aim was total

Westemization, and demanded the eradication of Islam, as we have seen. What emerged was a battle between belief and unbelief. Up to this time during his years of exile, Bediuzzaman's role in this battle had been `defensive'; he had written numbers of treatises explaining and proving the basic truths of belief which were then subject to fierce attacks in the name of science, philosophy, and atheism. He had sought to defend Islam and belief against these orchestrated onslaughts which had been conducted on many fronts: the press, and publications of all sorts, education in schools, adult education programmes. and so on. In a very low key and unobtrusive manner, Bediuzzaman's treatises, the Risale-i Nur, had been passed from hand to hand among the ordinary people, had been copied out by hand, and by degrees, had spread till by 1945 he and the Risale-i Nur had many thousands of followers all over Turkey.
Now, in 1945, as a consequence of the path that had been taken by Ataturk, Bediuzzaman saw that the 'Iirkish nation was in great danger: having been broken off from its natural support of the Islamic world in addition to being divorced and alienated from its own true identity of Islâii, it would be unable to withstand and counter the devious plans of the forces of unbelief, which step by step were being put into practice and would finally destroy it. The Turkish nation could only withstand these designs on it through the strength of the Qur'an. Thus, it was at this point that Bediuzzaman took on a role that could be interpreted as "offensive", by attempting to pub?ish the Risale-i Nur in the new alphabet and on a large scale.
At the same time Bediuzzaman was not working against the Govemment and established order. On the contrary. it was stability and social order that he was aiming to preserve in the face of the two outside currents or "calamities" mentioned above and those working for them within the country that were seeking to destroy public order, destabilize the country and create anarchy. And he wrote a number of `open letters' and petitions to various members of the Govemment and govemment departments in order to alert them to the dangers.
Onc such letter was to Hilmi Uran, Interior Minister until October,1946, then General Secretary of the Republican People's Party. In it Bediuzzaman described the two currents, pointing out the inseparable nature of Islam and the Turkish nation and the