The Twelfth Ray

The Twelfth Ray

[Part of the Defence Speeches Given in Denizli Court] [^1]

[^1]:Since the matters were the same, our Master, Üstad Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, presented the same defence - skipping where necessary and adding where necessary- to Afyon Court as he had at Denizli. He therefore put the greater part of the Denizli defence speeches together with those of Afyon, and gave them the name of the Fourteenth Ray. Signed, His Students.

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Yes, we are a society and we are a society which every century has had three hundred and fifty million [now one and a half thousand million] members. Every day through the five obligatory prayers, its members demonstrate with complete veneration their attachment to the principles of that sacred society. Through the sacred programme of "The believers are but a single brotherhood," [^2] they hasten to assist one another with their prayers and spiritual gains. We are members of that sacred, vast society, and our particular duty is to teach the believers in certain, verified fashion the Qur’anic truths of belief, and save them and ourselves from eternal extinction and everlasting solitary confinement in the Intermediate Realm. We have absolutely no connection with any worldly, political, scheming society or clandestine group, or the covert organizations concerning which on no grounds whatsover we have been charged; we do not condescend to such things.

[^2]:Qur’an, 49:10.

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If we had had any desire to interfere in worldly affairs, it would not have been with such buzzing like a fly, it would have exploded like the firing of a cannon. To accuse someone who defended himself vehemently in the Military Court and in the office of the Speaker of the National Assembly in the presence of an angry Mustafa Kemal, of hatching plots for eighteen