My Dear Brother!

The verse,

And even thus did the rejecters of God perish [utterly]24

indicates the allusion of

By [the token of] time [through the ages], * Verily man is in loss,25

that all the wars and destruction of the infidels have caused untold damage and loss. There is also an indication in the phrase Wa’l-‘Asr (By [the token of] time) which points to the date 1360 according to the Rumi calendar, in which year dissemblers and disbelievers would attack the Risale-i Nur, but they would be the losers. For the Risale-i Nur is a cause of calamities like earthquake and war abating. It may be a concealed sign that its ceasing from activity attracts disaster.

S a i d N u r s i

* * *

My Dear Brothers!

It is my guess that our final and true defence will be the short treatise that is the fruit of Denizli Prison. For the extensive plots hatched against us over the past year, originally due to unfounded suspicions, are the following: they attacked us on baseless pretexts such as founding a sufi order, establishing a secret society, being a tool of external forces, exploiting religious feelings for political ends, working against the Republic, meddling in government and breaching public security. Thanks be to Almighty God, their plans failed. Other than the truths of belief and the Qur’an, study of the hereafter, and working for everlasting bliss, they found nothing, even over such an extensive area, among hundreds of students, in hundreds of treatises, in the letters and books written over a period of eighteen years. They began to seek out anything at all to make a pretext of, in order to conceal their plots. But I think that in the face