Addendum to the Sixth Section, which is the Sixth Booklet: It was written to avoid the hatred and insults that can target us in the future.

Addendum to the Sixth Section,
which is the Sixth Treatise

Six Questions

[This Addendum was written in order to avoid the disgust and insults that will levelled at us in the future. That is to say, it was written so that when it is said: “Look at the spineless people of that age!”, their spit should not hit us in the face, or else to wipe it off. Let the ears ring of the leaders of Europe, savage beneath their humanitarian masks! And let this be thrust in the unseeing eyes of those unjust oppressors who inflicted these unscrupulous tyrants on us! It is a petition with which to hit over the head the followers of modern low civilization, who this century have a hundred thousand times over necessitated the existence of Hell.]

In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

No reason have we why we should not put our trust on Allah. Indeed He has guided us to the way we [follow]. We shall certainly bear with patience all the hurt you may cause us. For those who put their trust should put their trust on Allah.¹

Recently the concealed aggression of the irreligious has taken on a most ugly form; tyrannical aggression against the unfortunate people of belief and against religion. Our private and unofficial call to prayer and iqama was interrupted during the private worship of myself and one or two brothers in the mosque I myself repaired. “Why are you reciting the iqama in Arabic and making the call to prayer secretly?” they asked. My patience was exhausted in keeping silent. So I say, not to those unscrupulous vile men who are not worth addressing, but to the heads of the Pharaoh-like society who with arbitrary despotism plays with the fate of this nation: O you people of innovation who have deviated from the straight path of religion, I want the answer to six questions.

THE FIRST

Every government in the world, every people which rules, and even cannibals, and the chief of a band of brigands, have some principle, some law, by which they rule. So according to which principle do you carry out this extraordinary aggression? Show your law! Or do you accept as the law the arbitrary whims of a handful of contemptible officials? Because no law can interrupt private worship in that way; there cannot be such a law!

THE SECOND

On what force do you rely that you are so bold as to violate the principle of ‘freedom of conscience,’ which governs almost everywhere in mankind, especially in this age of freedom and in civilized circles, and to treat it lightly and so indirectly to insult mankind and dismiss their objections? What power do you have that you attack religion and the people of religion in this way as though you had taken irreligion as a religion for yourselves in bigoted fashion, although by calling yourselves ‘secular’ you proclaim that you will interfere with neither religion nor irreligion? Such a thing will not remain secret! You will have to answer for it! So what answer will you give? Although you could not hold out against the objections of the smallest of twenty governments, you try to violate by force freedom of conscience, as though you completely disregard the objections of twenty governments.

THE THIRD

According to what principle do you propose to people like me who follow the Shafi‘i school of law, the Hanafi school, in a way opposed to the elevatedness and purity of that school, due to the wrong fatwas of certain ‘bad religious scholars’ who have sold their consciences to gain the world? If, after abrogating the Shafi‘i school, which has millions of followers, and making them all follow the Hanafi school, it is forcibly proposed to me in tyrannical fashion, it may perhaps be said that it is a principle of irreligious people like you. Otherwise it is arbitrary and despicable, and we do not follow the whims of people such as that, and we do not recognize them!

THE FOURTH

In accordance with which principle is it to propose through a corrupt and innovative fatwa, “performing the iqama in Turkish,” in a way completely contrary to Turkish nationalism, which is sincerely religious and sincerely respectful towards religion and has since early times blended and united with Islam, in the name of Turkism, which has the meaning of Europeanism, to those like me who belong to another nation? Yes, although I have friendly and brotherly relations with true Turks, I have in no respect any relation with the Turkism of imitators of Europe like you. How can you propose such a thing to me? Through which law? Perhaps, if you abolish the nationhood of the Kurds, of whom there are millions and who for thousands of years have not forgotten their nationhood and language, and are the true fellow-citizens and companions in jihad of the Turks, and make them forget their language, then perhaps your proposal to those like me who are reckoned to be of a different race would be in accordance with some sort of savage principle. Otherwise it is purely arbitrary. The arbitrary whims of individuals may not be followed, and we do not follow them!

THE FIFTH

A government may apply all laws to its citizens and to those it accepts as its citizens, but it cannot apply its laws to those it does not accept. For they are able to say: “Since we are not citizens, you are not our government!”

Furthermore, no government can inflict two penalties at the same time. It either imprisons a murderer, or it executes him. To punish by both imprisonment and capital punishment is a principle nowhere!

However, despite the fact that I have caused no harm whatsoever to this country and nation, for eight years you have held me in captivity in a way not inflicted on even a criminal belonging to a most wild and foreign nation. Although you have pardoned criminals, you have negated my freedom and deprived me of all civil rights. You have not said: “He too is a son of this land,” so in accordance with what principle and law do you propose, contrary to the wishes of your nation, these freedom-destroying principles to someone like me who is a foreigner to you in every respect? Since in the Great War you have counted all the heroic deeds to which this person was the means and were testified to by the Army’s commanders, as nothing and considered his self-sacrficing struggles for the sake of this country as crimes; and since you deemed his preserving the good morality of this unfortunate nation and his serious and effective work to secure its happiness in this world and the next to be treason; and since you have punished for eight years (and now the punishment has been for twenty-eight years) someone who does not for himself accept your injurious, dangerous, arbitrary principles, which in reality are without benefit and spring from unbelief and from Europe; the punishment is the same. I did not accept its application, so you made me suffer it. So according to what principle is it to enforce a second punishment?

THE SIXTH

In view of the treatment you have meted out to me, according to your belief, I oppose you in general fashion. You are sacrifing your religion and life in the hereafter for the sake of your lives in this world. According to you, due to the opposition between us and contrary to you, we are all the time ready to sacrifice our life in this world for our religion and for the hereafter. To sacrifice two or three years of humiliating life under your domination in order to gain sacred martyrdom, is like the water of Kawthar for us. However, in order to make you tremble, relying on the effulgence and indications of the All-Wise Qur’an, I tell you this with certainty:

You shall not live after killing me! You shall be driven out of the world, your Paradise and your beloved, by an irresistible hand, and swiftly cast into everlasting darkness. Behind me, your Nimrod-like chiefs will be quickly killed and sent to me. In the Divine Presence I shall grasp hold of them by their collars, and on Divine Justice casting them down to the lowest of the low, I shall take my revenge!

O you miserable wretches who sell religion and your lives in the hereafter for this world! If you want to live, do not interfere with me! I hope from Divine Mercy that my death will serve religion more than my life, and my death explode over your heads like a bomb, scattering you! Cause me trouble if you have the courage! If you do anything, you shall see! With all my strength I read this verse in the face of all your threats:

Men said to them: “A great army is gathering against you;” and frightened them; but it only increased their faith. they said: “For us Allah suffices, and He is the Best Disposer of Affairs.”²

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1. Qur'an, 14:12.

2. Qur'an, 3:173