I saw that it was written on the back of the last report concerning the investigations of the examining magistrate: “On the pretext that its explanations of three verses against civilization were not in conformity with the present Civil Code, four months ago the decision was taken by the Cabinet to officially prohibit the distribution of The Miraculousness of the Qur’an, that is, the Twenty-Fifth Word.”
My reply to this: The Miraculousness of the Qur’an is now part of Zülfikâr, and on only two pages of the four hundred pages of Zülfikâr are explanations of the three verses, which reply in a way that cannot be objected to, to some of civilization’s criticisms of the Qur’an, and were included in three of my old treatises. One of the verses is about the veiling of women; the second, And to the mother, a sixth,1 is about inheritance; as is the third, And for the man a portion equal to that of two women.2 I expounded the wisdom of these verses’ meanings in a way that would silence the philosophers, in two pages twenty years ago, and in my other treatises thirty years ago. It is therefore our legal right, instead of banning the four-hundred-page Zülfikâr on the suspicion that it was written now, to excise those two pages from it and return the book to us — just as if a letter contains one or two harmful words, those words are cut out and the publication of the rest is permitted. We seek our rights from your just court in this matter.
Since nobody could find the opportunity to come to read to me the forty-page indictment, which was given me a month ago, they read it to me today, 11th June, for the first time. I listened to it, and I saw that the list of my objections which I wrote for you two months ago, and the Appendix and Addendum to my objections of nearly a month ago, had been given to both six departments of government in Ankara, and to your office. Those objections refute and demolish that indictment. I see absolutely no necessity to rewrite the objections to it. I only say now, in order to recall to the prosecution, the following two or three points:
The reason I did not take the indictment into consideration and reply to it was to avoid insulting the honour of the three just courts that had acquitted us and being in contempt of them. For those courts acquitted us after studying in the minutest detail all the points in the present indictment. To completely disregard their acquittals is to insult the honour of the judiciary.
Qur’an, 4:11.
Qur’an, 4:176.