during these twenty-eight years I have been quite certain that death would be much better for me than life, and the grave much more comfortable for me than prison, and prison would be ten times more advantageous for my ease and comfort than freedom of this sort. If some of my friends had not been saddened at it, I would have remained in prison permanently.

If suicide had been licit, surely a person who did not condescend to bow before the threats of the Russian commander-in-chief and the commander of the allied forces occupying Istanbul to execute him, or in the face of the fury of the President of the Republic in the president's office in the presence of fifty deputies, would have far preferred death to life on being subjected frequently to the insulting humiliations, slanders, torments, and severe provocations of common gendarmes, paltry officials, and uncouth prison guards. Death would have been sweet for him.

Since they are making a pretext of the Guide and I am being accused due to some unimaginable and astonishing delusion, I and my brothers say the following since we have saved our belief and morals from danger thanks to the truths of the Guide:

The Guide was composed fifteen years ago, and having been printed three times, thousands of copies and tens of thousands of handwritten copies have been disseminated everywhere in this country and have been read eagerly. Despite this, not one of its hundred thousand readers, friend or foe, religious or anti-religious, has said that they have suffered harm from it, nor have we ever heard any of them saying that it is harmful for the country and nation. If that had been the case, such words would have spread everywhere since it is a topical and relevant question. If necessary, we can put forward to testify to this claim of ours close on a hundred thousand witnesses who declare that they have saved their belief through it, rectified their national character, and profited from it.

If some small mistake is disregarded for a person who possesses ten virtues, how can charges be made against a work that has yielded a hundred thousand benefits and useful results due to some baseless, imaginary fault? No law in the world related to the life of society could ascribe guilt in such a situation.

The members of the experts' committee who studied the work had no knowledge of the Islamic and religious sciences; they noted the following as chargeable offences:

The First: They said it is opposed to secularism and exploits religion for politics.

The facts that its author has renounced politics for the past thirty-five years and has not read the newspapers, and has always told his students not to become involved in politics refute that charge entirely.