Muhammad (PBUH) and The Miraculousness of the Qur’an. This we in part sold, and with the money bought the paper for The Staff of Moses Collection (Asâ-yi Mûsa). We then printed The Staff of Moses, and sold it. Then we bought the paper for The Illuminating Lamp Collection (Siracünnûr), and printed it. This continued for about a year. Then, when bringing around thirty copies of these collections to Egirdir, I was arrested on the way, and handed over to the judicial authorities in Egirdir. Not much time had passed when on the initiative of the Isparta judicial authorities, Husrev Altınbaşak’s house was searched and both the duplicating machine and the collections were seized, and we were sent to court to be tried for the offences of a year previously. Since they were religious works which were not prohibited, Husrev Altınbaşak, myself, and one other friend were given sentences of one month for printing books without permission. We applied to the Appeal Court, and before it had come to a decision, I was sent to Afyon Prison.
Now, in your high court, because of this altruistic service of mine for my religion and co-religionists, and particularly the question of the Fifth Ray, which contains interpretations of Hadiths and was returned by the former court, the Afyon state prosecutor wants to have me, and the Risale-i Nur’s author, and Husrev Altınbaşak, and forty-six other student brothers punished for “breaching state security,” because they wrote out these works and read them.
I say to you in your presence as a full citizen of this country, without deviating from the truth, that for years I have been the student of Said Nursi, whom we hold with the highest esteem as our Master, and who with these works has rectified our conduct religiously and advanced us, and has rejected it when we called him “Regenerator of Religion.” I can testify categorically and absolutely certainly that neither he himself nor his works nor his students have in any way attempted to breach state security. One of the matters concerning which we have been charged is the money obtained from sale of the books, concerning which Isparta Court was fully aware and was unable to find us guilty and sentence us. For just as we were in no need to secure our livelihoods through sale of the books, so we used the money obtained from their sale to buy the duplicating machine, paper, and ink. There is no possibility of this service, which we performed purely for God’s sake with pure intention, being a crime, and therefore request of your high court and consciences that the copies of the Risale-i Nur be returned.
Prisoner, Tahiri