and wretched and the object of fearsome attacks, that prosecutor, who does not even know how many Suras there are in the Qur’an, said: “Although the Risale-i Nur attempts to expound the Qur’an and interpret Hadiths, it has no scholarly substance or value in teaching its readers in a part of it...” It is understood just how far his criticisms are from the law, reality, justice and equity.
I also make this complaint to you, that although for two hours you made us listen to the entire forty-page indictment, which contains hundreds of errors and wounds our hearts, despite my insistence you did not allow me two minutes to read one and a half pages in reply, which were the complete truth. In the name of justice I therefore request that you permit me to read my entire list of objections.
Thirdly: Every government has opponents. But so long as they do not disturb public order, they may not be touched legally. Is it at all possible then that myself and those like me who are disenchanted with the world and work only for the grave should give up spending the remainder of their lives within the bounds taught by the Qur’an, on the way our forefathers followed for one thousand three hundred and fifty years, in a way permitted by the rules sanctified at all times by three hundred and fifty million believers, — that we should give up that way, and being coerced by our enemies and their subterfuges, merely for this brief and fleeting worldly life, support the savage laws and principles of an immoral, dissolute civilization, indeed, of a sort of communism, and adopt them as our way? No law anywhere, and no one the tiniest bit fair, would force us to accept them. We only say to those who oppose us: Don’t bother us and we won’t bother you!
It is due to this fact that I support neither intellectually nor on scholarly grounds the arbitrary commands of a commander, called laws, which have made Aya Sophia into a house of idols and the Shaykh al-Islam’s Office into a girls’ high school. And for myself I do not act in accordance with them. But although for twenty years I have been severely oppressed during my tortuous captivity, I have not become involved in politics, nor provoked the authorities, nor disturbed public order. Although I have hundreds of thousands of Risale-i Nur friends, not a single incident has been recorded involving the disturbance of the peace. I am fed up with life due to the utterly humiliating and unjust treatment directed at my person here in my exile in the last period of my life, such as I have never before suffered and which has galled me. I feel disgust at freedom even, under this oppression. I have written you a petition saying that contrary to everyone else, I want not my acquittal but to be convicted and given not a light sentence, I want the heaviest penalty. For in order to be saved from