had made him withdraw entirely from politics in order to find a solution to this "calamity" that he saw would occur. He described this in a letter to "the Minister of Justice and Judges of the Courts concerned with the Risale-i Nur", urging them "to protect the Risale-i Nur and its Students" instead of striving against them, as the solution lay there. He pointed out to them that just as the results of "the libertarians" of some thirty years previously advocating a loosening of the constraints of religion and its morality were now apparent, so too that present situation would result in fifty years' time in a fearful moral degeneration and dissolution of society. For, "Muslims do not resemble others; a Muslim who abandons religion and departs from the high moral character of Islam falls into absolute unbelief, becomes an anarchist and can no longer be governed." [^287]

[^287]:Nursi, Emirdağ Lahikası, i, 20-1.

Bediuzzaman argued that the "moral and spiritual" (mânevî) destruction of these forces could only be halted and countered by the truths of the Qur'an and belief. Issuing from the Qur'an, the Risale-i Nur was "a repairer of the strength of an atom bomb" and "a Qur'anic barrier" before those forces. The law and processes of justice could not arrest them with their "material" penalties. [^288] Neither could politics or diplomacy. Thus, in his letters both to his students and departments of government, Bediuzzaman stressed the importance of "politicians and patriots embracing the Risale-i Nur." Similarly, he frequently pointed out that it was these forces that were themselves attempting to destroy order and create anarchy and thus were conspiring against the country, that continuously endeavoured to create incidents and have Bediuzzaman and his students accused of the same thing. Whereas as had been established by courts of law, the Risale-i Nur and its Students protected the bases of public order, preserved security and prevented subversion and sedition. [^289] And he wrote to the Afyon police headquarters: "In the near future, this country and its government will have intense need of works like the Risale-i Nur." [^290]

[^288]:Nursi, Emirdağ Lahikası, ii, 71, 164.

[^289]:For example, Nursi, Emirdağ Lahikası, i, 29, 75-6.

[^290]:Ibid., 77.

#### Increased Harassment and Prelude to Afyon

Increased Harassment and Prelude to Afyon

The swift spread of the Risale-i Nur over the three and a half years from 1944 to the beginning of 1948 and Bediuzzaman intensifying his struggle against the forces working against them by putting the case of the Risale-i Nur directly to the authorities and urging them to consider the seriousness