Menemen incidents.12 If, God forbid, they were persecuted to the point they were compelled and the Risale-i Nur attacked, the atheists and dissemblers who deceive the Government would regret it a thousand times over.

In Short: Since we do not interfere in the worlds of the worldly, they should not interfere in our work for the hereafter and our service of religious belief.

[I am relating here by way of defence an old memory and pleasant anecdote which was not divulged in Eskishehir Court and was not written in the official records, nor has been included in my defence speeches.]

They asked me there: “What do you think about the Republic?” I replied: “As my biography which you have in your hands proves, I was a religious republican before any of you, with the exception of the Chairman of the Court, was born. A summary is this: like now, I was living at that time in seclusion in a remote tomb. They used to bring me soup, and I would give breadcrumbs to the ants. I used to eat my bread having dipped it in the soup. They asked me about it and I told them: the ant and bee nations are republicans. I give the breadcrumbs to the ants out of respect for their republicanism.”

Then they said to me: “You are opposing the righteous early generations of Islam.” I told them in reply: “The four Rightly-Guided Caliphs were both Caliphs and Presidents of the Republic. Abu Bakr the Veracious (May God be pleased with him), the Ten Promised Paradise, and the Companions of the Prophet were like presidents of the republic. But not as an empty name and title, they were heads of a religious republic which bore the meaning of true justice and freedom in accordance with the Shari‘a.”

I told them: Mr. Prosecutor and Members of the Court! You are accusing me of holding an idea opposite to that which I have held for fifty years. If you ask me about the secular republic, what I understand by it is that ‘secular’ (laic) means to be impartial; that is, a government which, in accordance with the principle of freedom of