The Third: One reason they cited for our conviction was breaching security and disturbing public order. Putting forward the remotest possibility, one in a hundred or even a thousand, in place of actual events, and putting the wrong meanings on forty to fifty words from some confidential treatises and private letters out of the hundred thousand words and sentences of the Risale-i Nur, they present these as evidence, and accusing us want to have us punished.

Calling to witness those who have known my life these thirty to forty years and the thousands of ‘special’ (has)38 students of the Risale-i Nur, I say: to accuse of disturbing public order someone who, —at a time the commander of the British occupation forces in Istanbul was sowing discord among Muslims, even deceiving the Shaykh al-Islam and some leading men of religion and inciting the Committee of Union and Progress and the Freedom and Accord Party to struggle against each other, thus paving the way for the Greek victory and defeat of the National Movement,— foiled that insidious plan of the commander by printing and publishing through the efforts of Eshref Edib his work Hutuvat-i Sitte (The Six Steps) against the British and Greeks, not retreating even in the face of threat of execution; who did not flee to Ankara even when summoned because of the above service by the leaders there; who attached no importance when a prisoner-of-war to the Russian Commander-in-Chief’s order for his execution; who with a speech during the Thirty-First of March Incident induced eight regiments to obey their officers;39 and in the Military Court, disregarding the threat of execution said in reply to the presiding pashas’ questions of: “You too are a reactionary, you too wanted the Shari‘a?”, “If constitutionalism consists of one party’s despotism, then let all men and jinn witness that I am a reactionary and ready to sacrifice my very soul for a single matter of the Shari‘a,” causing those high-ranking officers to appreciate and admire him, and while expecting his execution, they decided on his acquittal, then on being released, he did not thank them but went on his way shouting: “Long live Hell