presidents of the republic. But it was not some meaningless title; they were leaders of a religious republic the meaning of which was true justice and the freedom of the Shari‘a.”
Mr. Prosecutor and Members of the Court! You are accusing me of holding an idea the opposite of which I have held for fifty years. If you are asking about the secular republic, what I understand by it is that secularism means being unbiased; that is, in accordance with the principle of freedom of conscience, it refers to a government that does not interfere with religiously-minded and pious people, the same as it does not interfere with the irreligious and dissolute. I have withdrawn from political and social life for ten, and now its twenty, years. I do not know the state of the Government of the Republic. If, God forbid, it has taken on a fearsome form whereby, on account of irreligion, it promulgates laws indicting those who work for their belief and lives in the hereafter, I proclaim to you fearlessly and warn you: if I had a thousand lives, I would be ready to sacrifice all of them for belief and the hereafter. Do whatever you like, my last word is For us God suffices and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs. In the face of your sentencing me unjustly to capital punishment or life imprisonment I say: as the Risale-i Nur has discovered and proved certainly, I am not being executed but discharged from my duties; I am going to the world of light and abode of bliss. As for you, you unfortunates who persecute us on behalf of misguidance! Since I know that you are being sentenced to eternal annihilation and everlasting solitary confinement, I am prepared to surrender up my spirit with perfect ease of mind, having taken my revenge on you completely.
Prisoner
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In His Name, be He glorified!
Sirs!
I have formed the certain opinion as a result of numerous indications that we have been attacked not for ‘breaching public security by exploiting religious feelings’ on behalf of the Government, but behind a tissue of lies, on behalf of atheism, because of our belief and our service to belief and public order. One proof of this out of many is that despite twenty thousand people reading and accepting the twenty thousand copies of the parts of the Risale-i Nur over twenty years, public security has not been breached by students of the Risale-i Nur on any occasion whatsover, and