obviously believing that he would be displeased or discomforted by this, and maybe try to have it removed. How little these officials understood Bediuzzaman — who had been "a religious republican" since an early age, and had spent his entire life striving for the good and salvation of the Turkish nation and country, both on the battlefield and with his pen. So he wrote the governor a letter. It went like this:

Sir!

I thank you for having the flag of the Independence Holiday hung on my ward. During the National Action in Istanbul, Ankara knew that I had performed the service of maybe a military division through publishing and distributing my work The Six Steps against the British and Greeks, for twice Mustafa Kemal notified me in cypher wanting me to go to Ankara. He even said: "We have to have this heroic hoja here!" That is to say, it is my right to hang this flag this holiday.

Said Nursi [^327]

[^327]:Nursi, Şualar, 455 (Eng. tr.: Rays, 533); Şahiner, Said Nursi, 366-8.

#### Afyon Court

Afyon Court

Just as in the prison Bediuzzaman and his students were abused and illtreated in ways that were entirely unlawful, so too in the trial, the law was subverted and exploited in the clear purpose of the court to convict Bediuzzaman whatever the reality of the case. As the tide was turning against them, the trial and imprisonment were a last, futile attempt to silence Bediuzzaman and stem the flood turning to the Qur'an and Islam due to the teachings of the Risale-i Nur. Their desperation was demonstrated by the fact that the same charges that had been cleared by previous courts, on which Bediuzzaman and his students had been declared innocent, were again put forward — he described them as "collecting water from a thousand streams": "exploiting religious feelings in a way that might disturb public order", "founding a secret society for political ends", "forming a new Sufi tarikat", "criticizing Mustafa Kemal and his reforms", "spreading ideas opposed to the regime", and again Bediuzzaman was accused of being "a Kurdish nationalist"; a charge so far from the truth that more than anything it shows the lengths the authorities were prepared to go to in order to discredit him.

Two points the Prosecution made much of in regard to "inciting the people in ways that might disturb the peace" concerned firstly the Fifth Ray, which explains a number of Hadiths alluding to the Sufyan and Dajjal