fears about his opposing you. Since it is a lunacy to even speak seriously with lunatics, I am giving up speaking with those like you. I said: “Whatever you do, I won’t feel obliged to you!”, which both angered them, and silenced them. My final word is:

For us God suffices, and He is the Best of Disposer of Affairs.16 * God suffices me, there is no god but He; in Him do I place my trust — He the Sustainer of the Throne [of Glory] Supreme!17

* * *

What I Said This Time in My Short Defence

The compasssion, reality, and truth of the Risale-i Nur prevents us from involvement in politics. For innocents are afflicted with calamities and we would have been unjust towards to them. Some people wanted an explanation of this, and I told them:

In the present stormy century, the egotism and racialism proceeding from cruel civilization, and the military dictatorships resulting from the Great War, and the pitilessness arising from misguidance have led to such extreme tyranny and excessive despotisms that if the people of truth defend their rights through physical force, or through severe tyranny, numerous unfortunates will be burnt on the pretext of partisanship, and in that situation, they too will be excessively tyrannical and will be defeated. For those who act and attack out of the above feelings, on some petty pretext, strike at twenty to thirty people because of the mistakes of one or two, and destroy them. If on the way of truth and justice, the people of truth strike only at the one who struck, they win only one in the face of thirty losses, and are then in a position of defeat. If, in accordance with the unjust rule of responding in kind, the people of truth also crush twenty to thirty people due to the errors of one or two, they will then perpetrate a ghastly injustice in the name of right.