reduced to obedience with a speech eight rebelling regiments during the Thirty-First of March Incident; and as was reported in the newspapers of the time, with an article called The Six Steps performed the important service of turning the ideas of the Istanbul ‘ulama against the British and in favour of the National Movement; and delivered an address to thousands in Aya Sophia, making them listen to him; and was greeted with tumultuous applause by the Assembly and deputies in Ankara, and had one hundred and sixty-three deputies assign one hundred and fifty thousand liras for his religious school and university; and without quailing responded completely firmly to the angry President in the Speaker’s office and invited him to perform the obligatory prayers; and while in the Darü’l-Hikmeti’l-Islamiye was unanimously considered worthy by the Union and Progress Government of the duty of effectively inviting the philosophers of Europe to accept Islamic wisdom; and Isharat al-I‘jaz (Signs of Miraculousness), the work he wrote on the front during the War and has now been seized, appeared so valuable to Enver Pasha, who was Commander-in-Chief at the time, that with respect shown by no one else and the idea of sharing in the good and glory of that memento of the War, which was racing to the future, he contributed the paper to have the work printed so that the exploits of its author during the War would be remembered — such a man would not descend to disgracing the dignity of his learning, the sacredness of his service, and his thousands of valuable friends by tainting himself with a petty crime like a horse-thief, abductor of girls, or pickpocket so that you could sentence him to a year’s imprisonment and treat him like a stealer of goats or sheep. He would prefer execution to suffering under the arbitrary persecution of a malicious detective or common policeman the year’s sentence now given him together with being held under supervision for a year, after having been tormented for ten years without reason with oppressive surveillance — although he could not endure to be dominated by the Sultan. If such a man had been involved in the world and if he had harboured such a wish and if his sacred service had permitted, he would have interfered in it to an extent ten times greater than the Menemen Affair and Shaykh Said Revolt.1 The booming sound of a cannon heard by all the world would not have subsided to the buzz of a fly.
Yes, I make the following point for the attention of the Government of the Republic: this situation has been brought about through the intrigues, machinations and propaganda of the covert organization which drove me to this misfortune. The evidence that widespread propaganda and terror and a conspiracy have been orchestrated against us in a way never before
See page 385, fns. 11, 12.