#### Bediuzzaman's Relations with the World and the Worldly
Bediuzzaman's Relations with the World and the Worldly
In early February 1934, Bediuzzaman wrote this letter to Re'fet Bey in Isparta:
My Dear, Loyal, Meticulous, and Ardent Brother, Re'fet Bey!
However much you want to talk with me, I probably want to talk with you more. But unfortunately, I am in a distressing situation afflicted with numerous difficulties. When I find the opportunity, I try to write seven or eight letters in the space of an hour or two. Galib too, who used to come from time to time, has been prevented. Only poor Şamlı remains, and he cannot come all the time. Also they wound these vipers and make them attack us like savage beasts, They try to cause annoyance at every opportunity.... And because they have made me think of the world, the ideas that come to me have ceased. Let it be the end of them, thinking of the worldlys' world is poison for me... I implore Almighty God to bestow on me firm patience and to abstract my mind so I do not think of it. [^94]
[^94]:Nursi, Barla Lahikası, 181.
The New Said had withdrawn from the world and politics. The Ankara government had aimed to isolate him from all contacts with the world beyond the village of Barla, and indeed within it too, but this was also what the New Said had chosen. It was after all from the cave in Mount Erek near Van that he had been taken to exile. But now the authorities would not leave him in peace. They would not leave him alone. They could not pin anything on him, he did not break any of their laws, yet the religious treatises he was writing were being duplicated in hundreds of homes in the province of Isparta and beyond at a time when the production of books and writings on Islam had been suppressed virtually entirely. They were extremely agitated by Bediuzzaman and the Risale-i Nur, interpreting his writings only in political terms. According to their way of thinking Bediuzzaman calls them "ehl-i dünya", the worldly whose view is restricted solely to the life of this world — the Risale-i Nur was being written as a means to political ends, hence their constant provocation and harassment of him and his students. Bediuzzaman answered these suspicions of the politicians and the authorities in several letters, stating clearly that he was compelled to explain the matter to them "in the tongue of the Old Said, not that of the New Said", in order to save not himself, but his friends and the Risale-i Nur from "the unfounded suspicions and torments of the worldly." [^95] In the Sixteenth Letter, Bediuzzaman made clear his attitude towards politics like this:
[^95]:Nursi, Mektûbat, 57 (Eng. tr.: Letters, 83).