about one. As is testified to by all my close friends and those I met with, for a full two years in Kastamonu and seven years in other places I knew nothing of the conflicts and wars in the world, and whether or not peace had been declared, or who else was involved in the fighting, and was not curious about it and did not ask, and for nearly three years did not listen to the radio that was playing close by to me. But I triumphantly confronted with the Risale-i Nur absolute unbelief, which destroys eternal life and transforms the life of this world even into compounded pain and suffering; and with the Risale-i Nur, which issued from the Qur’an, have saved the belief of a hundred thousand such people, as has been attested by them, and for a hundred thousand people have transformed death into discharge papers. Is there any law demanding that such a person is harassed to this degree, and made to despair, and by making him weep to make hundreds of thousands of those innocent brothers of his weep too? What advantage is there in it? Is it not unprecedented tyranny in the name of justice? Is it not an unprecedented miscarriage of justice on account of the law?
If you accuse me like some of the officials who searched my house, saying: “You and one or two of your treatises oppose the regime and our principles...”
T h e A n s w e r , Firstly: These new principles of yours have absolutely no right to enter the retreats of recluses.
Secondly: To reject something is one thing, not to accept it wholeheartedly is something else, and not to act in accordance with it is something quite else. Those in authority look to the hand, not to the heart. All governments have vehement opponents who do not interfere in government and public order. In fact, the Christians who were under the Caliph ‘Umar’s (May God be pleased with him) rule were not interfered with although they rejected the law of the Shari‘a and the Qur’an. According to the principles of freedom of thought and conscience, so long as they do not upset the government, if some of the Risale-i Nur students do not accept the regime and your principles on scholarly grounds and act in opposition to them, and even if they are inimical to the regime’s chief, they may not be touched legally. As for the treatises, I said they were confidential and prevented their publication. In fact, in regard to the treatise that was the cause of this affair, only once or twice in eight years in Kastamonu did someone bring me a copy. The same day I put it away somewhere. Now you are forcibly publicizing it, and it has become famous.
It is well-known that if there is some fault in a letter, only the faulty words are censored, and the rest are permitted. As a result of the four