for a person not to know the people he is contesting and not to be curious about them, for him not to know if they are friend or foe, and to attach no importance to finding out? It is clearly understood from this that they are concocting completely baseless pretexts to convict me whatever happens.
Since that is how it is, I say not to the court here, but to those unjust people: I don’t give tuppence for the severest penalty you can inflict on me; it has no importance. For I am seventy years old and at the door of the grave. It is great good fortune for me to exchange one or two years of persecuted, innocent life for the rank of martyrdom. Through the thousands of proofs of the Risale-i Nur, I believe absolutely certainly that for us death consists of discharge papers. If we are to be executed, one hour’s distress would be the key to eternal happiness and mercy. But you unjust people who confuse the judiciary on account of atheism and preoccupy the Government with us for no reason! Know certainly that you will be condemned to eternal annihilation and everlasting solitary confinement, and tremble! I see you will be made to pay for it many times over. I pity you even. Yes, death, which has emptied this city a hundred times into the graveyard, certainly has greater demands than life. And the question of people being saved from being executed by it is the most pressing and most important they face and their most essential and certain need. Even lunatics, therefore, would understand that in the eyes of reality and justice those who accuse on petty pretexts the Risale-i Nur students, who have found this solution for themselves, and the Risale-i Nur, which provides it supported by thousands of proofs, themselves become the object of accusation.
There are three matters which deceive these unjust people, leading them to suspect the Risale-i Nur students are a political society, with which they have absolutely no connection:
The First: Ever since early days, my students have been passionately attached to me, like brothers, and this has given rise to suspicions of a political society.
The Second: Some of the Risale-i Nur students have acted like the groups within the Islamic community, the same as everywhere and as is permitted by the laws of the Republic, and this has been supposed to be a society. But the intention of those three or four students was not some sort of political society, it was purely sincere brotherhood in the service of belief and a solidarity which looks to the hereafter.
The Third: Since those unjust people know themselves to be misguided and lovers of the life of this world, and since they find some of the laws of the land convenient for themselves, they say to themselves: “Doubtless, Said and his friends are opposed to us and to the laws of the