In Short: As I stated before, I told Eskişehir Court when they wanted to convict me under Article 163: out of two hundred deputies of the Republican Government, the same number, 163, agreed to assign one hundred and fifty thousand liras to my medrese [^13] in Van. Due to this, the regard in which the Republican Government held me invalidates Article 163 as far as I am concerned. Although I told the court this, the committee of experts corrupted what I said and wrote: “163 deputies opened proceedings against Said.” It is because of this totally baseless accusation of that first experts’ committee that the prosecution is making charges against us. This is in spite of the fact that the Risale-i Nur had been referred, on your decision, to the highest learned and scientific committee, and having studied and scrutinized all its parts, the committee unanimously made this statement about us: “There is nothing explicit or inferred in the writings of Said and the Risale-i Nur students which suggests that they have any intent to exploit religion or sacred matters, encourage the breaching of state security, or found a political society, or conspire in any way against the Government. It is understood that in their correspondences, Said’s students did not nurture any evil intentions against the Government, or have the idea of founding a political association, or establishing a sufi order.”

[^13]:See, page 483, footnote 69.

The second committee of experts also stated unanimously that “ninety-nine per cent of Said Nursi’s treatises are both sincere, and disinterested, and have in no way departed from the principles of scholarship, reality, and religion. There is clearly nothing in them exploiting religion, or concerning the formation of a political society, or breaching security. The letters and correspondence between the students and between them and Said Nursi are of this sort. Apart from five or ten confidential, complaining, and unscholarly pieces, all the treatises expound Qur’anic verses or the true meanings of Hadiths. Ninety per cent of the available treatises contain comparisons illustrating clearly the tenets of belief in God, the Prophet, and the hereafter and their terminology, scholarly views, moral admonitions to the elderly and to youths, and instructive incidents selected from his experiences in life. They contain nothing which could damage the Government, administration, or public security.

Thus, the prosecution ignored the report of this eminent committee and made extraordinary charges against us based on the confused, deficient first report, so we are truly extremely upset. We in no way deem it fitting for this just court with its proven fairness. If there be no mistake in the comparison, it resembles this story: they asked a Bektashi why he did not perform the obligatory prayers. He told them: “It says in the Qur’an