for his own comfort so as not to attract attention to himself or interfere in politics; with which law does it accord to raid his retreat and cause unimaginable distress to his spirit while he lies ill? Anyone with an atom's conscience would pity him.

The Fourth: Although a number of judicial authorities were prompted against him due to groundless fears concerning the founding of a Sufi order and political society, and due to the personal grudges of a great leader, he was acquitted of the charges after six months of investigations by Eskişehir Court and of charges connected with the Risale-i Nur. Only, on the pretext of a short part of the Risale-i Nur about the veiling of women, the court imposed a sentence of six months on five or ten students out of a hundred, not as dictated by the law, but at its discretion. They had already been under arrest for four months by the time the investigation commenced; that is, they had been held in prison for one-and-a-half months; then ten years later Denizli Court scrutinized all the letters and writings of twenty years, and they remained in prison during the investigations conducted by Ankara and Denizli. Then the courts passed down a unanimous decision for their acquittal regarding the Sufi order and political society [^102] and the other pretexts, and they acquitted Said and his friends and returned that book and all the letters to their owners. So to now look on them as a political society and accuse him of being a political intriguer, and to incite the officers of the law against them as though they were members of a political society and Sufi order, is totally opposed to the law, as anyone who has not lost his humanity would know.

[^102]:The basis and objective of the Risale-i Nur is certain, affirmative belief and the truth of the Qur'an. For this reason, three courts acquitted it in regard to Sufism. Also, in twenty years, no one at all has claimed that I have given instruction in Sufism. Anyway, a way that this nation has been bound to for a thousand years cannot be held to be reprehensible. Moreover, those who respond to certain covert dissemblers who label the reality of Islam "Sufism" (tarikat) and attack this nation's religion, cannot be accused of practising Sufism. As for the society, it is brotherhood that looks to the hereafter in so far as it is Islamic brotherhood. Three courts have ruled that it is not a political society. [Author]

The Fifth: It is like this: owing to the compassion which is the basis of the Risale-i Nur's way and has been a guiding principle of my life for thirty years, so that no harm should come to any innocent, I do not vex the criminals who persecute me, let alone curse them. I feel anger at the depraved sinners who oppress me with terrible hatred, indeed, irreligious tyrants, yet that compassion prevents me from responding physically, or even with curses. For those cruel evildoers have wretched elderly parents or innocent children; lest they suffer any blows, I refrain from annoying