against us in certain officials. Their purpose was to exhaust my patience and force me to give in. Anyway, one reason they're angry with me is that I maintain my silence and don't interfere with worldly matters. It's as though they are saying: "Why don't you meddle so that we can realize our aims?" I am here revealing one or two of the stratagems they employ to arouse the suspicions of certain officials.

They say: Said is influential; his works are both effective and numerous. People who have contact with him, love him. So we have to destroy his influence by isolating him from everything, denigrating him, giving him no importance, putting people off him, and scaring them away. They confuse the government and cause me terrible distress.

So I say: My brothers who love this nation and country! Yes, there is influence, as those dissemblers say, but it isn't mine; it's the Risale-i Nur's. And it cannot be broken; the more it is attacked, the more it gains strength. It has never been utilized against the nation or country, and it isn't and it could not be. The fact that two courts with ten years between them could find no genuine reason to convict us after scrutinizing my vehement and impassioned documents of twenty years is irrefutable testimony to this claim.

Yes, it's true the works have a powerful effect, but they are powerful in serving the true interests of the nation and country and their happiness and eternal life, by instructing a hundred thousand people in true, affirmative belief without causing them any harm whatsoever. Absolutely undeniable proof of this claim is the fact that hundreds of convicts in Denizli Prison, some of whom had been convicted of serious crimes, became most well-behaved and religious by virtue of the treatise The Fruits of Belief alone. Murderers of two or three people even refrained from killing bedbugs, and as testified to by the prison governor, the prison turned into a reformatory.

So to isolate me from everything is torturous torment and a compounded injustice and cruel treachery towards this nation. Certain evidence that although I have passed the last thirty to forty years of my life among this religious nation, it has received no harm but the benefits of strengthened morale and belief, is the fact that its people have disregarded the violent propaganda against me and on all sides have flocked to the Risale-i Nur and shown extraordinary interest in it, and I have to admit also towards myself far greater than my due,

I heard that the authorities here had applied for a pension for me, to make things easier for me, and it was accepted. Although I thank them for their kindness, I say this:

What I need most is my freedom, which has been the guiding principle