tea and a few olives each day. God's grace was with him; just how great he was, I didn't know. [^112]

[^112]:Postacı Kâmil, in Son Şahitler, iv, 147-50.

#### Eskişehir Court

Eskişehir Court

It is apparent from the overreaction of the Interior Minister, Şükrü Kaya, and the government, the furore started in the press, and the rumours put around both in Isparta and Eskisehir, that the intention was to do away with Bediuzzaman. Quite likely when it is remembered that countless people, and especially men of religion, had fallen prey to the secularizing 'reforms', accused of lesser 'crimes'. The charges were several, and involved the infringement of the principle of secularism and of Article 163 of the Criminal Code through, among other things, exploiting religion for organizing a group which might be harmful to public security. The court was under pressure from the Interior Minister to condemn Bediuzzaman. It was thus a matter of life and death for him, and his students, but it was not himself he set about to defend in the court, his defence speeches are for the most part defences of the Risale-i Nur. They are masterpieces which demolish with his usual straightforward reasoning the government's baseless suspicions concerning him and the trumped-up charges of the court. The fact was that due to his percipience and foresight, Bediuzzaman succeeded in counteracting the depradations against the Islamic faith of the people of Turkey. And more than this, with his writings, he had started a positive movement of renewal without apparently breaking the new laws. And he was able to prove this to the court.

Thus despite the pressure brought to bear on it, the court cleared him of all the charges, save one, which concerned a short treatise expounding some Qur'anic verses about Islamic dress. A topical subject, it made this the pretext and arbitrarily sentenced Bediuzzaman to twelve months' imprisonment, and fifteen of his students to six months. The remaining one hundred and two were acquitted; three had already been released. Bediuzzaman objected to this, for if they had been found guilty of the crimes of which they had been accused, it would have resulted in his own execution and at least imprisonment with hard labour for his students. He described it as "the sentence for a horse thief" and demanded that they show in accordance with the law that his guilt necessitated either his execution or a hundred and one years' imprisonment, or else give him and his friends and his