decisive proof that the students of the Risale-i Nur are in no way a political society. If what is intended by ‘society’ in the indictment is a community concerned with religious belief and the hereafter, in reply we say this:

If the name ‘community’ is given to university students and tradesmen, it may also be applied to us. But if you call us a community that is going to breach internal security by exploiting religious feelings, in response we say:

The facts that in no place over a period of twenty years in these stormy times Risale-i Nur students have breached internal security or disturbed public order, and no such incident has been recorded by either the Government or any court, refutes this accusation. If the name community is given meaning it might breach internal security in the future through strengthening religious feelings, we say this:

Firstly, foremost the Directorate of Religious Affairs, and all preachers, perform the same service.

Secondly, it is not disturbing the peace and breaching security, the students of the Risale-i Nur protect the nation from anarchy with all their strength and conviction, and maintain public order and guard security. The evidence for this has been cited in the First Principle.

Yes, we are a community, and our aim and programme is to save firstly ourselves and then our nation from eternal annihilation and everlasting solitary confinement in the Intermediate Realm, and to protect our compatriots from anarchy and lawlessness, and to protect ourselves with the firm truths of the Risale-i Nur against atheism, which is the means to destroying our lives in this world and in the next.

Eighth Principle: Saying its treatises contain some sharp expressions, they accuse us as a result of deficient and superficial study of the Risale-i Nur carried out in other places. In reply I say this: since our aim is belief and the hereafter, it is not confrontation with the worldly. And since the sharpness particular to these very insignificant one or two treatises was not intentional —we bumped against the worldly while advancing towards our goal— it certainly does not infer political prejudice. And since possibilities are one thing and occurrences are something else, and what we have been