Until the years following the First World War, Bediuzzaman’s struggles in the cause of Islam had been active and in the public domain. He had not only taught many students and had engaged in debate and discussion with leading scholars from all over Islamic World, but he had also commanded and led in person a volunteer regiment against the invading Russians in eastern Turkiye in 1914 for nearly two years until taken prisoner. Furthermore, up to that time he had sought to further the interests of Islam by actively engaging in public life. However, the years that saw the transition from empire to republic also saw the transition from the ‘Old Said’ to the ‘New Said’ was characterised by his withdrawal from public life and concentration on study, prayer and thought for what was required now was a struggle of different sort.

After a period of some two years, in 1925, Bediuzzaman was sent into exile in western Anatolia and for the next twenty-five years, and to a lesser extent for the last ten years of his life, he suffered nothing but exile, imprison-ment, harrassment and persecution by the authorities. But these years of exile and isolation saw the writing of the Risale-i Nur, the Treatise of Light, and its dissemination throughout Turkiye. To quote Bediuzzaman himself, “Now I see clearly that most of my life has been directed in such a way, outside my own free-will, ability, comprehension and foresight, that it might produce these treatises to serve the cause of the Qur’an.