Sirs! Why are you concerning yourselves with me and with the Risale-i Nur? I tell you certainly that it is outside my duty and that of the Risale-i Nur even to think of you, let alone struggle against you. For the Risale-i Nur and its genuine students are striving to perform a service of the greatest
importance for the generations of fifty years hence, and to save them and this nation and country from grave danger. Those who are now struggling against us will then be dust in their graves. If to suppose the impossible that striving for well-being and happiness had been oppositional struggle, it would in any case have been futile to bother with those doomed to be dust in the grave.
Just as the laxity in social morality, religion, and the national character displayed by the libertarians [of the Second Constitutional Period] has resulted now twenty to thirty years later in the present state of religion and morality; so you may surely understand what the state fifty years hence will be of this religious, honourable, and heroic nation's sons in regard to religion and social morality. Although this self-sacrificing nation has for a thousand years displayed matchless heroism in the service of the Qur'an, the coming generations will besmirch its shining past; indeed, will destroy it. We therefore know it to be a national and patriotic duty of paramount importance to convey a truth like the Risale-i Nur to some of those people of the future in order to save them from such a ghastly decline, and so we think of them and not of the people now.
Sirs! It is true that the Risale-i Nur looks only to the hereafter and it's aim is God's pleasure and to save the belief of people, and its students strive to save themselves and others from eternal non-being and everlasting incarceration, but it also performs a vital service of secondary importance that concerns this world, which is to save this nation and country from the danger of anarchy and the wretched members of coming generations from absolute misguidance. For Muslims do not resemble other people; one who renounces his religion and loses his Islamic character falls into absolute misguidance and becomes an anarchist who can no longer be controlled.
Fifty per cent of people now received the old Islamic upbringing and fifty per cent are unconcerned with national and Islamic traditions, but in fifty years' time ninety per cent will follow only their own whims and desires and lead the nation and country into anarchy. The thought of this calamitous possibility and the search for a solution drove me twenty years ago to give up politics and prevented me entirely from struggling with the people of this century. So too it prevented the Risale-i Nur and its students from evincing any interest in current events; they neither engage in any struggle nor are involved in any way.
Since the truth is this, the courts should consider it their primary duty to protect the Risale-i Nur and its students, not to incriminate me and them. For they are defending a primary right of this nation and country, and in opposition to them, this nation and country's real enemies attack
the Risale-i Nur and confuse the courts, driving them to perpetrate a ghastly injustice. Here I shall describe one or two examples:
For Example: Because of a letter that conveyed the greetings of my friends in prison and was sent to a man here so that ten liras, which was the price of an Arabic treatise of mine, should be given to a person in Isparta who held those copies and had paid for the printing costs, both the judiciary and the government harassed me, and they searched the man who was the go-between. It surely does not befit the high standing of the judiciary to blow up to this extent a commonplace letter of no importance, the only correspondence in a period of six months.
Second Example: It is hardly in keeping with the government of this province to scare with an official campaign of propaganda everyone, even his helpers, away from an elderly, ailing guest like myself, who is a stranger and has been acquitted of all charges, and to make him utterly wretched. With its sound judgement, it surely should not stoop to making a mountain out of a molehill in this unprecedented way and causing everyone consternation by asking: "Who does he meet with? Who goes around with him?"
There are numerous other such examples that cause astonishment to those who know about them.
Sirs! It is easy to dispel misguidance and misconduct if they arise from ignorance, but if they arise from science and knowledge, they are extremely difficult to eliminate. Since at the present time misguidance arises from science and learning, a work like the Risale-i Nur that is in every way perfect is needed to save those of the coming generations who fall into misguidance, so that they may resist it. Evidence that the Risale-i Nur can do this is that not one of my many, fierce opponents or the men of learning who have received its blows has been able to refute or counter it; nor have three courts of law or the experts' committee appointed by the central government been able to find in nine months a single matter in the hundred books of which the Risale-i Nur consists to indict us. Furthermore, the treatises entitled The Qur'anic Signs and The Predictions of Imam 'Ali and Gawth al-A'zam (İhbarat-ı Gaybiye-i Aleviye ve Gavsiye), which have induced complete certainty in the rigorous Risale-i Nur students, have
put their signatures to the importance of the Risale-i Nur this age, and to its acceptability.
It is the duty of the courts to defend rights and to halt the aggression of the lawless, It has been established that the hundred parts of the Risale-i Nur have for the last twenty years served the well-being of a hundred thousand people, and in ten years two courts, the central government, and the police of several provinces - and in connection with Denizli Court, nine months of scrutiny - have found nothing harmful for the nation and country or indictable in any of my papers and writings, both private and otherwise. Most certainly, therefore, the Risale-i Nur possesses universal, powerful rights in this country. So I remind you that it in no way befits the nature of the judiciary or the reality of justice to disregard such important rights and to ignore by confiscating it as though it were mere scraps of paper, the great injustice towards the nation and the unfortunates who are in need of having their faith strengthened, while attaching considerable importance to the minor rights of some inferior wretch.
We are fearful that it may may attract divine wrath if the Risale-i Nur is attacked while the works of atheists like Dr. Dozy are not interfered with. May Almighty God grant you fair-mindedness and compassion, and us patience and fortitude. Amen.
In accordance with «And consult them in matters [of import]» (Q 3: 159), I am in need of consulting with my brothers.
My Dear, Loyal Brothers!
Now I am faced with a fait accompli. The order has arrived to give me a daily allowance of two and a half liras and to prepare a house for me again, fully furnished and according to my tastes. But my lifelong guiding principle of fifty to sixty years obliges me not to accept it. It's true that for a couple of years in the Darü'l-Hikmeti'l-İslamiye I accepted a salary, but I gave most of it gratis to the nation by spending it on printing my books; I returned to the nation what belonged to it. If I now have to accept this so that harm should not come to you and to the Risale-i Nur, I shall put it by
to return to the nation at a future date. I shall spend only what is absolutely necessary on myself, the minimum. I heard that if I do refuse it, they, and especially those who were trying to fix the pension on my behalf, will be offended, and those who oppose me will say that I'm meeting my expenses from elsewhere. The wretches do not know the extraordinary blessings of frugality, and they have not seen that five kurush-worth of bread suffices me for two days and so are beset by completely baseless suspicions. If I do accept the pension, my life of seventy years will be offended, and it is possible that Imam 'Ali (May God be pleased with him) will also be dis- pleased with me, since making predictions of the present, he aimed blows at religious scholars who embrace innovations avidly seeking salaries and thus losing their sincerity, It is possible too that the true, pure sincerity of the Risale-i Nur will accuse me of insincerity. I am really quite bewildered as to what to do. I have heard that they will pressurize me even more if I do not accept it, and will perhaps curtail the Risale-i Nur's complete freedom. It seems even that their objective with the present oppression is to force me to accept their offers of the allowance. Since the situation is this, in accordance with the rule: «Necessity makes permissible what is forbidden,» if it is really necessary, God willing it will not cause harm. But I did refuse it and refer it to you for your opinion.
My dear brothers! Don't worry about me. I suffer no distress because I see a trace of divine mercy in every difficulty and a flash of divine favour. Your endeavour and seriousness and assistance dispel all distress and are a source of perpetual joy.
Here, hardworking, devoted Mustafa Acet, who resembles my brother Abdülmecid and whose family is my family, and the industrious Ceylan, who is both a young Husrev and a young Abdurrahman, together serve the Risale-i Nur to their utmost.
My Dear, Loyal Brothers!
I have sent you another part of The Fruits of Belief, about the angels. I sent two legal authorizations to Denizli on the chairman of the court saying that my books would be returned to me. Don't be anxious that here I am being held in the severest solitary confinement; divine favour persists.
It is noteworthy that while the Risale-i Nur was being read and written out freely here, quite unusually the winter was as mild as summer, as I heard from a number of people, but as soon as attacks were launched at it
and it could not be copied out, a severely cold spell ensued. Similarly, as though to make believe those who did not believe that the earthquakes were connected with the inactivity of the Risale-i Nur, which had been shown in the conversation written in the form of a complaint to Afyon, they began at exactly the same time as the attacks and the related tremors are still intermittently continuing, as warnings.
Furthermore, we see that whenever the Risale-i Nur is subject to attack a sort of general fear is felt. This means that the Risale-i Nur is a certain means of preserving this country from calamities. Since this is the case, those who love this country and nation should ensure its freedom and read it and have it read.
Only on one occasion have I accepted the allowance, and that for eight days out of what was allotted to me, to pay off the debts of my expenses. I told them that I don't want any more.
My Dear, Loyal, and Totally Steadfast Brothers!
The parts of the Risale-i Nur with which our martyr is happily busy in the Intermediate Realm, which were as though written to work in his place and to make me work, arrived just at the right time, together with the three sweet fruits of the Medrese-i Yusufiye and three portions (hizb) of the Qur'an, which produce thousands of sacred fruits.
It will be appropriate if two heroic people write out the Eleventh Topic in the same way that they wrote out the two Fruits so well and if they are sent together with four or five copies of the Hizb-i Nûriye, if there are any, and five or six copies of the Hizb-i Kur'aniye. And Husrev's letter should be appended to the Eleventh Topic.
This time, I am sending you a piece about the subtle points showing the inimitability of two or three Qur'anic verses as a companion and an addendum to Ayat al-Kursi (Q 2:255). It is incomplete since I have not yet received any sign that I should complete it. It was written in great haste.
Significant mysteries appeared, but it was not written clearly and openly so as to avoid worldly matters. If you like, you can add it as a supplement to the Addendum at the end of the Eleventh Topic. You can write it out, as well as the piece on Sura al-Falaq (Q 113), as addenda to the treatise, The Miraculousness of the Qur'an (İ'caz-ı Kur'an Risalesi).
My brothers! Don't be anxious, it seems absolutely certain to me that we are the recipients of grace and that outside our own will and power we are being employed by a hidden hand in a most important task. On numerous occasions we have manifested the meaning of the verse: «It may be that you detest a thing, but it is good for you» (Q 2:216). In this work, the hardships are few and the recompense, great.
My Dear, Loyal Brothers!
I have received your gifts, like felicitous fruits of Paradise, and your good news from the region of Denizli. The many tasks I have on hand at the moment do not allow me to say much; I have had to cut this short and write quickly since the person who brought it is leaving at once.
Firstly: The one thousand three hundred and forty-four for «a handhold most sure» (Q 2:256) at the beginning of the piece is wrong. But if the two hamzas and the elongation are not counted it is not wrong; it is most meaningful. One thousand three hundred and forty-seven is correct, which was anyway written at the end of the piece. The remaining section is both very signficant, but because it looks to this world and the «'alaq» in «Indeed man is overweening» (Q 96:6) looks to the idol in the piece, it has not been written for now.
And Secondly: The index of the Fourth Ray, about «For us God suffices» (Q 3: 173), should take the place of the Fourteenth Hope of the Treatise for the Elderly. It does seem to be appropriate and is indeed a hope.
Thirdly: The Twenty-Eighth Point of the Twenty-Eighth Flash should be placed at the end of the Fifteenth Word, not in the same index, for they discuss the same truths.
Fourthly: I have corrected the Flashes [Collection] that the late Hâfız Ali wrote out. God willing, it will be sent to you soon,
While correcting the paradaisical prison Fruits of those happy heroes recently, the treatise seemed to me to be so powerful and valuable that I shouted out: "If the distress we suffered in prison had been a hundred times greater, the benefits produced by The Fruits of Belief have been a hundred times more numerous. The most obdurate people have come to believe through it, and it has caused itself to be read in the widest circles.
I exclaimed: "You unfortunates who torment me! You do what you like, it doesn't bother me. Whatever we suffered was insignificant; it was pure divine favour and mercy!" and was consoled.
We send greetings to all the Risale-i Nur students and pray for their well-being.