and the hereafter, it is not confrontation with the worldly. And since the sharpness particular to these very insignificant one or two treatises was not intentional —we bumped against the worldly while advancing towards our goal— it certainly does not infer political prejudice. And since possibilities are one thing and occurrences are something else, and what we have been accused of is “possibly” disturbing public order, not having disturbed it, it is meaningless, for anyone may kill someone else. And since over a period of twenty years in their scrupulous investigations into twenty thousand people and thousands of copies and letters, and in their searches, neither Eskişehir, nor Kastamonu, nor Isparta, nor Denizli could find anything constituting a real crime, Eskişehir Court was compelled to find us guilty because of one short treatise under one article of an ‘elastic’ law, and could only give six-month sentences to fifteen people out of a hundred in such a way that they should have sentenced all who teach religion. I wonder if the twenty confidential letters one of your people had written over a year were scrutinized, wouldn’t they contain twenty incriminating sentences which would shame him? But the fact that in twenty thousand copies of the treatises and letters from twenty thousand people they could not find twenty truly incriminating sentences shows that the Risale-i Nur’s aim is solely the hereafter. It has no business with this world.
Ninth Principle: As with the matters which Denizli Court’s just prosecutor included in the indictment because of the unfair and superficial records of other places, so with Afyon Court —as indicated by what we experienced while being questioned— pretexts have been made so that we have been charged concerning the same matters, and undated letters, and correspondence over twenty, fifteen, and ten years, and the Fifth Ray —decisive answers about which are found in the Third Principle above and in the Second Question of my petition above— and four or five treatises out of the hundred and thirty of the Risale-i Nur, and a number of letters and treatises which were scrutinized by Eskişehir Court and for which the sentences were served, were later covered by the pardon and were acquitted by Denizli Court. Can it be said about someone who with a speech outside the War Ministry during the Thirty-First of March Incident brought to order eight battalions which had not heeded the Shaykh al-Islam and ‘ulama, that he strove for eight years —as stated by the police report— and only succeeded in deceiving twenty or thirty people? For instance, in the large town of Kastamonu he was able to hoodwink only five people? For during the Denizli affair, in Kastamonu they pulled out all my papers and books, both confidential and otherwise, from under the firewood, and after studying them for three months could find no one