absolutely no right to enter the retreats of recluses.

Secondly: To reject something is one thing, not to accept it wholeheartedly is something else, and not to act in accordance with it is something quite else. Those in authority look to the hand, not to the heart. All governments have vehement opponents who do not interfere in government and public order. In fact, the Christians who were under the Caliph ‘Umar’s (May God be pleased with him) rule were not interfered with although they rejected the law of the Shari‘a and the Qur’an. According to the principles of freedom of thought and conscience, so long as they do not upset the government, if some of the Risale-i Nur students do not accept the regime and your principles on scholarly grounds and act in opposition to them, and even if they are inimical to the regime’s chief, they may not be touched legally. As for the treatises, I said they were confidential and prevented their publication. In fact, in regard to the treatise that was the cause of this affair, only once or twice in eight years in Kastamonu did someone bring me a copy. The same day I put it away somewhere. Now you are forcibly publicizing it, and it has become famous.

It is well-known that if there is some fault in a letter, only the faulty words are censored, and the rest are permitted. As a result of the four months of close investigation in Eskishehir Court, only fifteen words were found in a hundred treatises of the Risale-i Nur that were the cause of criticism, and now on only two pages of the four-hundred-page Zülfikâr are explanations of Qur’anic verses about inheritance and the veiling of women, which were written thirty years ago and do not now conform to the Civil Code. This proves decisively that they have no worldly aim, and everyone is in need of them. The four-hundred-page Zülfikâr, which everyone has need of, may not be confiscated because of two pages. Those two pages should be excised and the collection returned to us; it is our right that it is returned.

If you say like those who suppose irreligion to be politics of a sort and in this episode have said: “You are spoiling our civilization and our pleasure with these treatises of yours...”

I reply: It is a universal principle accepted worldwide that no nation can continue in existence without religion. Particularly if it is