months of close investigation in Eskişehir Court, only fifteen words were found in a hundred treatises of the Risale-i Nur that were the cause of criticism, and now on only two pages of the four-hundred-page Zülfikâr are explanations of Qur’anic verses about inheritance and the veiling of women, which were written thirty years ago and do not now conform to the Civil Code. This proves decisively that they have no worldly aim, and everyone is in need of them. The four-hundred-page Zülfikâr, which everyone has need of, may not be confiscated because of two pages. Those two pages should be excised and the collection returned to us; it is our right that it is returned.
If you say like those who suppose irreligion to be politics of a sort and in this episode have said: “You are spoiling our civilization and our pleasure with these treatises of yours...”
I reply: It is a universal principle accepted worldwide that no nation can continue in existence without religion. Particularly if it is absolute unbelief, it gives rise to torments more grievous in this world than Hell, as has been proved with complete certainty in A Guide For Youth. That treatise has now been printed officially. If, God forbid, a Muslim apostasizes, he falls into absolute disbelief; he cannot remain in a state of ‘doubting unbelief,’ which keeps him alive to an extent. He also cannot be like irreligious Europeans. And in respect of the pleasure of life, he falls infinitely lower than the animals, for they have no sense of the past and future. Because of his misguidance, the deaths of all past and future beings, and his being eternally separated from them, overwhelm his heart with continuous pain. If belief enters his heart and he comes to believe, those innumerable friends are suddenly raised to life. They say through the tongue of disposition: “We did not die and we were not annihilated,” transforming his hellish state into Paradise-like pleasure. Since the reality is this, I warn you: do not contest the Risale-i Nur, for it relies on the Qur’an. It cannot be defeated. It would be most regretable for this country.1 It would go somewhere else and illuminate there. Also, if I had heads to the number of the hairs on it and every day one was cut off, I would not bow this head, which is devoted to the Qur’an, to atheism and absolute disbelief, I would not and could not give up this service of belief and the Risale-i Nur.
Certainly, any faults in the statement of someone who has been a recluse for twenty years will be disregarded. He is defending the Risale-i Nur, so it cannot be said he deviated from the subject. Eskişehir Court found nothing after studying its hundred treatises, both confidential and
The severe earthquakes which occurred the four times the Risale-i Nur was contested proved that it would be “most regretable for this country.”