descendants of the Prophet (PBUH), but also because the revolution "put a bomb to the auspicious developments" of the pact and the moves towards Islamic Unity and co-operation. However it is apparent from a statement Bediuzzaman made on the fourth day after the revolution that he expected unity on a broader scale to result from such actions on the behalf of communism and unbelief, for he said:

"I was expecting Germany, Japan, India, Pakistan, America, and the Islamic world to strike together against absolute unbelief. It means the time has not yet come." [^81]

[^81]:Mustafa Sungur, in Nur—The Light, Vol. V, No. 57, September 1990, 2-4.

#### Other Matters on which the Third Said Addressed the Democrats

Other Matters on which the Third Said

Addressed the Democrats

It was because from time to time Bediuzzaman concerned himself with matters such as the Baghdad Pact that these last ten years of his life are known as the period of the Third Said. The favourable attitude towards Islam of Menderes and a number of Democrats prompted him to put for- ward to them certain key principles which would counter the destructive moves made by "those who exploited politics for the cause of irreligion" and establish unity and harmony in society and solidarity with the Islamic world. In order to understand better this endeavour, and also the opposition he continued to receive from the RPP and the enemies of religion, which demonstrated their fear of him and his penetrating analyses of the situation, it is worth recalling briefly the nature of the struggle.

The basis of the argument that had now been continuing in Turkey for over a century and a half had been over what was necessary firstly to save the Ottoman Empire, and then when the Empire collapsed, to set Turkey on the road to progress and prosperity. Simply, on the one hand, there had been those who had favoured Westernization and adopting 'man-made' philosophy of some sort as the ideological basis of the state and society. While on the other, there were those who believed that religion, Islam, was the source of true civilization. Among these some, like Bediuzzaman, stated that it was necessary to take science and technology from the West but nothing else. Thus, in this struggle between 'philosophy' and 'religion', Westernization and Islam, which had turned into a battle between belief and unbelief and had been so bitter in Turkey, he had dedicated his life to proving that Islam and religion were superior to Western philosophy and civilization, and that mankind's happiness and salvation were to be