Judges of the Court! In consequence of this truth, the powerful, irrefutable proofs of the Risale-i Nur have directed the hearts of the people of the court towards itself; whatever you do against me, I forgive you; I will harbour no grudge. It is because of this that although I have been riled by the extreme tyranny and repression I have suffered, and the contemptuous treatment and defamation of my person, which have been to an extent I have never previously experienced, I have endured it and have not even spoken ill of those involved. The collections of the Risale-i Nur, which you have in your possession, form my irrefutable, incontestable defence and my objections to all the charges made against us and the crimes of which we are accused.

It is astonishing that although the leading scholars of Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo, Medina and Mecca, and the exacting scholars of the Directorate of Religious Affairs have studied the Risale-i Nur collections minutely, and offering no criticisms have praised and applauded them, the ‘clever’ persons who compiled the indictment against us showed through an extraordinary and obvious error —stating that the Qur’an contains forty Suras— just how superficially they considered the matter. Despite hundreds of thousands of the people of reality affirming the Risale-i Nur, under these severe conditions, and myself in exile, alone and wretched and the object of fearsome attacks, that prosecutor, who does not even know how many Suras there are in the Qur’an, said: “Although the Risale-i Nur attempts to expound the Qur’an and interpret Hadiths, it has no scholarly substance or value in teaching its readers in a part of it...” It is understood just how far his criticisms are from the law, reality, justice and equity.

I also make this complaint to you, that although for two hours you made us listen to the entire forty-page indictment, which contains hundreds of errors and wounds our hearts, despite my insistence you did not allow me two minutes to read one and a half pages in reply, which were the complete truth. In the name of justice I therefore request that you permit me to read my entire list of objections.

Thirdly: Every government has opponents. But so long as they do not disturb public order, they may not be touched legally. Is it at all possible then that myself and those like me who are disenchanted