extended to the whole Risale-i Nur, and accused myself and those who read and write the Risale-i Nur of contesting the government.

I call to witness my close friends and those who meet with me, and I swear that apart from two Presidents, one deputy, and the Governor of Kastamonu, for more than ten years, I have not known who the members and ministers of the Government are, or its leaders, officials and deputies, and I have not had the slightest curiosity to find out. Is it at all possible ffor a person not to know the people he is contesting and not to be curious about them, for him not to know if they are friend or foe, and to attach no importance to finding out? It is clearly understood from this that they are concocting completely baseless pretexts to convict me whatever happens.

Since that is how it is, I say not to the court here, but to those unjust people: I don’t give tuppence for the severest penalty you can inflict on me; it has no importance. For I am seventy years old and at the door of the grave. It is great good fortune for me to exchange one or two years of persecuted, innocent life for the rank of martyrdom. Through the thousands of proofs of the Risale-i Nur, I believe absolutely certainly that for us death consists of discharge papers. If we are to be executed, one hour’s distress would be the key to eternal happiness and mercy. But you unjust people who confuse the judiciary on account of atheism and preoccupy the Government with us for no reason! Know certainly that you will be condemned to eternal annihilation and everlasting solitary confinement, and tremble! I see you will be made to pay for it many times over. I pity you even. Yes, death, which has emptied this city a hundred times into the graveyard, certainly has greater demands than life. And the question of people being saved from being executed by it is the most pressing and most important they face and their most essential and certain need. Even lunatics, therefore, would understand that in the eyes of reality and justice those who accuse on petty pretexts the Risale-i Nur students, who have found this solution for themselves, and the Risale-i Nur, which provides it supported by thousands of proofs, themselves become the object of accusation.

There are three matters which deceive these unjust people, leading them to suspect the Risale-i Nur students are a political society, with which they have absolutely no connection: