The Third Matter with which I am charged:
Incitement to breach public security in Emirdağ. My objection to this is as follows:
Firstly is my irrefutable list of objections, which has been presented to the court here and to six departments of government in Ankara with this court’s knowledge and permission. I am now stating it exactly in answer to the indictment.
Secondly: As is testified to by all those who met with me in Emirdağ and is confirmed by its people and police, in my solitude I avoided involvement in politics with all my power. I even gave up writing and corresponding with others. I wrote nothing apart from two pieces, one on repetition in the Qur’an, the other about the angels. And I used to write one letter a week to one place to encourage people in the Risale-i Nur. In fact, in three years I wrote only three or four letters to my own brother, who is a Mufti and for twenty years was with me as my student, and was very anxious about me, and sent me congratulations for the religious festivals. And although for twenty years I have not written once to my brother who is in my native region, I am accused in the indictment of breaching security, and once again, of “opposing the reforms.” In reply I say this:
The fact that in twenty years six courts of law and the police of ten provinces connected with the matter have not recorded any incident involving the disturbance of public order and breaching of security in connection with the twenty thousand or perhaps a hundred thousand people who enthusiastically read the twenty thousand copies of the Risale-i Nur, shows that it looks on a single possibility out of thousands as being established fact. But if there is no sign of anything concerning one possibility out of two or three, there can be no crime. And it is not one possibility out of thousands, but everyone including the prosecutor who attacks me, could kill numerous people; they could disturb public peace and order on account of communism, and breach security. That is to say, it is contempt of court and the law to put forward extraordinary and exaggerated possibilities in place of events.
Furthermore, every government has opponents. It is no crime to oppose a government purely intellectually. The government looks to the hand, not to the heart. Especially someone who has performed great services for this country and nation and caused no harm, and latterly played no part in the life of society, but has been made to live in absolute isolation, and whose works have been appreciated and applauded in the most