"Understand this, my brothers and fellow students! I shall be happy if you tell me freely when you see a fault in me. If you hit me over the head with it even, I shall say, May God be pleased with you! Other sakes should not be considered in preserving the sake of the truth. I will accept it immediately because of the egotism of the evil-commanding soul, not to defend a truth which I did not know was for the sake of the truth. Understand that at this time, this duty of serving belief is most important. It should not be loaded on a wretch who is weak and whose thought is dispersed in numerous directions; assistance should be given as far as it is possible. Yes, the absolute and succinct truths emerge and I am the apparent means, and the ordering and clarifying and giving of form are up to my valuable and capable fellow students...
" You know that in summer the heedlessness of this world prevails. Most of my fellow students become slack and are compelled to cease from their occupations. They cannot be fully occupied with serious truths. In His perfect Mercy for two years now Almighty God has granted a favour to our minds with the subtle `coincidences' [tevafukat], which are like fruits in relation to the serious truths; He has given joy to our minds. In His perfect compassion, through the fruits of those subtle `coincidences', He has driven our minds to a serious Qur'anic truth, and made those fruits food and sustenance for our spirits. Like dates, they have been both fruit and basic sustenance...."
It is important to all the time bear in mind when reading these pages the extremely difficult conditions under which Bediuzzaman and his students were working at this time. It will be recalled that the plans had been laid to entirely root out Islam from the fabric of Turkish society, and that these plans were being progressively, and forceably, put into practice. First the medreses and Sufi tekkes had been closed. Then a final stop had been effectively put to the teaching of religion with the banning of the Arabic alphabet in 1928 and its substitution by the Latin letters. Subsequent to this those , caught teaching or reading books in the old alphabet were treated as criminals, and very often suffered imprisonment, exile, or even death as a consequence. This was also true for the Qur'an. The teaching