unjust people: I don’t give tuppence for your severest penalty; it has no importance whatsoever. For I am seventy-five years old and have one foot in the grave. To exchange one or two years of innocent life of persecution for the rank of martyrdom would be the greatest happiness for me. Thanks to the thousands of proofs of the Risale-i Nur, I believe with the utmost certainty that for us death is our discharge papers. Even if outwardly it is execution, for us one hour’s distress would be the key to eternal happiness and mercy. But as for you, covert, cruel enemies who confuse the judiciary on account of atheism and preoccupy the Government with us for no reason! Be certain of this and tremble! For you are being condemned to eternal annihilation and everlasting solitary confinement. We see that our revenge is being taken on you in compounded fashion. We pity you even. Yes, surely the reality of death, which has emptied this town a hundred times into the graveyard has demands greater than life. To find a way of being delivered from its certain execution is man’s greatest need, more important than anything. Those who on trite pretexts impute guilt to the Risale-i Nur students, who have found this way for themselves, and to the Risale-i Nur, which provides that way with thousands of proofs, —how guilty they are themselves in the eyes of truth and justice even lunatics would understand.

There are three matters which deceive these unjust people and give rise to the delusion of a political society, which is completely irrelevant:

The First: The fact that since early days my students have been fervently attached to me like brothers, has given rise to the erroneous impression of a society.

The Second: Some of the Risale-i Nur students have acted as though they were an Islamic group, such as is found everywhere and is permitted by the laws of the Republic and is not harassed by it, and this has been imagined to be a society. But those limited three or four students have not intended any sort of political society, only to serve belief together sincerely as brothers and to support each other in working for the hereafter.

The Third: Because those unfair people know themselves to be misguided and overcome by love of this world, and because they find some of the Government’s laws convenient for themselves, they say to themselves: “Most probably Said and his friends oppose the