Born in eastern Anatolia and of Kurdish descent, the Qur’anic exegete and theologian Bediüzzaman Sa‘id Nursi lived through the final decades of the Ottoman Empire, its collapse and dissolution after World War I, and the first 37 years of the secular Turkish Republic. It was an era during which the Muslim world faced major intellectual and political challenges, including secularization, colonization, and failure of traditional structures. Nursi’s scholarly writings and public engagements throughout his life reflected a deep concern for Islamic revival.
Referring to an inner transformation he went through around age 45, Nursi divided his life into “Old Sa‘id” and “New Sa‘id” phases. In the “Old Sa‘id” phase (1890–1922), Nursi was a public intellectual and an erudite scholar who taught and wrote about Qur’an interpretation (tafsīr) and theology (kalām). While critical of nationalism, Nursi supported the constitutional government that sought to limit the sultan’s power. He argued that the era of one caliph acting on behalf of the entire community is over and that a representative government is needed. Nursi also supported the abolishing of the special status of religious minorities, a change that made all citizens equal before the Ottoman state. Though committed to a religious revival of the caliphate, he distinguished between its religious foundations and day-to-day transactions of governance and argued that, according to the shari‘a, minorities may become governors and have equal say in the parliament.
Old Sa‘id was also enthusiastic about progress in the sciences and what he considered as the end of dogmatism in Europe. He proposed educational reforms to the Ottoman sultans Abdülhamid (d. 1918) and Mehmet Reshad (d. 1918), aiming at putting the traditional madrasa (seminary) training, Sufism (tasawwuf), and the modern sciences in dialogue with each other. But the eruption of World War I interrupted his endeavors: the Russians invaded his town, and he lived for two years as a prisoner of war in Russia.
In 1922 when many were celebrating Turkish nationalist victory over European colonial powers, Nursi wrote about a serious danger infiltrating the community: the positivistic attitude, which pretended to explain the world in materialistic terms, would soon undermine the faith of many. His understanding of Islamic revival radically shifted with this birth of the “New Sa‘id.” He now argued that revival was not about sociopolitical reform or establishing a caliphate capable of uniting Muslims across the globe. Rather, the urgent task was reviving the hearts and minds of Muslims in the light of the Qur’an. He argued that belief based on imitation will not survive in the modern age, and to ensure the happiness of the people in this world and the next, belief based on investigation had to be expounded and put forth.
New Sa‘id forbade himself any political engagement. He found it harmful to have any political agenda while trying to serve the Qur’an. While he admitted that political power could be useful for restraining evil people from corrupting society, Nursi contended that such people were a minority; the majority of people who strayed from the “truth” were actually willing to find a way out of their confusions but did not know how. The “light” of the Qur’an had to be made available to them without any connection to politics, lest they think that the call to the Qur’an was a means for gaining power. According to Nursi, even if the majority chooses to apply the social aspects of shari‘a as a collective, the service to belief should continue relentlessly, as it is the most important and yet the most neglected aspect of the religion.
New Sa‘id lived much of his life in prison and in exile (1925–56), persecuted by the secularist state for having invested in religious revival. During this difficult period, Nursi composed the Risale-yi Nur (literally, “Epistle of light”), a 6,000-page collection seeking to expound the Qur’an and nurture a life infused with belief and love of God. He also sought to revive kalām and offer a Qur’anic theology that speaks to the modern age. His writings, banned by the state, were secretly disseminated and hand-copied by thousands of people, many of whom were also persecuted.
After decades of political disengagement, in 1950 Nursi voted for the Democratic Party in the first multiparty elections in Turkey, signaling his support for the relaxation of state despotism, which led to the lifting of the ban on his writings in 1956. This was also a period when most Muslim countries were gaining independence from colonial rule. Nursi encouraged solidarity across Muslim communities in the world. He also called for an interfaith solidarity to uphold faith in God and resist moral collapse, which he felt was demonstrated by the horrors of the two World Wars.
The grassroots movement founded around Risale-yi Nur, the Nur movement, continued to grow after Nursi’s death in 1960, and the Risale found an international audience in translation.
See also revival and reform; Turkey
Further Reading
M. Said Ramadan Al-Buti, “Bediuzzaman Said Nursi’s Experience of Serving Islam by Means of Politics,” in Proceedings of Third International Symposium on Said Nursi: The Reconstruction of Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century and Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, 1997, 105–14; Ahmet Davudoglu, “Bediuzzaman and the Politics of 20th Century Muslim World,” Proceedings of Third International Symposium on Said Nursi: The Reconstruction of Islamic Thought in the Twentieth Century and Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, 1997, 286–311; Zeynep Akbulut Kuru and Ahmet T. Kuru, “Apolitical Interpretation of Islam: Said Nursi’s Faith-Based Activism in Comparison with Political Islamism and Sufism,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 19, no. 1 (2008): 99–111; Nursi Studies, http://www.nursistudies.com; Ibrahim Abu Rabi‘, Islam at the Crossroads: On the Life and Thought of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, 2003; Risale-i Nur: A Contemporary Interpretation of the Qur’an, http://www.saidnur.com; Colin Turner and Hasan Horkuc, Makers of Islamic Civilization: Said Nursi, 2009.
ISRA YAZICIOGLU