ous ways and made the very greatest efforts to found in eastern Anatolia an Islamic university called the Medresetü'z-Zehrâ which would correspond to al-Azhar University. He always insisted on the absolute need for it. As it says in the piece our Master wrote to the President and Prime Minister congratulating them on this question, the University of the East would win a place of pride among Muslims as a sort of centre of the Islamic world. The highly valuable, sacred work for religion of the past and the enduring moral qualities of the thousands of esteemed, blessed scholars and gnostics, martyrs and people of reality who are our ancestors and are buried there, would be personified in this university, where they would persist in serving the cause of belief in a wider field.

The basis of instruction in the University of the East, and of its curriculum, would be the Risale-i Nur, which expounds the All-Wise Qur'an's truths of belief, and proves all the questions it deals with with the rational and positive sciences and logical arguments, and addresses the reason, and is suitable to be taught in the universities and schools of the present era.

The Risale-i Nur appeared through the mediation of a student of the masters and medreses scattered over eastern Anatolia, which for centuries have acted as sources of the water of life for that region. With these latter-day illumined fruits of theirs, those esteemed masters will once again take up their duties, expanding them and their service of the Qur'an to embrace the whole world. We hope for this with all our spirit and beseech divine mercy that it will be realized. The present time and place and conditions of life and the need for general reconciliation all say: "Amen! Amen!" to this, and so they will say it.

As a fruit and universal result of the activities in the east related to knowledge and its acquisition, and as the programme of the Eastern University in respect of Islam, the Risale-i Nur closely concerns those who strive to serve this nation and the Islamic world. And the fact that the Risale-i Nur is now being sought in America and Europe and is spreading there, demonstrates the paramount importance of what we say.

Mustafa Sungur ∗∗∗

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They read me a newspaper the articles of which I saw consisted of lies and slanders. Such slanders are extremely harmful for both Isparta and the publishers of the Risale-i Nur.

First Lie: It accuses me of giving instruction in Sufism, calling the readers of the Risale-i Nur "disciples" (murid) and the Risale-i Nur, a Sufi path