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Our Ustadh Bediuzzaman Said Nursî gave the following defence speech at the Istanbul Court, and his trial resulted in his acquittal.

Our secret enemies have once again turned the courthouse against me during this noble Ramadhan, and the matter is related to a covert communist committee.

One of these: In complete violation of the law, a sergeant with three armed gendarmes was sent to me while I was on my own, alone in the countryside and sitting in the mountains. They forcefully took me to the police station, saying, “You are not wearing the hat!” In response to this, I say to all courthouses whose aim is to establish justice:

They have been tormenting my conscience for two years with their peculiar lawlessness and pretext deriving from that lawlessness, even though a man who violates the laws of Islam in five different ways and commits five unlawful deeds should be accused of being actually unlawful. They will surely suffer the punishment of it in the Supreme Court when they rise from the dead and assemble for judgment. Indeed, which legal system in the world would ever let a man, who was a recluse for thirty-five years and has never walked around towns and marketplaces, be accused of not wearing the European hat? Five provinces, five courts and the police of those five provinces have not interfered with what this man wears on his head for twenty-eight years. Especially this time, at the just Court of Istanbul, he was in front of more than one hundred onlooking police and had walked to all these places in the last two months, and no police had interfered with him. Moreover, although the Appeal Court has decided that wearing the snow caps is not illegal, all women and those not wearing anything on their heads and all soldiers and public servants on duty are not obliged to wear the hat, and although there is no benefit in wearing it, and I do not have any official duty — the hat is official attire — and although it was said that those who wore the snow caps would not be responsible, this recluse man, who does not mingle with people, does not even see his closest friends during the noble Ramadhan to avoid preoccupying his rûh with such an unlawful and ugly thing and reminding himself of the world, despite being extremely ill, does not take medicine and does not call for doctors to avoid preoccupying his heart and rûh with his physical body, was forced to wear the hat to make him look like a foreign priest and threatened legally. This would disgust anyone who had any conscience at all.

For instance, the one who forced him to wear the hat said, “I obey the order.” How can an order based on an oppressive arbitrary law be obeyed? Just as there is an âyah in Al-Qur’an Al-Hakîm that foremost prohibits resembling Christians and Jews, so the âyah 1 يَا اَيُّهَا الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا اَطِيعُوا اللّهَ وَ اَطِيعُوا الرَّسُولَ وَ اُولِى اْلاَمْرِ مِنْكُمْ commands obedience to uli’l-amr2. On the condition that it is not against obedience to Allah and His rasûl, one can act by claiming that he obeys the order. Whereas, regarding this matter, even though the laws of the Islamic tradition command the compassionate treatment for the sick and to avoid harming them, to show compassion for those in ghurbah and to avoid harming them, and to avoid causing difficulty to those who serve the Qur’an and the ‘ilm of îmân for the sake of Allah. It is against laws not in ten ways but in a hundred ways to force a recluse man, who has abandoned the world, to wear a hat worn by foreign priests, and is a transgression against the law of Islamic tradition; it is to break those sacred laws on account of an arbitrary order.

These kinds of treatment against a very sick, old, alone, poor and recluse man who is at the door of the grave and has abandoned the world for thirty-five years just to refrain from acting contrary to Sunnah as-Saniyyah leave no room for any doubt that this is a conspiracy against the country, the nation, Islam and religion under the veil of communism and for the sake of anarchy. It is also a conspiracy against those who wish to serve Islam and the country, the religious members of parliament and the Democrats who took a stance against the terrible external destruction. The religious members of parliament should be cautious about not leaving me alone in defending against this terrible conspiracy.

NOTE: If it is said to a self-sacrificing servant of the haqiqahs of the Qur’an who devoted his life to Islam, who did not rise to the Russian Commander, who deliberately passed by him three times, did not stoop and bow his head to him in response to the Russian Commander’s threat of execution in order to preserve the honour of Islam, who responded to the British Commander who invaded Istanbul and those who granted fatwas by means of the British Commander with the sentence “Spit on the shameless faces of dhâlims” and by the language of his publications and did not submit to their threat of execution for the sake of the honour of Islam, who payed no attention to the anger of Mustafa Kemal before fifty members of the parliament and said, “One who does not perform salâh is a traitor,” and who said, “I am ready to sacrifice my rûh for a single matter of Sharî’ah,” in response to the terrible questions posed by military courts instead of licking their boots, and who has chosen to be a recluse for twenty-eight years so as not to resemble kâfirs, if it is unlawfully and vainly said to him “You should look like a Jewish rabbi and a Christian priest, wear the hat as they do, and oppose the consensus (‘ijma) of all ‘ulamâ of Islam; otherwise, we will punish you.” Surely such a man, who sacrifices everything for the haqiqahs of the Qur’an, if he had a hundred rûhs, will indeed sacrifice all of them, as his biography testified, even if he was cut into pieces with a knife or thrown in Jahannam, let alone suffered worldly imprisonment or punishments and tortures.

What is the hikmah of endurance of this devoted man, who possesses extreme ma’nawî power, and his not responding destructively by using material strength against the Nimrod-like severe cruelty of the covert enemies of this country and religion?

Here, I will announce this to you and all the people of conscience: so that ninety innocent people will not be harmed due to ten per cent of zindiq irreligious people, Al-Qur’an Al-Hakîm has given him the lesson of preserving the domestic public order and security with all his strength by leaving a self-prohibitor in everyone’s heart through the lessons of the Nur. Otherwise, I could avenge my dhâlim enemies of twenty-eight years in one day. It is for this reason, on the path of preserving public order and security for the sake of protecting the rights of the innocent, he does not defend his personal rights against the people who insult his honour and dignity and says, “I will sacrifice not only my worldly life but, if need be, sacrifice my life in the âkhirah too for the sake of the nation of Islam.”

Said Nursî