Demiroğlu, who later served as the Deputy for Van for many years. He provides a number of details concerning Bediuzzaman's life, and recalls particularly his own adventures with Abdurrahman when distributing The Six Steps secretly under the noses of the British. The work was printed secretly "through the efforts of Eşref Edip." [^360] Tevfik Demiroğlu also notes that Bediuzzaman was closely associated with Eşref Edip, and with Mehmet Akif and the magazine Sebilürreşad, and that they used to meet for long conversations in the Yusuf Izzeddin Pasha Pavilion in Çamlıca, where Bediuzzaman stayed for some time. He also describes his adventures in stealing breech-blocks from the arsenals so as to make the British heavy guns unusable, while others would steal rifles and other weapons. [^361]

[^360]:Nursi, Şualar, 379 (Eng. tr.: Rays, 445).

[^361]:Tevfik Demiroğlu, in Son Şahitler, i, 229-231.

Bediuzzaman's enemies were not restricted to the British. Some thirty years later he wrote in a letter that a fellow member of the Darü'l-Hikmet, Seyyid Sadeddin Pasha, had warned him of another plot to kill him. The Pasha had told him: "I have learnt via certain means that an aggressive atheistic organization which is here but whose roots are abroad has read one of your works, and has declared that so long as its author remains in this world, they shall be unable to impose their ideas, that is, irreligion, on this nation, and that he shall have to be eliminated. So guard yourself well!" Bediuzzaman wrote that in reply he said to Sadeddin Pasha: "I place my trust in God! Death only comes once and the time of its coming cannot be changed." [^362]

[^362]:Nursi, Emirdağ Lahikası, i, 189-90.

#### Ankara

Ankara

In recognition in these services to the national cause, and particularly through The Six Steps, the national leaders in Ankara invited Bediuzzaman to join them there. However he declined to "flee" from Istanbul, [^363] Mustafa Kemal Pasha himself, who had been elected as President of the Grand National Assembly, sent three messages in cipher summoning him. These were repeated on numerous occasions by various people including Marshal Fevzi Çakmak; this is corroborated by National Defence Imam and Regimental Mufti, Osman Nuri Efendi. [^364] But Bediuzzaman told them:

[^363]:Nursi, Şualar, 379 (Eng. tr.: Rays, 445).

[^364]:Mehmet Süleyman Teymuroğlu, "Muhterem Said Nursi'nin Doldurduğu Boşluk," Hilal Dergisi, No. 13, Şubat 1969; see, Şahiner, Said Nursi, 239-40.

"I want to fight where it is dangerous; I do not like fighting behind trenches. I consider here to be more dangerous than Anatolia."