private soldier. Endless thanks be to God. The soul is lower than everything, and the duty higher,” — although this is written in the Court judgement, they find me guilty of being called a supreme guide due to the praises of others, which in fact refer to the Risale-i Nur, and are thus deserving of paying an awesome penalty due to the error.
The Seventh: Although Denizli Court and Ankara Criminal Court and the Appeal Courts unanimously acquitted us and all the treatises of the Risale-i Nur and returned them and our letters to us, and they said “Even if the Appeal Court’s decision to quash the decision and Denizli’s acquittal were wrong, since they have been made final, the case cannot be retried,” I was sent to Emirdağ, where I spent three years as a recluse. There, so long as there was no necessity, I spoke only with the two or three tailor apprentices who were assisting me, and rarely, for five or ten minutes with certain religiously-minded people. I wrote no letters other than once a week to one place as encouragement in the Risale-i Nur, and wrote only three letters in three years to my Mufti brother. I gave up writing pieces, which I had been doing for twenty to thirty years, except for two points, twenty pages in length, which were useful for the people of the Qur’an and for belief. One was about the wisdom in the repetitions in the Qur’an, and the other, about the angels; I wrote no other treatise. Only, I gave permission for the treatises which the courts had returned to be made into large collections, and since five hundred copies of The Supreme Sign, which had been printed in the old letters, had been handed over to us by the court, and since duplicating machines were not officially banned, I gave permission to my brothers to duplicate them so they could be published for the benefit of the Islamic world, and I busied myself with correcting them. I was certainly not concerned with politics in any way. Moreover, although official permission had been given for us to return to our native region, contrary to all the other exiles I accepted the hardship of exile in order not to become involved in politics and the world, and did not return. The treatment I have received these last twenty months proves that the person who is trying in this third indictment to find guilty such a man through the baseless accusations, lies, and misinterpretations is ruled by two fearsome meanings, which I shall not utter for now. What I do say is this: the grave and Hell are sufficient, and I refer it to the Last Judgement.
The Eighth: Since the Fifth Ray was returned to us after remaining for two years in the hands of Denizli and Ankara Courts, it was added at the end of the large collection called The Illuminating Lamp together with my defence, which had led to our acquittal in Denizli Court. For sure, previously we had held it to be confidential, but since the courts had