political society and sufi order and the Risale-i Nur charges, and only making a pretext of a short piece called Treatise On Islamic Dress, gave sentences of six months to fifteen out of a hundred students, not in accordance with the law but arbitrarily. And although until the investigations had been completed they remained in prison for four and a half months, that is, they served prison sentences of one and a half months, and ten years later Denizli Court again on a number of pretexts like organizing a political society and founding a sufi order, and after scrutinizing closely twenty years’ worth of letters and writings, sent five boxes of books to Ankara Criminal Court, and although those books and letters were the subject of two years’ close scrutiny by Ankara and Denizli Courts, they passed a unanimous decision for their acquittal concerning the political society and sufi order1 and other pretexts, and returned all the books to their owners. They also acquitted Said and his companions. So anyone who has not lost his humanity will understand just how illegal it is to look on him as a political activist and accuse him of being a plotter, and to provoke the officers of the court against him.
The Fifth: Because of the compassion which is the basis of my way and that of the Risale-i Nur and for thirty years has been a principle by which I have lived, so that no harm comes to the innocent I do not censure the tyrants who persecute me, let alone cursing them. Even when angry at some of those depraved wretches who oppress me out of vicious hatred, or even the irreligious tyrants, my compassion prevents me from responding with a curse, let alone physically. For those cruel tyrants have parents and children; I do nothing to them so that no material harm comes to those four or five elderly unfortunates and innocents. Sometimes I even forgive them. It is because of this compassion that I absolutely never interfere in government or disturb public order. Moreover, I have recommended this so strongly to all my friends that some of the fair-minded police of three provinces have admitted that “these Risale-i Nur students are police of a sort; they preserve order and maintain public security.” There are thousands of witnesses to this fact, and they have confirmed it through twenty years’ experience and thousands of students have corrob
The basis and aim of the Risale-i Nur is certain belief and the essential reality of the Qur’an. For this reason, three courts of law have acquitted it in regard to being a tarikat. Furthermore, not one person has said during these twenty years: “Said has given me tarikat [instruction].” Also, a way to which for a thousand years most of this nation’s forefathers have been bound may not made something for which [the members of the nation] are answerable. Also, those who combat successfully those covert dissemblers who attach the name of tarikat to the reality of Islam and attack this nation’s religion, may not themselves be accused of being a tarikat. As for a society or community, it is a fraternity which look to the hereafter within Islamic brotherhood. It is not a political society, as three courts have ruled. They have acquitted it in that respect.