Otherwise, we could have defended our rights to the full.

Six courts over fifteen years have scrutinized the Risale-i Nur and our correspondence, and five of them in effect acquitted us on all points. Only Eskishehir Court made a pretext of five or ten words in the short treatise about the veiling of women, a single matter, and gave a light sentence under a ‘flexible’ law. When they did this, I wrote the following in the correction which after the Appeal Court I sent officially to Ankara as the sole example of illegality:

A long time ago, following the consensus and rulings of three hundred and fifty thousand Qur’anic commentaries, I expounded the Qur’anic verses about the veiling of women, which for one thousand three hundred and fifty years have taught and enjoined a powerful, perpetual Islamic practice and sacred principle of three hundred and fifty million people, in order to defend them against an atheist’s objections and his criticisms of Qur’anic civilization. If there is any justice in the world, the Court will surely quash the conviction of someone and the sentence passed on him for expounding the verses, since he was following the way taken by our forefathers for one thousand three hundred and fifty years; it will surely remove this extraordinary stain from the legal establishment of this Islamic State.

I wrote this in the addendum containing my corrections and showed it to the public prosecutor. He was horrified and said: “There is no need for this. Your sentence was short and only a small part of it remains. There is no need to send this.”

Thus, you have understood the truly strange examples like this one in my defence and objection, which has been presented to you and the departments of government in Ankara. What I seek and hope from Afyon Court is this: I await from you in the name of true justice that you decide on the complete freedom of the Risale-i Nur, whose service and effulgence profits the nation and country as much as an army. Otherwise, I have to inform you that when the five or ten of my friends who were sent to prison because of their relations with me are released, I have the idea of committing some offence which will necessitate the heaviest penalty, compelling me to bid farewell to this life. It is like this:

Although for the good of the country and nation, the