court and the present court could find no indictable offences, it is an ugly and meaningless injustice for you to interfere with our acquittal granted unanimously by the new court, and with me and the Risale-i Nur, as is proved decisively by the former court only being able to give sentences of six months each to fifteen out of one hundred and twenty of my brothers who were being held in prison, only arbitrarily and on the pretext of five or ten words out of one hundred and thirty treatises, for the sake of an important personage in the eyes of the world. Moreover, I have no new teachings and none of my secrets have remained hidden so that you should try to modify them through supervision.

I am now very much in need of my freedom. Enough now of the unnecessary, unjust, and meaningless surveillance to which I have been subjected these twenty years. My patience is exhausted. There is the possibility that due to old age I shall utter the curses that up to now I have refrained from uttering. “The sighs of the oppressed rise to the Divine Throne” is a powerful truth.

Then those tyrannical wretches who occupy high places in the eyes of the world said: “Not once in twenty years have you worn our headgear; you have not uncovered your head in the presence of either the former court or the present courts; you have presented yourself in the former attire. Whereas seventeen million have taken to modern dress.” So I replied: rather than wearing through a dispensation of the Shari‘a and under the constraint of the law, the dress, not of seventeen million or even seven million, but with their own consent and sincere acceptance of seven thousand European-smitten drunkards, I prefer to wear, in conformity with the Shari‘a and fear of God, the dress of seven thousand million. It may not be said of someone like me who for twenty-five years has withdrawn from social life “he obstinately opposes us.” Even if it was obstinacy, since Mustafa Kemal could not break it, and two courts could not break it, and the authorities of three provinces could not smash it, who are you to struggle pointlessly to break that obstinacy to the harm of both the nation and the Government! Even if he was a political opponent, since as you have confirmed, he has severed all his connections with the world these last twenty years and has in effect been dead, he would not be again raised to life, meaninglessly become involved in political life causing himself considerable harm, and struggle against you; it is therefore lunacy to have groundless