disinterested, and have in no way departed from the principles of scholarship, reality, and religion. There is clearly nothing in them exploiting religion, or concerning the formation of a political society, or breaching security. The letters and correspondence between the students and between them and Said Nursi are of this sort. Apart from five or ten confidential, complaining, and unscholarly pieces, all the treatises expound Qur’anic verses or the true meanings of Hadiths. Ninety per cent of the available treatises contain comparisons illustrating clearly the tenets of belief in God, the Prophet, and the hereafter and their terminology, scholarly views, moral admonitions to the elderly and to youths, and instructive incidents selected from his experiences in life. They contain nothing which could damage the Government, administration, or public security.

Thus, the prosecution ignored the report of this eminent committee and made extraordinary charges against us based on the confused, deficient first report, so we are truly extremely upset. We in no way deem it fitting for this just court with its proven fairness. If there be no mistake in the comparison, it resembles this story: they asked a Bektashi why he did not perform the obligatory prayers. He told them: “It says in the Qur’an ‘Approach not the prayers.’” When they reminded him that the verse continued “When you are intoxicated,”14 he told them: “I have not memorized the whole Qur’an.” They take a single sentence from the Risale-i Nur, and disregarding what follows it, which puts it in context and explains it, use it against us. Thirty to forty examples of this are to be seen in the defence I shall present, when comparing it with the indictment. I shall recount a subtle incident which is one of those examples:

The prosecution in Eskishehir Court used a phrase about the Risale-i Nur’s instruction in belief which was anyway the result of an error, like “it corrupts the people.” Although it later did not use it, one of the Risale-i Nur students called Abdürrezzaq, said a year after the trial:

“You unfortunate! The Risale-i Nur has received the indirect praise of thirty-three Qur’anic verses, its value for religion has been established by three miraculous predictions of Imam ‘Ali (May God