In His Name, be He glorified!

[I quote exactly an old memory and subtle matter of defence which was not disclosed in Eskishehir Court, and not officially recorded, and was not even written in my defence.]

They asked me there: “What do you think about the Republic?” I replied: “My biography, which you have in your possession, proves that I was a religious republican before any of you, with the exception perhaps of the Chairman of Eskishehir Court, was born. A summary of it is this: like now, at that time I was living in seclusion in an uninhabited tomb. Someone would bring me soup and I used to give breadcrumbs to the ants. I used to eat my bread with the soup. Some people heard of this and asked me about it, and I told them: “The ant and bee nations are republicans; I give the ants the breadcrumbs out of respect for their republicanism.”

So they said: “You are opposing the early leaders of Islam.” I replied: “The Rightly-Guided Caliphs were both Caliph and presidents of the republic. Surely Abu Bakr the Veracious (May God be pleased with him), the Ten Promised Paradise, and the Companions of the Prophet were like presidents of the republic. But it was not some meaningless title; they were leaders of a religious republic the meaning of which was true justice and the freedom of the Shari‘a.”

Mr. Prosecutor and Members of the Court! You are accusing me of holding an idea the opposite of which I have held for fifty years. If you are asking about the secular republic, what I understand by it is that secularism means being unbiased; that is, in accordance with the principle of freedom of conscience, it refers to a government that does not interfere with religiously-minded and pious people, the same as it does not interfere with the irreligious and dissolute. I have withdrawn from political and social life for ten, and now its twenty, years. I do not know the state of the Government of the Republic. If, God forbid, it has taken on a fearsome form whereby, on account of irreligion, it promulgates laws indicting those who work for their belief and lives in the hereafter, I proclaim to you fearlessly and warn you: if I had a thousand lives, I would be ready