impudence which was in five ways illegal and in five ways entirely lacking in conscience.
Our Master is someone who could not endure to be slighted by the domineering behaviour of a sultan; and in reply to Hurşid Pasha, the chief of the military court, and its other members, in the Second Constitutional Period, declared: "If constitutionalism consists of one party's absolutism, let all mankind and the jinn witness that I'm a reactionary and ready to sacrifice a thousand lives if I had them for a single matter of the Shari'a!" who told Mustafa Kemal in the National Assembly: "Anyone who does not perform the prayers is a traitor, and traitors do not have the right to govern!" who has never given up his Islamic dress, and who told the Governor of Ankara, called Nevzat, who wanted to interfere with his dress and received a blow by killing himself: "This turban comes off with this head," pointing to his neck and rejecting any interference; whose turban they could not remove in any of the courts of Isparta, or Eskişehir, or Denizli even; and with the exception of the last Afyon trial, he was not ordered to even when there were crowds of thousands of people and twenty police.
Thus, the intention of those ill-mannered officials in intervening in his dress although he is a recluse, and insulting him, was directly on account of anarchy to cast the country and nation into danger. It was also entirely illegal. He is a person who for years and with unequalled self-sacrifice and abnegation of self has striven in the most arduous conditions to save with his wondrous works consisting of one hundred and thirty treatises the belief of this country and nation. To assault such a person in this way surely means assisting the covert enemies of this country, who strive to destroy and corrupt the nation and its youth. We understood from the fact that our Master, who could never endure insults, endured and attached no importance to the denigrating abuse of a couple of obdurate wretches in Afyon, joined and incited by an atheist Mason, was that he has sacrificed even his honour, reputation, self, spirit, and tranquillity so that no harm should come to this country and nation because of himself.
Zübeyir from Konya ∗∗∗