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[Our Master, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, used this defence speech, which was published in Samsun by the newspaper, Büyük Cihad, after having been read in the court there, in the court in Istanbul and the case resulted in an acquittal.]

Our covert enemies again prompted the judiciary to move against us this Ramadan. The matter concerns a secret communist society.

One of them: While taking some air in the countryside and sitting alone on a hillside, three armed gendarmes and a sergeant approached me in a way that was completely outside the law, and accused me of not wearing a peaked cap. They took me by force to the police station. So I say to all the courts of law whose purpose is the administering of justice:

While those who act illegally in five respects and break the laws of Islam in five ways in the name of Islam, should be accused of illegal behaviour, they will surely be punished by the Supreme Tribunal on the Last Day for trampling the law in that way and using it as an excuse, and causing me torments of the conscience for two years. Which law in the world would permit someone who has been a recluse for thirty-five years and goes neither to any market or town to be censured for not wearing a European-style hat? These last twenty-eight years, five provinces and their police and five courts of law have not interfered with his headgear, and no police interfered during this last court case in Istanbul, even, under the eyes of more than a hundred police and for two months making trips everywhere there on foot. And since the Court of Appeal ruled against the prohibition of the beret, and also, none of the women, including those of them who do not wear the veil, and none of the private soldiers are obliged to the wear the brimmed hat like some officials, and since there is absolutely no advantage in wearing it, and I have no official post — seeing that it is an item of official dress — and those who wear berets are not prosecuted, to propose that he wears the hat and resembles foreign priests and to threaten him with court proceedings would certainly disgust anyone with a grain of conscience. For he is a recluse and does not mix with people, and so as not to busy his spirit with this ugly, illegal matter during Ramadan, and in order not to preoccupy his heart and spirit with his body, does not take medicines or call the doctor although he is seriously ill.

For example: The person who was proposing this said that he has to obey orders. But how can you have orders with the force of arbitrary laws? Yes, in the Qur'an, there are verses like: "O you who believe, obey God, and obey the Messenger, and those charged with authority among you" (Q 4:59), which command obedience to leaders so as not to resemble the Jews