arises from egotism, self-advertisement, arrogance, and cruel politics, people shower blessings on Satan if he assists their side, and curse angels if they help the opposing side. In fact, I saw one righteous religious scholar speak so badly about another righteous scholar as to accuse him of disbelief, while enthusiastically praising an atheist who was inimical to Islam yet held the same ideas as himself and supported him. It was because of this that I have given up politics this last thirty-five years, as though fleeing from the Devil.

Furthermore, now it appears that when someone perpetrated a serious misdemeanour towards both Ramadan, and the marks of Islam, and this religious nation, his opponents were pleased at the situation. Whereas, just as consenting to disbelief is disbelief, so agreeing with misguidance, vice, and wrongdoing is misguidance, vice, and wrongdoing. I understood from this extraordinary situation that with the idea of exonerating themselves from their crimes in the nation's eyes, they want to show their opponents to be more irreligious and guilty than themselves and to see them thus. Awesome injustices of this sort both have perilous consequences, and overturning social morality, resemble a serious conspiracy against this country and nation and Islamic supremacy.

I was going to write more but for now I am sufficing with explaining these three essential points for the religious promoters of liberty.

S a i d   N u r s i

[We present an addendum to some facts we wrote previously about the life of our society with the intention of sending it to Adnan Menderes.]

Addendum: In my view, the sole way of preventing the Ticanî question [^59] being loaded on the religious Democrats, which resulted from the unnecessary, arbitrary laws of the former regime, indeed, due to their provocations, and so that they do not lose face in the sight of the Islamic world; is to restore Aya Sophia to its sacred function of five hundred years, just as they were strengthened tenfold by restoring the Arabic call to prayer, and to announce the Risale-i Nur's freedom officially. For at present the Risale-i Nur is yielding very favourable results in the Islamic world and

[^59]:A group affiliated with the Tijaniyya Order (T. Ticani) which in the early 1950s attacked the many busts and statues of Atatürk in and around Ankara. Accusing the Democrat government of condoning reactionism, the opposition Republican People's Party exploited the question as a means of pressurizing the government. [Tr.]