solicitous divine protection. It would surely be mistaken to contest such a genius, and extremely damaging to the nation and country, and arrogant obduracy to oppose such divine protection and dominical favour.

If you say: If we release you and do not hold you under surveillance, you may contaminate the life of our society with your teachings and hidden secrets.

I reply: Without exception, all my teachings are in the possession of the government and judiciary, and not one thing has been found that would necessitate even a day's punishment. Although forty to fifty thousand copies of the treatises expounding those teachings have been circulating among the people and have been read attentively and no one has received any harm, only benefits; and since both the former and the recent courts could find nothing incriminating, the recent one unanimously ruled for our acquittal and the former one, for the sake of an important personage in this world, on the pretext of five or ten words out of one hundred and thirty treatises, were able to give only a six-month sentence to fifteen of the one hundred and twenty arrested brothers. These facts form a decisive proof that it is a meaningless anxiety and ugly injustice to attack myself and the Risale-i Nur. Anyway I do not have any new writings and none of my secrets have remained hidden that you should try to correct them by holding me.

I am in great need of my freedom. Enough now of these twenty years of unnecessary, unjust, and useless surveillance. My patience is exhausted. It is possible that out of the weakness of old age I shall utter the curses that I have never uttered uptil now. The saying: "The sighs of the oppressed rise up to the divine throne" [^1] is a powerful truth.

[^1]:Bukhārī, Jihād, 18; Zakāt, 62; Maghāzī, 60; Maẓālim, 9; Muslim, Īmān, 29; Abū Dā'ūd, Zakāt, 5; Tirmidhī, Zakāt, 6; Birr, 67; Nasā'ī, Zakāt, 1; Ibn Māja, Zakāt, 1; Musnad, i, 222; ii, 102.

Then those cruel wretches who occupy high worldly positions said: "These last twenty years not once have put one of our hats on your head, and you haven't attended the courts bareheaded but have appeared in your garb of the former era. But seventeen million people have adopted the new dress."

I told them: "I prefer to adhere to the Shari'a and out of fear of God wear the dress of seven thousand million people rather than under the force of law and although permitted by the Shari'a, adopt the dress of not seven-teen million or even seven million, but on their own wish and acceptance of only seven thousand Europe-smitten drunkards !"