136-138

[In response to the committee of experts, the following is the objection presented to the Istanbul court conducting the trial of the Youth Guide in 1952.]

To the First High Criminal Court

…

This report given by the committee of experts is completely alien to the laws and life, history and sanctities of this nation and country and is an example of the conspiracy that attacks the ma’nawî life of our twenty million brothers who live in this country, insults the government and insults the ancestors of the entire nation by vilifying this nation’s one-thousand-year history and slanders the present laws. It is not possible for a court of justice to consider it with credibility.

Here, we ask those who took the name Experts and put their signatures on this document of conspiracy: Is this nation, hâsha, irreligious? Is this nation, hâsha, the most corrupt nation deprived of religion and îmân for centuries? Did our ancestors, who gilded the shining history of this nation, follow throughout their lives the way of kufr scattering dissipation and dhalâlah to the world? Is the entire history of a nation a lie; a history that illuminated mankind with the light of Islamic civilisation, instructed true civilisation to Europe, spread the nûr of hidâyah, ‘ilm and fadhîlah to East and West by carrying the duty of being the flag bearer of the Qur’an and opened a new age in the world by conquering Istanbul; is a nation full of heroism of individuals like Yıldırım, Fâtih, Selim and Suleyman, a nation to which those heroic individuals belong, unaware of religion contrary to what is written in history? Has this nation lost their ma’nawî life? So it is a different nation that disseminated Islam; are those commanders in a different nation’s history? Does history lie? Is it a lie that as the heroes of Islam, Turks carried the honour crown of being the flag bearers of the Qur’an over all nations, or is it a lie that, with the instruction it received from the haqiqah of Islam, this nation adorned its women and girls with the ornament of Qur’anic âdâb, protected the honour and dignity of being woman and prevented them from being valueless and vile? So our ancestors, our mothers, who were famous for centuries as the Turkish heroes of Islam and to have reached the pinnacle of perfect morals, honour, rectitude and dignity as we know —contrary to what we pride ourselves in — did not follow the commands of the Qur’an; they did not consider the haqiqah of beauty as being adorned with the ornament of Qur’anic âdâb within the sphere of the tarbiyyah of Islam, but in displaying themselves naked, is it so?

O, people of conscience and the present generation who take pride in their history, heroic and blessed ancestors and its sanctities! Come and see! In the name of Islam that you know to be the very life of your life and rûh of your rûh, and on behalf of the Qur’an that lightened the universe for fourteen centuries, illuminated millions of your ancestors for a thousand years with the nûr of its sacred and Ilahî principles and guided them to eternal happiness, and in the name of your hundreds of millions of ancestors, who followed those principles of the Qur’an, and on behalf of your mothers, grandmothers and sisters, who were illuminated with the nûr of tarbiyyah of Islam on the path of preserving their high morals and honour and showed the true meaning of being woman and its true beauty through their actions, attires and lives, express your regret, critisism and rejection to these slanderers, who have written and signed this treacherous document that insults your history and your religion of Islam!

And now, in order to ensure the confiscation of the work called the Youth Guide that teaches good morals, elevated sense of honour, îmân and fadhîlah to the youth to protect them from the dangers of immorality and promiscuousness of which all illuminated people, intellectuals, many educators and patriots are now complaining, and that ensures the youth to become beneficial members of the country and nation, and that serves as the most powerful force for the happiness of this nation and country in favour of justice, public order and security, and in order to convict the esteemed author of the Youth Guide, an eighty-year-old hero of Islam who suffers severe illness due to poison and, throughout his life, has been subjected to torments in prisons because of his religious service, these slanderers are saying this:

“Bediuzzaman supports tasattur. He describes women walking around half-naked and uncovered as the troops under the command of shaytan in the war against Islam. Bediuzzaman considers it a sin for women to expose their legs and to dress half-naked in social life; he deems the half-naked and immodest dressing of the present to be an obstacle to marriage and encourages promiscuousness. According to Bediuzzaman, the true and eternal beauty of women and what beautifies them is not dressing up and exhibiting their bodies in the social life but the ornament of Qur’anic âdâb within the sphere of Islamic tarbiyyah. Bediuzzaman supports religious instruction. He says that through the instruction given by the Risale-i Nur, the convicts in prison will be reformed in fifteen weeks, as witnessed by the prisons of Denizli and Afyon and their directors, guards and judicial authorities. In Bediuzzaman’s opinion, the youth enslaved by the alluring fitnah can only be saved through the haqiqahs of religion and the lessons of Risale-i Nur on îmân. He is guilty of these ideas, and he should be convicted.” Here, they are so-called professors and associate law professors called the committee of experts who teach the nation’s youth about justice, haqq and freedom.

Judges who, with the title of the representatives of true justice, preserve public law and national honour! If the lessons on îmân and the inculcations of fine morals in the Youth Guide are accepted as a crime as asserted by the report of the committee of experts, and if its author is held responsible for this great service, you have to accept the above insults, vilifications, blows that were dealt, and the disgusting slanders that were uttered against a nation, its thousand-year history, its traditional and judicial laws, its sacred religion that has been the eternal cause of its pride, and against the sacred haqiqahs of Islam, teachings of the Qur’an and honourable ancestors who, by embracing those sacred haqiqahs, proclaimed the Islamic civilisation over the world in all its glory, and against their rectitude, rights and morals. Only by tolerating and accepting these serious ma’nawî crimes can the Youth Guide accused by the so-called experts be considered a crime. Only in that way can its author be convicted and his students who published it be condemned; otherwise, the principles of legal justice and the freedom of thought and conscience would not permit their conviction and trial; it can never be compatible with the laws of democracy of the administration of the Republic that implement the principles of freedom of thought and freedom of conscience in the broadest sense.

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