Abstract
Said Nursi was a late Ottoman theologian and thinker who lived well into the Turkish republican era. Nursi was concerned with the understanding of the human condition in the modern world, the relationship between religious faith and modern life, and the role of religion in negotiating the tension between tradition and modernity. At the more practical level, one of Nursi’s main objectives was to revive Muslim ethics in a world that had become highly secularized. In this sense, Nursi differed from other Islamic thinkers of the twentieth century such as Mawdudi, Hassan al-Banna and Sayyid Qutb who advocated the idea of ‘Islam as politics’ rather than ‘Islam as faith.’ Nursi writings constitute theology with a strong sociological dimension.
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Notes
- 1.
Ibrahim Abu-Rabi, ‘Introduction,’ in Sükran Vahide, Islam in Modern Turkey: An Intellectual Biography of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, edited and with an introduction by Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005), xv.
- 2.
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, The Flashes Collection, From the Risale-i Nur Collection 3 (Istanbul: Sözler, 2004), 115.
- 3.
Nursi, The Flashes, p. 119.
- 4.
Nursi, The Flashes, p. 225.
- 5.
Nursi, The Flashes, 226.
- 6.
Nursi, The Flashes, 227.
- 7.
Nursi used the metaphor of illness (mardh, pl. amradh) and refers to the pharmacy of the Qur’an when discussing the lessons of the six ‘words.’ See The Damascus Sermon (Istanbul: Sözler, 2001), 26–27.
- 8.
Emile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology, George Simpson, ed., John A. Spaulding
- 9.
Nursi, The Flashes, 160.
- 10.
Thomas Michel S.J. ‘Grappling with Modern Civilization: Said Nursi’s Interpretive Key,’ in Michel, Said Nursi’s Views on Muslim-Christian Understanding (Istanbul: Sözler, 2005), 82.
- 11.
This is presented in the collection of aphorisms entitled ‘Seeds of Reality.’ See Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, ‘Seeds of Reality’ in Nursi, Letters −1928–1932 (Istanbul: Sozler, 2001), 548.
- 12.
Nursi, The Words, 496.
- 13.
Nursi, ‘Seeds of Reality,’ 546.
- 14.
Nursi, ‘Seeds of Reality,’ 547.
- 15.
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, Al-Mathanawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri (Istanbul: Sözler), 62. See also Ibrahim Özdemir, ‘Said Nursi and J.P. Sartre: Existence and Man – A Study of the Views of Said Nursi and J.P. Sartre,’ 22–3. http://iozdemirr.blogspot.com/2009/12/said-nursi-and-j-p-sartre.html.
- 16.
Nursi, The Words, 493
- 17.
Nursi, The Damascus Sermon, 26–7.
- 18.
Nursi’s Damascus sermon was delivered in Arabic. The Arabic term for despair used by Nursi is al-ya’s. See Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, Al-Khutbah al-Shamiyyah (The Damascus Sermon) (Istanbul: Sözler, 2007), 28. In the Sufi tradition of Islam, al-ya’s refers to the sense of hopelessness resulting from having lost contact with the Beloved, the Divine. See Amatullah Armstrong, Sufi Terminology (Al-Qamus Al-Sufi): The Mystical Language of Islam (Kuala Lumpur: A.S. Noordeen, 1995), 267. Nursi’s usage of the term, however, is more in the modern sense of loss of purpose and meaning in life.
- 19.
Bediuzzzaman Said Nursi, The Words: On the Nature and Purpose of Man, Life, and All Things, Istanbul: Sozler, 2004, 496.
- 20.
Nursi, The Damascus Sermon, 39.
- 21.
Nursi, The Damascus Sermon, 44.
- 22.
Vahide, Islam in Modern Turkey, 45.
- 23.
Nursi, The Damascus Sermon, 43–45, cited in Vahide, Islam in Modern Turkey, 98.
- 24.
Vahide, Islam in Modern Turkey, 94
- 25.
Nursi, The Flashes, 274–275.
- 26.
Nursi, The Words, 229.
- 27.
Nursi, The Words, 744.
- 28.
Emile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology, London: Routledge, 1989, 241–8.
- 29.
Nursi, The Words, 111.
- 30.
Nursi, The Flashes, 226.
- 31.
Nursi, The Flashes, 226.
- 32.
Nursi, The Flashes, 226.
- 33.
Said Nursi, Emirdağ Lahikası (Istanbul: Sinan Matbaası, 1959), 97–99, cited in Vahide, Islam in Modern Turkey, 318.
- 34.
Nursi, The Damascus Sermon, 102.
- 35.
Nursi, The Words, 421–422.
- 36.
Nursi, Letters, 324.
- 37.
Nursi, The Words, 77. See also the Arabic translation of The Words which more accurately reflects the use of Islamic terminology in the Turkish original – Al-Kalimat (Istanbul: Sözler, 1419/1998), 68.
- 38.
Nursi, Al-Khutbah al-Shamiyyah, 28.
- 39.
See S. H. M. Jafri, The Origins and Early Development of Shi’a Islam (Beirut: Libraire du Liban, 1990).
- 40.
For Sunni sources see Sahih Muslim, Kitab al-Fada’il al-Sahabah (The Book Pertaining to the Merits of the Companions (Allah Be Pleased With Them) of the Holy Prophet (ﺺ), (Book 31), ‘The Merits of the Family of the Prophet (ﺺ),’ no. 5955, http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/hadith/muslim/031-smt.php; Sahih al-Tirmidhi, v5, pp. 351,663. For a Shi’ite source see Shaykh ‘Abbas Qummi, Mafatih al-Jinan (The Keys of Paradise) (Qom: Ansariyan Publications, 2001).
- 41.
Nursi, The Flashes, 131–132.
- 42.
See Nursi, Letters, 129, and Nursi, The Flashes, 132 for the relevant traditions. Nursi also mentions the Prophet’s foreknowledge of the killing of Husayn at Karbala in The Rays Collection (Istanbul: Sözler, 1998), 596–597.
- 43.
Sunan Tirmidhi, vol. 5, 626, hadith no. 3788.
- 44.
Nursi, The Flashes, 38.
- 45.
Nursi, The Flashes, 38.
- 46.
Nursi, The Flashes, 83–84.
- 47.
Nursi, The Flashes, 83–84.
- 48.
Nursi, Letters, 138.
- 49.
Nursi, Letters, 130–131.
- 50.
Nursi, The Flashes, 38.
- 51.
İbrahim Cânan, ‘The Companions of the Prophet (PBUH) in Bediuzzaman’s Works,’ in Proceedings of the Third International Symposium on Bediuzzaman Said Nursi – The Reconstruction of Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century and Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, Istanbul, 24–26 September 1995 (Istanbul: Sözler, 1997), 58.
- 52.
Nursi, The Flashes, 36.
- 53.
Nursi, Letters, p. 77.
- 54.
Nursi, Letters, p. 75.
- 55.
Nursi, Letters, p. 76.
- 56.
Nursi, The Flashes, 39.
- 57.
Nursi, The Flashes, 40.
- 58.
Nursi, The Flashes, 43.
- 59.
Nursi, The Flashes, 43.
- 60.
Nursi, The Damascus Sermon, 35.
- 61.
Nursi, The Damascus Sermon, 36.
- 62.
Richard W. Bulliet, The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization (New York: Columbia University, 2004), 5–6.
- 63.
New English Weekly 237(2), 1939.
- 64.
Cited in Thomas A. Bruscino, A Nation Forged in War: How World War II Taught Americans to Get Along (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2010), 202.
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Lisa McGirr, Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 172–173.
- 66.
Bulliet, The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization, p. 10.
- 67.
Richard Bulliet, Islamo-Christian Civilization, Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, Policy Brief, December 2012. http://www.ispu.org/pdfs/ISPU_Brief_IslamoChristianCiv_1212.pdf
- 68.
Bulliet, The Case for Islamo-Christian Civilization, 11.
- 69.
De Lacy O’Leary, Arabic Thought and Its Place in History, rev. ed. (London: Kegan Paul, 1939), 280.
- 70.
O’Leary, Arabic Thought and Its Place in History, 281.
- 71.
O’Leary, Arabic Thought and Its Place in History, 281.
- 72.
O’Leary, Arabic Thought and Its Place in History, 285–286.
- 73.
O’Leary, Arabic Thought and Its Place in History, 290–291, 294.
- 74.
Philip K. Hitti, History of the Arabs (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1970), 364.
- 75.
Alfred Guillaume, ‘Philosophy and Theology,’ in Sir Thomas Arnold & Alfred Guillaume, eds., The Legacy of Islam (London: Oxford University Press, 1931), 244.
- 76.
Guillaume, ‘Philosophy and Theology,’ 245n.
- 77.
R.Y. Ebied & M. J. L. Young, ‘New Light on the Origin of the Term “Baccalaureate”,’ Islamic Quarterly 18, 1–2 (1974), 3–4.
- 78.
See also Mesut Idriz, ‘From a Local Tradition to a Universal practice: Ijazah as a Muslim Educational Tradition,’ Asian Journal of Social Science 35, 1 (2007), 84–110.
- 79.
Donald King and David Sylvester, eds. The Eastern Carpet in the Western World, From the 15th to the 17th century (London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1983), 9–28, 49–50, & 59. Cited in ‘Islamic Art,’ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_art#Rugs_and_carpets. Accessed 19 January 2014.
- 80.
John Mills, Carpets in Paintings (London: National Gallery, 1983), 11, 16, 20, 20, 22, 24.
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Mills, Carpets in Paintings, 18.
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Alexandre Papadopoulo, Islam and Muslim Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1979), 247–248.
- 83.
Sean Foley, ‘Muslims and Social Change in the Atlantic Basin,’ Journal of World History 20, 3 (2009), 379.
- 84.
The Koran, George Sales, trans., 5th ed. (Philadelphia: J.W. Moore, 1856). Cited in Foley, ‘Muslims and Social Change in the Atlantic Basin,’ 394.
- 85.
Foley, ‘Muslims and Social Change in the Atlantic Basin,’ 392, 395.
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Denise A. Spellberg, ‘Could a Muslim be President? An Eighteenth Century Constitutional Debate,’ Eighteenth Century Studies 39, 4 (2006), 490–491.
- 87.
Hitti, History of the Arabs, 335.
- 88.
Şükran Vahide, Islam in Modern Turkey: An Intellectual Biography of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005, 166.
- 89.
Cited in Vahide, Islam in Modern Turkey, 167.
- 90.
Nursi, The Words, 29–30.
- 91.
Şükran Vahide, ‘Proof of the Resurrection of the Dead: Said Nursi’s Approach,’ in Ibrahim M. Abu-Rabi,‘ ed., Theodicy and Justice in Modern Islamic Thought: The Case of Said Nursi (Surrey: Ashgate, 2010), 41.
- 92.
Nursi, The Flashes, 155–6.
- 93.
Şerif Mardin, Religion and Social Change in Modern Turkey: The Case of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), 23.
- 94.
See the chapter on Rizal.
- 95.
Şükran Vahide, Islam in Modern Turkey: An Intellectual Biography of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, Albany, 2005, 67.
- 96.
‘Gleams,’ in Nursi, The Words, 745–746.
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Alatas, S.F. (2017). Said Nursi (1877–1960). In: Sociological Theory Beyond the Canon. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-41134-1_8
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