[The defence speeches of the Risale-i Nur students during their trials in Afyon Court, which commenced in 1948 as a conspiracy to impose, through propaganda, the death penalty, and during which the Risale-i Nur was firstly convicted, then all copies of it finally returned.]

We say the following in the face of those who, departing from reality and justice, have called the Risale-i Nur students’ attachment for the Risale-i Nur and its interpreter, which looks purely and sincerely to the hereafter, a worldly, political society, and have tried to show this to be a criminal offence, despite three courts of law having acquitted them in that respect:

The basis of all human society, and especially the Islamic nation, are earnest love between relatives; concerned relations between tribes and groups; brotherhood and moral assistance for fellow believers arising from Islamic nationhood; self-sacrificing concern for one’s fellow-countrymen and the members of one’s nation; and unshakeable attachment and devotion to and support for the truths of the Qur’an, which save their eternal lives, and for those who disseminate them. It is only by denying these bonds, which secure the life of society, and by accepting the Red Peril —which is scattering the terrible seed of anarchy in the north, destroying nations and their youth, and by drawing everyone’s children to itself, annihilates kinship and nationhood, and opens the way to the total corruption of human civilization and society— that the Risale-i Nur students can be called a political society in the sense of its being a crime.

The Risale-i Nur students therefore do not hesitate to display their attachment to the Qur’an’s truths and their firm relations with their brothers of the hereafter. They accept gratefully any punishment that may be given them because of that brotherhood, and admit the truth to your just court. They do not condescend to defend themselves with trickery, sycophancy, and lies.

Prisoner, S a i d N u r s i