While the preliminary questioning was being carried out by the Public Prosecutor and Examining Magistrate after the arrests of Bediuzzaman and his students, the collections of the Risale-i Nur, such as Zülfikar, The Staff of Moses, The Illuminating Lamp (Siraj al-Nur), and A Guide for Youth, as well as letters and other documents were all sent to the Directorate of Religious Affairs in Ankara to be scrutinized by another ‘committee of experts’. Although these produced their report in a short time, presenting it to Afyon Court on 16 March, 1948, due to the Prosecutor’s interference, it was not for several months that Bediuzzaman was able to obtain a copy of it. This committee bowed to pressure from the Government, and put forward two main points that the Prosecution was able to use against Bediuzzaman,[31. Bediuzzaman had surmised that the Experts’ Report had arrived some time previously, because some of the answers in a table he had made out of ninety errors and factual inaccuracies in the indictments and his answers to them corresponded exactly to the Report. In other words, the indictment was in part based on the report (Sualar, 433.) For the table, see Sualar, 342-361.] although only three years before the previous ‘experts’ had cleared the Risale-i Nur. Nevertheless, importantly, they rejected the charges of forming a tarikat, organizing a society, and disturbing public security, and concentrated their objections, which Bediuzzaman described as, “unfair, incorrect, and unjustifiable”, on the Fifth Ray.[32. Sualar, 437.] The second point they raised, also entirely unfair and mistaken but one which, out of fear, Bediuzzaman’s enemies frequently levelled at him, was being “conceited and vain-glorious”, by which was meant building up by means of his students’ good will towards him, a position of personal prestige and power.
Bediuzzaman answered these objections the committee raised in a “Thank-you Letter”, in which he firstly expressed his gratitude to them for exonerating him of the main charges. He then pointed out in scholarly and reasoned fashion the errors in their objections to the Hadiths in the Fifth Ray and his interpretation of them. Since together with the few lines on inheritance and Islamic dress this was the one part of the Risale-i Nur that was made the pretext for this court case and numerous subsequent cases – since the authorities interpreted it as attacking Ataturk, it is worth mentioning here the history of this extraordinary treatise,which illustrates one reason how Bediuzzaman earned his name, ‘The Wonder of the Age’, and also, unfortunately, how this frequently resulted in rivalry and jealousy on the part of other religious scholars.
The Fifth Ray had originated over forty years previously, from when Bediuzzaman came to Istanbul before the Constitutional Revolution in 1907. At that time, when that “prodigy from the East” had put a notice on his door saying “Here all questions are answered, but none are asked”, the Istanbul ‘ulama put some questions to him about some allegorical Hadith referring to the end of time, which had been asked them by the visiting Japanese Commander-in-Chief. Then, when a member of the Darü’l-Hikmeti’l-Islamiye after the First World War, in reply to some further questions on the same subject, Bediuzzaman arranged these replies roughly in the form of a treatise, the purpose of which was to save believers from doubts about the allegorical Hadiths, which superficially appeared to be unconformable with reason.[33. Sualar, 296; 383.] Then, in 1922 he was invited to Ankara by Mustafa Kemal, and as is described in the relevant chapter above, Bediuzzaman saw part of what these Hadiths foretold “in someone there”, and for that reason felt compelled to refuse the offers made to him by Mustafa Kemal of various important posts, and withdrew from politics and the world to eastern Anatolia in order to work “solely on the way of saving belief.” And again on being asked questions on these allegorical Hadiths foretelling events at the end of time when in exile in Kastamonu in 1938, Bediuzzaman arranged this treatise in its final form and it was incorporated into the Risale-i Nur as the Fifth Ray.[34. Sualar, 300-1.] That is to say, as time unfolded, the interpretations of some of these Hadiths which Bediuzzaman had given as far back as 1907 became realized; what they prophesied became realized in fact.
For example, one of these Hadiths says: “A fearsome individual at the end of time will rise in the morning and on his forehead will be written: ‘This is a kafir ’.” In 1907, the meaning Bediuzzaman had given this was: “This extraordinary individual will come to lead this nation. He will rise in the morning and put on a hat, and he will make others wear hats.”[35. Sualar, 300.] …“That Sufyan will put on a European hat, and make others wear [similar hats]. But because this will be by compulsion and force of law, the hat will made to prostrate [before God] and God willing will be rightly-guided, and by wearing it – unwillingly – everyone will not become kafirs.”[36. Sualar., 490.]
It was for this reason, because this was so plain, that Bediuzzaman had suppressed the treatise and not permitted it to be circulated. It was only after the entire Risale-i Nur, including the Fifth Ray, had been declared legally innocuous by the previous Committee of Experts and Denizli Court that he had allowed it to be duplicated.
Now, the present ‘committee of experts’ levelled criticism at the Fifth Ray which Bediuzzaman described as “unfair, mistaken, and unjustifiable.”[37. Sualar, 437.] These centred on the nature of the Hadiths, which they said were either “unsound” or “weak”, and on his interpretation of them. In his “Thank-you Letter”, Bediuzzaman answered these criticisms with little difficulty.[38. Sualar, 338-9.] Besides this, Bediuzzaman also described these criticisms as resulting from jealousy and “a vein of Wahhabism”, which points to the reasons for their second point of objection, which was equally mistaken. They criticized the eulogies written to Bediuzzaman and the Risale-i Nur by some of his students.
So Bediuzzaman pointed out it was a long-standing custom among scholars and literary people to write such eulogies about one another’s work, and for these to be included at the ends of the works when they first appeared. If such eulogies had been directed towards himself, Bediuzzaman had changed them to refer to the Risale-i Nur. In any event time was proving what was written about the Risale-i Nur to be true. And even if what they wrote had been excessively exaggerated or even wrong, it would still only have been a scholarly error, and everyone was entitled to his own opinion. Bediuzzaman went on to gently put three questions to the ‘experts’ from the Directorate of Religious Affairs, suggesting that they were busying themselves with trifles while religion and the Qur’an were suffering the fearsome attacks of that time, or even assisting them.[39. Sualar, 338-341.]
Nevertheless, despite the unfair criticisms in this report and their consequences, Bediuzzaman maintained a positive attitude towards the Directorate of Religious Affairs, marked by the “Thank-you Letter” above and the fact that in addition to other government departments, he arranged for copies of the defence speeches to be sent also to them.[40. Sualar, 409.] In fact, previous to their arrests, and subsequently, he sent students to them to seek their co-operation.[41. Emirdag Lahikasi, i, 232-3; ii, 6; 9.]