ple of innovation who have deviated from the straight path of religion, I want the answer to six questions.
T h e F i r s t
Every government in the world, every people which rules, and even cannibals or the chief of a band of brigands, have some principle, some law, by which they rule. So according to which principle do you carry out this extraordinary aggression? Show your law! Or do you accept as the law the arbitrary whims of a handful of contemptible officials? Because no law can interrupt private worship in that way; there cannot be such a law!
T h e S e c o n d
On what force do you rely that you are so bold as to violate the principle of freedom of conscience, which governs almost everywhere in mankind, especially in this age of freedom and in civilized circles, and to treat it lightly and so indirectly to insult mankind and dismiss their objections? What power do you have that you attack religion and the people of religion in this way as though you had taken irreligion as a religion for yourselves in bigoted fashion, although by calling yourselves secular you proclaim that you will interfere with neither religion nor irreligion? Such a thing will not remain secret! You will have to answer for it! So what answer will you give? Although you could not hold out against the objections of the smallest of twenty governments, you try to violate by force freedom of conscience, as though you completely disregard the objections of twenty governments.
T h e T h i r d
According to what principle do you propose to people like me who follow the Shafi‘i school of law, the Hanafi school, in a way opposed to the elevatedness and purity of that school, due to the false fatwas of certain corrupt religious scholars who have sold their consciences to gain the world? If, after abrogating the Shafi‘i school, which has millions of followers, and making them all follow the Hanafi school, it is forcibly proposed to me in tyrannical fashion, it may perhaps be said that it is a principle of irreligious people like you. Otherwise it is arbitrary and despicable, and we do not follow the whims of people such as that, and we do not recognize them!
T h e F o u r t h
In accordance with which principle do you propose through a corrupt, innovating fatwa, to “perform the iqama in Turkish” in a way completely contrary to Turkish nationalism, which is sincerely religious and sincerely