absolute unbelief, it gives rise to torments more grievous in this world than Hell, as has been proved with complete certainty in A Guide For Youth. That treatise has now been printed officially. If, God forbid, a Muslim apostasizes, he falls into absolute disbelief; he cannot remain in a state of ‘doubting unbelief,’ which keeps him alive to an extent. He also cannot be like irreligious Europeans. And in respect of the pleasure of life, he falls infinitely lower than the animals, for they have no sense of the past and future. Because of his misguidance, the deaths of all past and future beings, and his being eternally separated from them, overwhelm his heart with continuous pain. If belief enters his heart and he comes to believe, those innumerable friends are suddenly raised to life. They say through the tongue of disposition: “We did not die and we were not annihilated,” transforming his hellish state into Paradise-like pleasure. Since the reality is this, I warn you: do not contest the Risale-i Nur, for it relies on the Qur’an. It cannot be defeated. It would be most regretable for this country.3 It would go somewhere else and illuminate there. Also, if I had heads to the number of the hairs on it and every day one was cut off, I would not bow this head, which is devoted to the Qur’an, to atheism and absolute disbelief, I would not and could not give up this service of belief and the Risale-i Nur.

Certainly, any faults in the statement of someone who has been a recluse for twenty years will be disregarded. He is defending the Risale-i Nur, so it cannot be said he deviated from the subject. Eskishehir Court found nothing after studying its hundred treatises, both confidential and otherwise, for four months, apart from one or two points touching on a subject necessitating a light penalty, and it gave six-month sentences to fifteen people out of one hundred and twenty. I served the sentence as well. And since a few years ago all the parts of the Risale-i Nur came into the hands of the Isparta authorities, who after studying them for several months, returned them to their owners; and since after serving that sentence, nothing was found to concern the police and judiciary during my eight years in Kastamonu despite the minute searches; and since during the last search in Kastamonu some of my treatises came to light, in a