CHAPTER SEVEN
AFYON
• Afyon Prison
Thus, Bediuzzaman and the Students of the Risale-i Nur entered their third School of Joseph (Medrese-i Yusufiye). And as previously they did transform it into a `school' through persisting in writing out copies of the Risale-i Nur and the long piece Bediuzzaman wrote, Elhüccetü'z-Zehra, and themselves studying and instructing other prisoners, despite the conditions, which in their harshness, far exceeded what they had experienced in Eskisehir and Denizli.
The years of despotic Republican People's Party rule were drawing to an end, already in 1946 the Democrat Party had been founded. As though to have a final strike at religion and Islam, to which they were now having to make concessions, they inflicted on Bediuzzaman, who virtually alone of all the leading religious figures in Turkey had not only persistently defied them but also with the Risale-i Nur had defeated them, twenty months of the most terrible imprisonment. That he survived the inhuman conditions as well as further attempts to poison him is a further indication that he was under Divine protection.
It is clear that Bediuzzaman and his students' imprisonment and conviction were a foregone conclusion. After the acquittals of the just court at Denizli, their enemies determined to have them convicted come what may, although this meant "being disrespectful to three major courts, slighting their honour and justice, and even insulting them."' For the charges were the same. There are a