speak, otherwise I would have said this to those who were trying to punish me: I stayed as a guest for three months in the police station in Kastamonu. At no time did they say to me: “Wear the brimmed hat!” And although in three courts of law I did not wear the hat and did not remove my own headgear, they did not interfere with me. And on that pretext for twenty-three years a number of irreligious tyrants have inflicted a very distressing and severe penalty on me unofficially. And children, women, villagers, officials in their offices, and those who wear the beret are not compelled to wear the hat. And there is no physical benefit in wearing it. Yet because of their fabrications and allegations a recluse like myself has paid a twenty-year penalty for not wearing headgear that all the mujtahids and Shaykh al-Islams have prohibited. Those who are trying to have me punished again because of a meaningless custom related to dress; and with such force, repetition, and insistence to have me found guilty because of my dress —despite, saying there is personal freedom, their comparing to themselves those who drink raki in public in Ramadan during the day and do not perform the obligatory prayers, and not bothering them— surely after suffering the everlasting extinction of death and perpetual solitary confinement of the grave, at the Last Judgement they will be questioned concerning this error.

The Fifth: Those who have heard this third indictment and seen the judgement that we published will confirm that on pretexts as flimsy as a fly’s wing, they are trying to confiscate some of the treatises of the Risale-i Nur, which is alluded to favourably by thirty-three Qur’anic verses, was applauded by such saints as Imam ‘Ali (May God exalt him) and Gawth al-A‘zam ( May his mystery be sanctified), is affirmed by a hundred thousand believers, and in twenty years has won a highly beneficial rank for this nation and country without causing any harm. Even, making a pretext two pages about two correct explanations of two verses, which were written long ago and have been covered by pardons, it was even the cause of the four-hundred-page Zülfikâr and The Miracles of Muhammad (Mu’cizat-i Ahmediye) being seized, which has strengthened and saved the belief of a hundred thousand people and is extremely beneficial and valuable. And now, giving the wrong meaning to one or two words out of a thousand, they are trying to have that infinitely useful treatise seized. As for us, we say: