I used to drink some water once or twice a day, but now, although I eat very little, I am compelled to drink water twenty or thirty times. In fact, two days ago it was even worse and I supposed I had been poisoned. I divulged this suspicion to the brothers who were with me. I beseeched divine mercy for patience and fortitude so that I might bear that crushing illness. Then suddenly it came to my heart that there has been a manifestation of providence and mercy in most of the difficulties I have suffered in my lifetime, so, God willing, there will be a ray of mercy in this too. It was this: the atheists' and the Satans from among men and the jinn's trying to poison me and silence me is an instance of divine mercy showing that I have fulfilled my duty and will take my rest. For last year I started to teach the Qur'anic

commentary Ishârât al-I'jâz and the Arabic Mathnawî, and this continued for a year. Then although my covert enemies, the Satans from among men and jinn, tried with their various plots to silence me, divine mercy bestowed the Turkish translations of both works and for the greater part, the Risale-i Nur taught itself, leaving no need for teachers. As a consequence, as a divine bounty, this extraordinary illness was a means of releasing me from my duties of teaching and of my taking a rest. It also occurred to my spirit that there are thousands or even hundreds of thousands of young Saids to speak and teach in my place. Through divine grace, the Risale-i Nur does not need onerous instruction like the other religious sciences. The wondrous prediction of Gawth Geylânî, "You are protected within the purview of Providence," {[*]:} appears to be exactly true both at that time and now. And now that enemies are becoming friends, speaking and meeting with people may well be the delectable, fleeting fruits in this world of our service which looks to the hereafter, It therefore should be made the tool of nothing lest maximum sincerity be impaired. Also, one should not interfere in God's business; divine determining ordained and permitted this severe condition, not against me, but for me. I appoint as my deputies my spiritual sons the youths who are with me and I have named in my will. I regard anyone who speaks with them as speaking with myself.

This illness our Master suffers shows that the covert atheists discovered a drug that prevents speech and they administered it to him. In short, we also see that he has been prevented from shaking hands with people, and meeting and talking with them.

Since his youth and even his childhood, our Master has exhibited independence from people and self-reliance so as to preserve the dignity of learning. He has never accepted zakat or charity, nor has he accepted gifts, as is explained in the Second Letter. In His mercy, Almighty God has transformed this principle of his into an illness so that he may continue to practise it in his old age and weakness. That is to say, an unreciprocated mouthful, even, immediately makes him ill. He cannot eat it. In his youth, our Master was not so needy. When he lived alone, he had very few expenses. But now he provides the subsistence of many of his students and he suffers from various illnesses, so Almighty God makes him ill from unreciprocated presents to preserve that principle of his.

Similarly, being held in high esteem resembles a non-material gift for our Master, so he shrinks from the people's veneration and from having his hand kissed. As testified to in his biography and in the Twenty-Sixth Flash for the elderly, in his youth exceptionally to his peers, he went into seclusion in the township of Tillo near Siirt; when a medrese student, he withdrew to the tomb of Ahmad Khani in the province of A grr, while a prisoner-of-war in Russia, he retreated into solitude in a tiny, unfrequented mosque of the Tatars near the camp, although ninety or so of his fellow-prisoner officers used to attend his religious homilies willingly; while enjoying a glittering social life as a member of the Darü'l-Hikmeti'l-İslamiye, he chose to withdraw into solitude on Mount Yuşa, on returning to Van, he rejected an enjoyable life among his numerous students, old and new, and retired to a cave on Mount Erek; and finally these past thirty years, when sent to various prisons as a result of appalling injustices, he never complained when he was held in solitary confinement for twenty months or throughout his imprisonment, despite the legal limit for such confinement being a fortnight.

All the events show that the desire for solitude has always one of his dominant innate characteristics. But so that this should persist in his old age when he is in much need of assistance, help, and conversation, he has been given a sort of illness. If he speaks for five minutes even, he is overcome by intense thirst and can emit no sound. In fact, since he follows the Shafi'i School, he should recite the Fatiha in the prayers loudly enough for himself to hear, but because he cannot emit any sound, he has to perform them following the Hanafi School. He has two reports from two leading doctors concerning this illness. They may be shown if required.

We have formed the opinion that now, when the Risale-i Nur is making

unprecedented conquests and is being very favourably received by the Islamic world, and enemies even are becoming friends, our Master's unsociableness, that is, his retreating from society, and his inability to speak and emit sounds, and his feeling as though he has received a blow if his hand is kissed, is a divine visitation in order to preserve the maximum sincerity of the Risale-i Nur, which means not making it the tool of anything other than divine pleasure, be it the ranks and stations of either this world or the next. In fact, our Master even forgave the person who divulged his indispositions.

We asked our Master why he does not meet with people now that the Risale-i Nur is spreading so splendidly and his enemies have been defeated and are showing themselves to be friendly. He replied:

"Those people who want to meet with me are either opponents or friends. If they are friends, the hundreds of thousands of copies of the Risale-i Nur speak with them fully in my place, and leave no need for me at all. If those people who want to meet me are hostile, numerous courts of law and experts' committees these past thirty years have found nothing incriminating in the Risale-i Nur or among the Nur students despite their investigating them closely. The facts that twenty-four trials have concluded that the Risale-i Nur contains nothing reprehensible, and four courts have ruled for its acquittal, and on these rulings being finalized, all its books and letters have been returned to their owners, all reply in my place to all those who object to and oppose us. No need remains for me. If any of them want to meet with me personally, all the Nur students are the defence lawyers in one sense of this wretched Said, or seeing that I have lawyers in Ankara and Istanbul, they may see them."

His students who are assisting him in essential tasks due to his severe illness and the infirmities of old age

In His Name, be He glorified!

Our Master said the following:

The newspaper Cumhuriyet, which opposes us, completely misreported my defence speech and distorted the meaning, including such nonsensical sentences as "to save ten innocent people from darkness because of one criminal" instead of, "so that no harm should come to ten innocent people due to one criminal," Moreover, although the answer I wrote was stated exactly five or six years ago in the Istanbul Second Magistrates' Court and was part of my defence which earned an acquittal in the matter which holds most importance for me, a month or two ago during my trip to Istanbul, completely meaninglessly and maliciously and in order to provoke a storm in a teacup, a public prosecutor handed over the case to the Isparta

public prosecutor and officially sent two policemen to take my statement. I told them that the matter had been replied to five years previously and that my reply was still the same. They accepted this and had it written by typewriter, and they sent it to the wretch. Now, someone esle has evidently again meaninglessly given it to a kaymakam a long way off from us. Then the calumniating newspaper wanted to raise suspicions among some weak Nur students by saying that "the kaymakam gave it to the public prosecutor." The Risale-i Nur's many lawyers must write refutations of this article. There are four reports from the Istanbul health authorities about the matter involved. I had not condescended to show them to anyone since it was unimportant. And it is still unnecessary.

Postscript: I send many greetings to the two police chiefs in Ankara. They should attach no importance to such matters.

In His Name, be He glorified!

Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Firstly: Our Master sends congratulations to you for the Night of Acquittal, and many greetings, and he prays for you.

{(*):}

Secondly: According to what is written in the letter we received yesterday from Diyarbakir, around two hundred Nur study centres (ders-hane) have been opened in the east including the region of Diyarbakir. There are also four or fives study centres just for women. God willing, this augurs well. The Nur Schools, which our Master spoke of ten years ago, explaining their extensive advantages, are now being realized. At that time he said: "Now, as a result of the official permission to open private institutions for religious instruction, the Nur students should open little Nur Schools as far as they can. It is true that everyone may benefit themselves though not everyone will understand every matter fully, but because they are explanations of the truths of belief, they are both learning, and knowledge of God, and worship, and they yield a sense of the divine presence.

God willing, the Nur Schools will secure in five to ten weeks the results the old medreses secured in five or ten years, and so it has been doing for the last twenty years.

Our Master has dedicated to the Risale-i Nur as a Nur School, the house he lived in for nine years in Barla, This was the first Nur School and the seed of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ, which extends over six provinces. And now, following this, Nur study centres are being opened in both Isparta and surrounding towns and villages, and in Diyarbakir and the east.

The Risale-i Nur being read in this way in such places gains for those who persist in doing this and those who study it the honour of being students of the religious sciences (talebe-i ulûm). Some authoritative scholars (müçtehid) have stated that the actions of such students and even their sleep may be counted as worship.

Thirdly: The fact that the first radio broadcast of the Risale-i Nur to Anatolia and the Islamic world coincided with the Night of Acquittal, is a sign and indication presaging great good for this country and the Islamic world, favouring the Risale-i Nur.

In His Name, be He glorified!

I am proclaiming this last will and testament to all my friends and my Nur brothers: Regarding myself, I no longer have the strength to fulfil the duties of the Risale-i Nur. And perhaps no need remains for me to do so. It is as though I can no longer endure to remain alive due to the many times I have been poisoned and the infirmity of old age and other ailments. Even if death, for which I so yearn, does not befall me, I am writing this will as though I have died to outer life,

Endless thanks be to the Most Compassionate and Merciful Creator that when studying sixty to seventy years ago, contrarily to custom the Old Said did not seek the charity of others, particularly when engaged in acquiring the sciences of belief, and despite his utter penury. During his childhood and youth, he tried to provide the subsistence of twenty to thirty

of his students so that they should not be obliged to earn money by selling their knowledge and learning. Just as they succeeded in doing this at that time through practising frugality and contentment, so too, all thanks be to the Most Merciful of the Merciful, the Risale-i Nur has begun to produce through its publication the subsistence of its true students. One fifth of the profits of its copies that are sold is the right of the Risale-i Nur itself. This is just sufficient for its select students, especially those who are unable to meet their own needs. It now yields sufficient capital for fifty to sixty students. I - this wretched Said - have no right to be counted as one of them. It was only the Riwyee-i Nur's own value and the complete loyalty of the students' collective personality that gave rise to this festival of the Risale-i Nur.

I am now appointing as my absolute deputies four or five of the students who are with me and nearest to me and serve my person and know to an extent my practices and have seen how I act, but this is not to say that they are superior to the other students. If I die, or am alive but unconscious, they know my way of doing things and should carry out the Risale-i Nur's work to the letter. For now, I am appointing Tahirî, Sungur, Ceylân, Hüsnü, and one or two others as my absolute deputies. The capital accruing from the sale of copies of the Risale-i Nur belongs to the Risale-i Nur. Said is also a servant of it, and may receive his subsistence from it, Recently, death has seemed very near to me. The last two or three years, I intended firmly to provide the subsistence of fifty to sixty students in six provinces out of the Risale-i Nur's capital, but I gave this up thinking that perhaps certain obstacles would cause some of them to give up performing the services incumbent on the students. Now, however, I have written my will.

With the phrase, "ta'îshu sa'îdan" (prosperous livelihood) in a section of the predictions the Gawth al-A'zam, Shaykh Geylani (May God be pleased with him) alluded to the Risale-i Nur and its author, he foretold that our Master would live comfort- ably and happily as regards his livelihood. We neverthless observed that his poverty and independence were apparently contrary to this. This prediction of the Gawth is now to be seen in our Master's life in fact, for as a child of ten he would not eat his uncle's soup to avoid becoming obliged to him, and then he himself would provide the livelihoods of the students he taught, and now, in just the same way, he is again providing for fifty to sixty of his students. All this shows that the prediction has been realized fully.

Tahirî, Sungur, Ceylân

In His Name, be He glorified!

My Dear, Loyal Brothers!

Thinking that since the appointed hour is not known, it could occur any time, this will and testament, which confirms the one I wrote previously, was imparted to me due to a severe, internal illness I am suffering. So I declare this:

On the one hand, the capital being held in Eskişehir {(*):} is for printing photographically our miraculous Qur'an which shows the coincidences; and on the other, is the Risale-i Nur's capital which I hold in trust. Endless thanks be to the Most Merciful of the Merciful that as a divine bounty and bestowal, seventy or so years ago I provided the subsistence of my students, despite my own impecuniousness and contrarily to the customs of those times. And now, fifty to sixty years later, as a result of the divine bestowal of those times, the capital I hold is for the subsistence of the sincere students of the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ who are unable to provide their own livelihoods. This capital will be spent on their subsistence. I adjure my spiritual sons and my heirs to carry this out, exactly as I have these past few years.

If, God willing, the Risale-i Nur starts to spread further, the capital will be sufficient for devoted students far exceeding the numbers of students who now have dedicated themselves to the Risale-i Nur; Nur Schools and Medresetü'z-Zehrâs will open in many places. I request my spiritual sons, and my select, self-sacrificing assistants, and my heroic brothers who have dedicated themselves to the Risale-i Nur and are known by everyone, that they assist in implementing this last will and testament in my place. Since, with regard to the Risale-i Nur no need remains for me, to depart for the Intermediate Realm is a cause of joy for me. You should not feel sad. You should rather congratulate me, for I am going from troubles to mercy.

Yes, we bear witness to this last will and testament of our Master,

Çalışkan from Emirdağ, Mustafa Acet, Hüsnü from Safranbolu, Zübeyir from Ermenek, Bayram from Çoğol

In His Name, be He glorified!

Our Esteemed Brother, Tahsin Bey!

We congratulate you on the Night of Power and wish you success. Our Master sends you his particular greetings. He said:

"The biography that Tahsin published has been as useful as twenty large collections, and has made that many conquests. He should in no way worry about their now bothering him a little. Their doing this has attracted attention to the biography and been effective advertising. Just as the twenty large collections have made great conquests these last twenty years by spreading underground; so, God willing, the biography will produce similar results by spreading unobtrusively.

Secondly: Almighty God graciously placed you in Ankara to be the commander-in-chief of the Risale-i Nur there; and now you have been granted the publication of the Qur'anic commentary Ishârât al-I'jâz (Signs of Miraculousness) from the Risale-i Nur, which elucidates one of the forty aspects of the Qur'an's miraculous inimitability, its composition and ordering (nazm). There are seven sorts of this latter aspect, one of which is the coincidences (T, tevâfukât; Ar. tawâfuqât). {[*]:} And one sort of these are the clear coincidences in the name Allah.

Our miraculous Qur'an shows these latter coincidences. God willing, it will fall to you also to print and publish it. Previously our Master sent you ten thousand liras; now he is sending six thousand, six hundred, and sixty- six liras, which is exactly the equivalent of the Qur'an's verses, and is the amount remaining from two years of the students' subsistence. There is a great mystery in this, which is blessed like money of gold. It should not be spent on anything else. We are sending this together with a number of sections (cüz') of the Qur'an, and our greetings.

In His Name, be He glorified!

One of the main reasons I have come to Ankara this time is to see Namık Gedik, {[*]:} the Interior Minister, who is a serious supporter of Islam, and to say the following to the hero of Islam, Adnan Bey, {[*]:} and prominent persons like Tevfik İleri. {[*]:}

In order to greatly strengthen the Democrats as did the Arabic call to prayer, and to win support for them as did permitting the Risale-i Nur's publication, and to please the Islamic world and even some Christian states, it is to cleanse Aya Sophia of extraneous matters and make it suitable for worship. It was just for the sake of this question that I wanted to see Namık Gedik, although I have given up politics for thirty years, so I came. For the sakes of Adnan Bey, Namık Gedik, and Tevfik İleri I did not go elsewhere.

Moreover, just as in accordance with a fundamental law of the Qur'an, the Risale-i Nur has silenced communism with its five hundred thousand copies; so too, evidence that it has ensured public peace and security in Anatolia and the eastern provinces is this: ten years or so ago, the Afyon public prosecutor said: "He's got six hundred thousand devoted students and has published five hundred thousand copies of the Risale-i Nur; per- haps he'll disturb public order." So Said replied to him: "It's true he's got six hundred thousand devoted students, and these last fifteen years they have been persecuted mercilessly, but neither the police nor the courts have discovered any such incident."

I also said: "Public prosecutor! If the Risale-i Nur has not assisted in maintaining public order as much as a thousand public prosecutors and a thousand police chiefs, may God damn me! You can give me any penalty you wish!" He could find nothing to say in reply to this.

Only, a year or two after this, a young student of the Risale-i Nur was going to commit suicide because he imagined that harm would come to the Risale-i Nur because of him. But his Master prevented him and a very minor incident occurred, but the two were reconciled.

Whereas if a master has ten devoted students, then one of them greets someone and receives a blow in return and another kisses someone's hand and is then treated with contempt, they all remain silent so as not to create a disturbance. For they had heard from Said: "If I had a thousand lives, I would sacrifice them all to maintain public order and security." Therefore, in accordance with the fundamental law, «No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another» (Q 6:164 etc.), so that no harm should come to ninety innocents due to five criminals and in order not to treat unjustly ten innocent children and parents because of one criminal, the Risale-i Nur ensures public order with the services it performs for the cause of belief and lodges a prohibitor in everyone's hearts against wrongdoing. The biography proves that if I had a thousand lives, I would sacrifice all of them for this fundamental law of the Qur'an, and it is there for all to see. And courts of law have also concurred with this.

He even looks on public demonstration of oneself as hypocrisy, self- advertisement, and egotism, and so has given up meeting with the people, and through the grace of divine mercy he has lost his voice too so that he is not obliged to meet with his friends and they are not offended.

In His Name, be He glorified!

Peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings, for ever and ever!

A letter arrived for our extremely ill Master from a high-ranking official. It says that some leading members of the former party (Republican People's Party) who did not want his biography to be published, made some large concessions and drove some of its officials to make the mistake. So our Master said:

The main parts of the biography have been published three times by Sebilurreşad, and four times over the past thirty to forty years in both the old letters and the new. And recently, one or two religious scholars have sent several appreciative letters from abroad, from such places as Medina, by way of elucidation and thanks. In which case, the courts can in no way interfere officially.

Secondly: The Risale-i Nur has on its own spread in the Islamic world in wondrous fashion despite all the politicians' harassment, so now that there are millions of people disseminating it, let alone the former party, if

the whole world were to gather together, it could do nothing to stop it. It is quite impossible. It would be more like an advertisement; the Nur students need not worry.

Thirdly: On the one hand I have forgiven the former party all its unjust persecution of me. On the other, in accordance with the verse, «No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another» (Q 6:164 etc.), that is, no person, or his party or relatives, is answerable for another's errors, the Risale-i Nur has spread both in Anatolia and in the eastern provinces and has performed effective services for public order and security. Like a non-physical, moral police force, it leaves a prohibitor in everyone's heart. It has not blamed the errors of five men on ninety-five, so has not aggravated them twenty or thirty times. Most of the former party's followers should therefore be as grateful to the Risale-i Nur as the party in power. For if it had not taught that lesson from the above fundamental Qur'anic principle, the errors of the five men would have been attributed to thousands.

Fourthly: It is now quite certain that the Risale-i Nur is a lesson proceeding from the All-Wise Qur'an's miraculousness that will protect this nation and the world of Islam against the absolute disbelief that assaults from outside, for no atheistic philosopher has found any means of opposing it. We have received certain news that in some places abroad, a million youths are saying that general peace may be secured by the Risale-i Nur. We have heard too that they have started to translate the Risale-i Nur in some countries that are seeking universal peace, such as Germany and America.

Fifthly: If officials misinterpret some of the new laws and object to one or two lines from the Risale-i Nur, say in my place: "Should twenty thousand neighbours be punished and cast into prison because of one man's fault? Is there any law in the world that demands it?" So if one line of a five-hundred-page book with twenty lines on every page deals someone a hard blow, but there is no specific name and nothing prosecutable; and even supposing there was, the line would be deleted as with the censor. So to seize the book is illegal and an injustice unheard of in the world, like sending ten thousand people to prison. Moreover, seeing that the other twenty thousand lines have strengthened the belief of twenty thousand people, it surely absolves the error and causes it to be forgiven.

I would have spoken more if I had not been so extremely ill. You, my assistants, must correct and emend it. Even, if you deem it appropriate, while more than anyone the police should be in favour of the Risale-i Nur's lessons, which strengthen them considerably in their duties of securing the peace, my spirit is not easy at giving them to those policemen who

are acting as official detectives, which is contrary to their profession. But tell them that I forgive all of them.

Sixthly: While expecting some means of venerating the Three Months on the Night of the Ascension, the search on account of the biography caused me intense sadness and grief. In accordance with the Hadith, "Almsgiving repulses calamities," {[*]:} the Risale-i Nur has become like almsgiving that repulses calamities from Anatolia, and when it is acquitted and given its freedom calamities are repulsed, but when it is attacked, calamities descend. There are a hundred events showing this; sometimes it is shown with earthquakes and storms, and this time, a cold spell I had never before witnessed with temperatures of nearly minus 18Y coincided with assaults and the searches.

Our Master is so ill, he could not speak any more. He told his assistant: "Send this to some friends and some officials for their information so that they do not worry."

[The time has come to explain a strange mental state of our Master in the face of the public prosecutors.]

I am presenting this absolutely true letter which our Master wrote for you.

His student, Sungur

He said to me:

"Although during these thirty to forty years of oppression in prison and exile, I have been the object of the severity of the public prosecutors, who are charged with duties related to public law, known as "hukûkullah" (lit. God's law), I have never felt angry at them or offended. I realized that I did not see in them the faults that were the cause of their apparent anger. Then some time later I saw that the compassionate slaps of divine deter- mining were dealt at the hand of the prosecutors due to my own faults. Because the slaps came from divine determining, I accepted them with all my spirit and heart and I forgave the prosecutors' harshness, for they were only the apparent causes. Now, thanks be to God, some of the prosecutors,

in performing their duties of defending the public rights - in so far as they are «hukûkullah» - are not treating me so severely, on the contrary, in respect of true justice and the service the Risale-i Nur performs for belief, which is beneficial for all Muslims and even humanity, they are giving up their severity and are as though seeing the compassionate slaps of divine determining and assisting us despite their apparent torments. As a consequence of this great mystery, I have assumed a friendly attitude towards all such prosecutors and I pray for them. The situations which appear to be severe judgements against me are advertisements of a sort for our work for belief.

"I now send my greetings to them and to all who understand that public law has become like hukûkullah and I pray for them. I forgive their severity and vehemence towards me."

[I have written this letter to the newspapers which write about the matters that concern us. If they publish it, I shall forgive all that they have attributed to us recently. It is very short due to my severe illness. Let them publish it so that my brothers who think of us are not saddened.]

Firstly: Do not worry about what is happening these days. What is being manifested concerning us comprises great instances of good, through divine providence and mercy. I am ill and cannot endure to speak and meet with people. With the Risale-i Nur spreading so widely both at home and abroad, and its conquests, enemies even are becoming friends. Everyone wants to speak with me, but through divine providence I have lost my voice; I cannot speak and see people, because the Risale-i Nur leaves no need for me.

When setting out in response to the invitations to me from six provinces, some friendly officials who understand the Risale-i Nur and my way, stopped us and informed us that the government requested that for now I remain and rest in Emirdağ. In any event, since I cannot endure to speak and see people, their friendly proposal was providential. My true

brothers who have invited me from many provinces should not be upset. Anyway, if I had gone to some provinces and not to others, hundreds of thousands of my true, devoted brothers might have felt offended. They should feel no offence.

Secondly: Evidence that these journeys of mine are in no way concerned with politics is that I have given up politics for the past forty years and have been preoccupied with the Risale-i Nur alone, which is a Qur'anic commentary that is altogether appropriate for the times. The Risale-i Nur has smashed absolute disbelief and has thus acted as a barrier before anarchy and destructive currents. Moreover, in accordance with a meaning of the verse, «No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another» (Q 6:164 etc.), which is a fundamental law of the Qur'an it has taught to the Risale-i Nur, the Risale-i Nur has been most beneficial for this country and nation and public order, since to disturb order and security means causing harm to ninety innocents on account of five criminals. In consequence, I forgive the police who spy on me or cause me trouble. They are the mujâhid preservers of the peace and I happily accept them as brothers. In fact, just as I complied with their turning me back from Ankara, so I offer thanks to God since they were a cause of divine grace. I turned back from Ankara with complete peace of mind.

Thirdly: Because the Risale-i Nur is spreading everywhere and being read and sought eagerly, they wanted to invite me and see me and speak with me. I would have had to visit twenty provinces, but I only went to Ankara, Istanbul, and Konya, where the Risale-i Nur is being printed.

I say this to the friends who sent me back to Emirdağ: their treatment turned out to be an instance of divine grace and mercy for me. I am not annoyed. Only, I have a house I have rented for two years and some belongings in Isparta Province, where I lived for twenty years. The air there is also somewhat beneficial to my illness. With the government's per- mission, I want to stay for a month in Emirdağ and a month in the house I have rented in Isparta.

My Dear Brothers!

Our duty is to act positively; it is not to act negatively. It is solely to serve the cause of belief in accordance with divine pleasure, and not interfere with God's concerns. We are charged with responding with patience and thanks to every difficulty we may meet in the positive service to belief, a consequence of which is the preservation of public order and security.

Taking myself as an example, I say: Formerly I never bowed before tyranny or humiliating treatment. Numerous events established that I could never endure to be treated in that way. For example, not rising to my feet before the commander-in-chief in Russia, and my giving no importance to the pashas' questions in the military court even when under threat of execution, as well as my attitude to four commanders, all show that I never bowed before domination, But these last thirty years, for the sake of acting positively and not acting negatively and not interfering in God's concerns, I have responded with patience and resignation to all the treatment I have received. I have met it with patience and resignation like Jarjis (Upon whom be peace) {[*]:} and those who suffered the extreme difficulties of the Battles of Badr and Uhud.

Yes, for example, I did not even curse a public prosecutor whose eighty-one errors I had proved in court, as a result of whose false accusations the decision was taken against us. For the essential matter at this time is the jihad of the word or moral jihad (cihad-ı mânevî). It is to form a barrier against the moral and spiritual destruction, and to assist internal order and security with all our strength.

Yes, there is a power in our way, but this force is for preserving public order. According to the principle of «No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another» (Q 6:164 etc.) the brother, family, or children of a criminal cannot be held responsible for him. It is because of this that throughout my life we have endeavoured with all our strength to maintain public order. This force may not be employed internally, but only against external aggression. Our duty in accordance with the above verse, is to assist the maintenance of internal order and security with all our strength. It is for

this reason that within the world of Islam internal destructive conflicts damaging public order have been negligible, and arose from differences in interpretation of the law. The most important condition of the jihad of the word is not interfering in God's concerns; that is, to say: "Our duty is to serve; its results are Almighty God's concern. We are charged with carrying out our duty, and are obliged to do so."

Similarly to Jalaluddin Kharazmshah, I have learnt from the Qur'an to say: "My duty is to serve religious belief; it is Almighty God's concern whether or not He makes it successful," and to act with sincerity.

External aggression may be met with force, for the enemy's possessions and dependants are like booty, But this is not the case internally. Internal action should be in accordance with the true meaning of sincerity, and means acting in positive, non-physical (mânevî) fashion against the moral and spiritual (mânevî) destruction. External and internal jihad are completely different. Almighty God has now given me millions of true students. Internally, we shall act positively only to maintain public order and security. The difference at this time between internal and external jihad is truly great.

There is another question which is also of supreme importance. According to the injunctions of the Qur'an, at this time due to the demands of modern low civilization essential needs have risen from four to twenty. As a result of addiction, custom, and habit, inessential needs have become like essential needs. Although one believes in the hereafter, he says: "It's necessary," and because of this gives preference to this world over the hereafter, for worldly benefits and because of the struggle for livelihood,

Forty years ago, in order to accustom me to this world a little, a commander-in-chief sent some high-ranking officers and even some hojas to me. They told me: "As dictated by the rule: 'Necessity makes permissible what is prohibited,' we are now compelled to adopt some of the Europe's principles and imitate some of the requirements of civilization." I told them: "You are grievously deceived. If necessity arises from unlawful deeds, it certainly is not right. It does not make licit what is illicit. If it does not arise from a wrong, that is, if it has not arisen from an unlawful action, it is not harmful. For example, if a man deliberately gets drunk in unlawful fashion and when drunk commits a crime, the judgement will be against him; he will not be considered excused and will pay the penalty. For the necessity resulted from a voluntary wrong action. But if an insane youth shoots someone when in a state of insanity, he is excused; he will receive no penalty, because it was not voluntary." I asked the commander and the men of religion: "What essentials auththere outside having bread to eat and

maintaining a livelihood? Voluntary actions arising from illicit desires and unlawful dealings cannot make what is unlawful lawful. Since things like the cinema, theatre, and dancing are not essential and addiction to them results from a voluntary wrong action, if a person becomes addicted to them, it cannot be a reason for making the illicit licit. Laws whose source is human have also taken this point into consideration, for they differentiate between definite necessity outside the will and matters arising from voluntary unlawful acts. Divine laws differentiate in firmer and more fundamental fashion between these basic matters."

Nevertheless, do not attack those hojas who support innovations, supposing that they are made essential by the times. Do not strike at those unfortunates, who unknowingly act on the supposition of "there being necessity." For this reason we do not employ our force internally. We do not interfere with the unfortunates who oppose us saying "such-and-such has become essential," even if they are hojas. I previously held out on my own against so many opponents, not wearying even a jot, and was successful in serving belief. Although there are now millions of Risale-i Nur students, I still endure all their insults and persecution through acting positively.

We do not consider the world. If we do consider it, we try to assist those involved in it. We assist in positive fashion the preservation of public order and security. Because of facts like these, we have to tolerate it, even if they persecute us.

The Risale-i Nur's spreading everywhere has given rise to the firm conviction that the Democrats support religion. To hamper a single treatise now is directly contrary to the benefits of the country and nation.

A small example of the rule "Necessity arising from a voluntary unlawful action does not make what is unlawful lawful:" there was a confidential treatise the publication of which I prevented. I said that it could be published after my death. Later the courts seized it and studied it; then they acquitted it. The Court of Appeal upheld the acquittal. And in order to pre- serve public order internally and so that no harm should come to the ninety-nine innocents out of a hundred people, I gave permission to the publishers, saying: "Said may publish it on consulting with others."

Third Matter: Absolute disbelief is now trying to spread such a hell that no disbeliever in the universe should approach it. An inner meaning of the Qur'an being a "Mercy to all the worlds" is this, that just as it is mercy for Muslims, so, by offering the possibility of belief in the hereafter and belief in God, it is a subtle sign of its being a mercy to all unbelievers and all the world and mankind. For it saves them to an extent from that immaterial

hell in this world too. But now the misguided sort of science and philosophy - that is, the sort which is not reconciled with the Qur'an and has strayed from the path and opposes the Qur'an, absolute disbelief - has begun to be spread in the form of communism. Since it has begun to be inculcated and spread by means of dissemblers and atheists, and some extremist irreligious politicians, covertly as communism in such a way that will result in anarchy, it is not possible to live now without religion. The saying, "A nation cannot continue to exist without religion" alludes to this point. Absolute disbelief is not viable, it cannot be lived. That is why the All-Wise Qur'an has taught the Risale-i Nur students this age in miracuIous fashion that they should form a barrier against absolute unbelief and anarchy. And so they have. Yes, what has protected us against this current, which has overrun half Europe and the Balkans is this lesson of the Wise Qur'an; it has formed a barrier against its assault and in this way found a solution for the danger.

This means that it is not possible for a Muslim to embrace another religion and become a Christian or a Jew, or especially a communist. For if a Christian becomes a Muslim, he loves Jesus (Upon whom be peace) even more. And if a Jew becomes a Muslim, he loves Moses (Upon whom be peace) even more. But if a Muslim breaks away from the chain of Muhammad (Upon whom be blessings and peace) and gives up his religion, he will not embrace any other religion; he becomes an anarchist and nothing remains in his spirit that may lead to perfection and attainment. His con- science is corrupted and he becomes poison in the life of society.

It is because of this that, thanks be to God, a Qur'anic miracle, a lesson of the Qur'an called the Risale-i Nur, has begun to spread among the heroic Arab and Turkish peoples. Alluded to by the All-Wise Qur'an and in the Arabic and Turkish languages, it will save this age. Sixteen years ago it had saved the belief of six hundred thousand people, and now it has been established that the number exceeds millions. That is to say, just as the Risale-i Nur has been a means of saving mankind from anarchy to an extent, so it has been a means of uniting the Turks and Arabs, the two heroic brothers of Islam, and disseminating these fundamental laws of the Qur'an, as even its enemies have confirmed.

Absolute disbelief is opposing the Qur'an at the present time. Absolute disbelief comprises a hell in this world that is greater than Hell itself. For since death is not killed and every day thirty thousand human deaths testify to its continuance, thinking of their own eternal annihilation and that of all their relatives of the past and future, those who fall into absolute disbelief, or those who support it, suffer torments ten times severer than Hell. That

is, owing to their absolute disbelief, they feel that hellish torment in their hearts. For a person is happy at the happiness of his relatives and is tormented at their torments, and due to the beliefs of the deniers of God, all their happiness is destroyed and replaced by torment. Thus at this time there is one single way dispelling this immaterial hell from people's hearts in this world, and that is the All-Wise Qur'an, and the Risale-i Nur and its various parts, which is a miracle of the Qur'an in accordance with the understanding of the age.

Now we offer thanks to God that one party among the political parties has realized this to an extent for it has not prevented the publication of those works. It has not hindered the Risale-i Nur, which proves that the truths of belief gain a non-material heaven for believers in this world; it has permitted its publication and given up pressurizing its publishers.

My brothers! My illness is very severe, Perhaps I shall die soon or be prevented from speaking altogether, as I am sometimes now. Therefore, saying that they are the lesser of two evils, my Nur brothers of the here- after should not attack certain unfortunate, mistaken people because of their mistakes. They should always act positively. Acting negatively is not our concern. For action internally may not be negative, Since some of the politicians cause no harm to the Risale-i Nur and are a little tolerant, look on them as the lesser of two evils. Cause them no harm and do them good, so that you may be saved from a greater evil.

Also, internal jihad of the word is to work against the moral and spiritual devastation. It is not material or physical service that is needed, but non-physical and moral. For this reason we do not interfere with the politicians, nor have the politicians any right to busy themselves with us!

For example, I have forgiven a certain party despite its having inflicted thousands of sorts of difficulties on me, and even thirty years of imprisonment and persecution. And I have been instrumental in ninety-five per cent of those unfortunates being saved from insult, criticism, and oppression. For according to the verse, «No bearer of burdens can bear the burden of another,» the fault was ascribed to only five per cent. The party which opposed us has no right whatsoever now to complain about us.

In one court, even, attempts were made to convict us, seventy people, as a result of the delusions of spies and informers and to convict me due to misunderstandings and carelessness and eighty errors by attaching false meanings to certain parts of the Risale-i Nur - as had been proved in a number of courts. But while a prisoner, one of your brothers who had been subject to the worst attacks saw the public prosecutor's three-year-old child out of the window. He asked and they told him, "It is the public prosecutor's

daughter." For the sake of that innocent child, he did not curse the prosecutor. Indeed, since the troubles he had inflicted had resulted in advertising the Risale-i Nur, that non-material miracle, and in furthering its dissemination, they had been transformed into mercy.

My Brothers! Perhaps I shall soon die. This age has another sickness; sicknesses like egotism, self-centredness, self-advertisement, the desire to pass one's life comfortably in accordance with the fantasies of modern civilization, and to be obsessed with this. The first and most important lesson the Risale-i Nur has learnt from the Qur'an is the necessity to give up egotism, selfishness, and self-advertisement, so that the saving of belief may be served with true sincerity. Thanks be to God, numerous people have emerged who have gained that maximum sincerity. There are many who sacrifice their egotism and reputation and good name for the smallest matter of belief. For example, when the enemies of one unfortunate student of the Risale-i Nur became friends, divine mercy made him lose his voice because their conversations with him increased. Also, the looks of those who consider him admiringly strike him like the evil eye, and cause him pain. Shaking hands even causes him distress as though he had received a blow. He was asked: "What is this condition of yours? You have millions of friends; why do you not meet with them for their sake?" He replied:

"Since our way is maximum sincerity, it necessitates preferring a single, eternal matter of belief to rule over the whole world even, if it were to be given, let alone egotism and selfishness. For example, in the midst of the enemy's fire in the front lines in the war, he gave greater importance to a single point of a single letter of a single verse of the All-Wise Qur'an, and ordered his scribe, Habib, when under the rain of the bullets: 'Take out the notebook!' and dictated that point to him on horseback. That is to say, he did not abandon a single letter or point of the Qur'an in the face of the enemy bullets; he preferred it to saving his own life."

We asked that brother of ours where he had learnt such extraordinary sincerity. He said: From two points:

The First is the Glory of the World (Upon whom be blessings and peace) commanding in a Hadith, despite the enemy's assault at one of times of the prescribed prayers during the Battle of Badr, the most wondrous battle in the history of Islam, that half of the mujâhids should lay aside their arms and join the congregation, so as not to be deprived of the benefits of the congregation, and that they should pray two rakats and then the other half should do likewise. Since there is permission to do this in battle, and since the benefit of praying in congregation has been established by the Prophet's (UWBP) practices, complying with that practice was

given priority over the most momentous of worldly affairs. Taking one small point from such a hint of the Absolute Master (UWBP), we follow it with all our strength and spirit.

Secondly: In many places of his Jaljalûtiyya and at the end of it, Imam 'Ali (May God be pleased with him), the champion of Islam, asked for a protector, so that heedlessness should not encroach on his sense of the divine presence during the five daily prayers, He beseeched the divine court for a protecting spirit being, solely so that an assault by his enemies should not occur to him and the thought of his very numerous enemies attacking him should not hinder his sense of the divine presence during the Prayers.

Thus, this wretched brother of yours, whose life at this time is afflicted with self-advertisement, learnt these two small points from the Reason for the World's Creation (UWBP and the Champion of Islam. Attaching importance to the Qur'an's mysteries, which are so necessary at this time, he did not think of protecting his own life in battle, and expounded one fine point of one letter of the Qur'an.