Badiuzzam Said Nursi was born in 1877 in eastern Turkey and died in 1960 in Urfa (Turkey). During his long life, he saw the last days of the Ottoman Empire, its collapse after the First World War and the emergence of modern Turkish Republic. He also witnessed the twenty-five years of Republican Peoples’ Party’s harsh and authoritarian rule and ten years of “Democratic” rule during which conditions became a little easier for Bediuzzam.
A remarkable child endowed with a prodigious memory, Bediuzzam completed a traditional madrasah education at the early age of fourteen and then studies physical sciences, mathematics and philosophy. In the course of the second decade of his life, he became extremely convinced that the Turkish madrasah education was inadequate and his own interest in natural sciences led him to construct a new curriculum for the Islamic educational system. He prepared a blue print for the establishment of a university, Medrestu’z Zehra, (the Resplendent Madrasah) in the Eastern Provinces. In 1917, he arrived in Istanbul and met Sultan Abdul Hamid. Subsequently, he received some funding for the construction of the university and its foundations were laid in 1913. But the beginning of World War I and the subsequent events made it impossible for this project to materialize.
The end of World War I and that of the Ottoman Empire culminated the first phase of Bediuzzam’s life, the period of the “Old Said”, as he would later call it. During the War, he had led the militia forces on the Caucasian Front against the invading Russians for which he was later awarded a War Medal. He was taken prisoner in March 1916 and was held in Russia for two years. In early 1918, he escaped from the prison and made his way back to Istanbul via Warsaw, Berlin and Vienna.
It was during the first two years of War that he composed his first works on the Qur’an. Spoken while sitting on horseback, and dictated hese “commentaries” on various chapters of the Qur’an attempted to combine the religious knowledge with natural sciences. This was the beginning of his major work, Risale-i Nur. But the work was interrupted when Bediuzzaman was captured and imprisoned by the Russians.
The defeat of the Ottomans, the occupation of Istanbul and parts of Turkey by foreign forces and the bitter internal struggle that emerged after the War led to a profound change in Nursi. Despite his active involvement in public life, his association with Daru’l Hikmeti’l Islamiye, the learned body attached to the office of the Shauk ul-Islam, and his War services, Beddiuzzaman became increasingly dissatisfied with the world. He started to see the limits of human endeavor and concentrated on his spiritual training. Recognized for his services, he was invited to Ankara by Mustafa Kemal, who had emerged as the victorious General, to take part in the reconstruction of the New Turkey.
Beddiuzzaman spent almost eight months in Ankara during which he realized that the new Turkish military elite was attempting to establish a secular republic in which Islam was to be shunned. He was offered various posts in this new set up but he declined to be part of an establishment founded on materialistic and secular philosophy. He left Ankara for Van where he sought solace in spiritual practices and isolation.
But early in 1925, he was arrested on charges of taking part in a “rebellion” in eastern provinces although he had taken no part in it. He was sent into exile in western Anatolia along with hundreds of other Turks—thus began a twenty-five year period of oppression, imprisonment and privation. It was during this time, in the remote village of Barla in the mountains of Isparta province where Bediuzzaman had been sent, that Bediuzzaman resumed his work on Risale-i Nur.
Risale-i Nur is not a tafsir (commentary) on the Qur’an in the usual sense of the term; rather, it attempts to establish links between the Qur’anic verses and the natural world. It also attempts to show that there is no contradiction between religion and science (See selections for Risal-i Nur in the following section).
While in Barla, Bediuzzaman also wrote a treatise on Resurrection and thirty-three other pieces which were later collected as Sozler (The Words). This was followed by Maktubat (Letters), a collection of thirty-three letters of varying length written to his students. Bediuzzaman wrote two more works, Lem’alar (The Flashes) and Sualar (The Rays), the latter was completed in 1949. In addition, there are three collections of additional letters, Barla Lahikast, Kastmonu Lahikast, and Emirdag Lahikast from each of Bediuzzaman’s three places of exile.
Risale-i Nur is actually a collection of quickly uttered words, dictated to a scribe at high speed, without consulting any books or references, in the mountains and countryside places of exile. They were then copied by hand and secretly circulated because the new secularist regime had banned all religious works. The essays were then passed on from village to village by the Risale-i Nur students. It was only in 1946, that duplicating machines became available to the Risale-i Nur students and it was not until 1956 that The Words and other collections were printed in new Latin script that had been imposed on the Turkish language by the Kemalist regime. The figure given for hand-written copies is 600,000.[1]
Nursi thus became the founder of the Nurcu movement. Left without books, without his home and family, and restricted to a remote region of the country, Said Nursi was to make a remarkable impact on the lives of millions of Turkish men and women through his powerful writings and he continues to be a revered figure in Turkey and other Muslim lands. His works, now collectively called Risale-i Nur, clandestinely circulated and copied by hand, are now easily available in many languages. Nursi and his work provide an excellent example of the conditions in which the discourse on Islam and science progressed in Turkey during the early decades of the twentieth century and how politics and faith were intertwined in the discourse. His movement spread quietly until 1950 despite all efforts to crush it and then entered a new phase in which a great number of young Turks, who had gone through the state-run secular institutions of the Republic, openly responded to his call. Toward the end of his life, Nursi’s influence spread beyond Turkey. Today, there are several offshoots of this movement, some of which have become rather profane.
Said Nursi had considerable knowledge of modern science and he attempted to integrate it within a theistic perspective. For him, the Qur’an and modern physical sciences had no dissonance; rather, relating the truth of the Qur’an to modern men and women was even easier. Written during his exile, Risale-i Nur was later described as “a manevi tefsir, or commentary which expounds the truths of the Qur’an.”[2] In the course of his expressive prose, which pulsates with energy, Nursi substantiates Islamic faith on the basis of the certainties of modern physical sciences and reads the cosmic verses of the Qur’an in the light of modern science. As a religious scholar well grounded in traditional Islamic sciences, Nursi was aware of the apparent discrepancy between traditional cosmology articulated by Muslim philosophers and Sufis, and the Newtonian worldview, but instead of rejecting the mechanistic view of the universe presented by Newtonian science, he tried to appropriate it by appealing to the classical arguments from design. He saw no contradiction between the order and harmony of the universe and Newtonian determinism. Rather, through a radical recasting of God as the Divine artisan, he found support for the mechanistic view of the universe. He thought of the universe as a machine or clock, just like the nineteenth century deists, but he transformed this enduring symbol of the European tradition to lend support to the theistic claims of creation. For him, the Qur’anic themes of the regularity and harmony of the natural order, when combined with the predictability of Newtonian physics, disproved the triumph of the secularists and positivists of the nineteenth century and provided a solid rock on which to construct a new understanding of the message of the Qur’an.
Nursi’s approach to modern science needs to be interpreted with due consideration of the social and political conditions in which it was written; unlike many other reformers of the nineteenth century, there is an additional element here: the need to survive in an environment dominated by state sponsored harassment. Perhaps this is the reason for the emergence of a number of conflicting ways in which Nursi’s work has been judged; some take the work as if it was a scholar’s commentary on the Qur’an; others read it with due regard to the life of the writer and his social and historical conditions. There are those who take his work to be an attempt to deconstruct metaphysical claims of modern science by using the language of Newtonian physics, chemistry, and astronomy. And there are those who emphasize the influence of modern science and positivism on Nursi. In addition, the work itself is not a smooth and calm exposition and many additions have been made to it. Originally, it was not even written; it was “dictated at speed to a scribe, who would write down the piece in question with equal speed” and these handwritten copies would circulate clandestinely. There were no books for references. The Risale-i Nur collection is, in essence, a collection of dictations of an inspired mind, secretly written, for all religious teaching was forbidden. As such, Nursi’s work does not fall in the category of so-called al-tafsir al-`ilmi (scientific commentary); rather, in its style and purpose, the collection now known as Risale-i Nur is a collection of sermons—a title that is used for one of the “Words”, “The Damascus Sermon”, which was delivered at the historic Umayyad Mosque in early 1911 to a gathering “of ten thousand, including one hundred scholars…the text was afterwards printed twice in one week,”.[3] “The Damascus Sermon” is a sermon on hope, a commentary on Q. 39:53: Do not despair of God’s mercy, a diagnosis of the maladies that had afflicted Muslims and an impassionate appeal to act resolutely to change the conditions.
As we have seen in other cases, a heavy overlay of political and social conditions defined Nursi’s discourse. In order to appeal to an audience under the spell of rationalism, Nursi himself adopts a rationalistic style in many cases, but then the burden of his arguments makes it totally irrational, bordering on the ridiculous. For example, the verse …and We have created for them similar [vessels] on which they ride,[4] points to the railway and the “Light Verse” alludes to electricity, as well as to numerous other lights and mysteries.[5] And the verse: To Solomon [We made] the wind [obedient]: its early morning [stride] was a month’s [journey], and its evening [stride] was a month’s [journey],[6]
suggests that the road is open for man to cover such a distance in the air. In which case, O man! since the road is open to you, reach this level! And in meaning Almighty God is saying through the tongue of this verse: “O man! I mounted one of my servants on the air because he gave up the desires of his soul. If you too give up laziness, which comes from the soul, and benefit thoroughly from certain of my laws in the cosmos, you too may mount it…” the verse specified final points far ahead of today’s aeroplanes.[7]
And the miracle of Prophet Moses’ staff mentioned in the Qur’an (Q. 2:60), predicts the development of modern drilling techniques to dig out such indispensable substances of modern industry as oil, mineral water, and natural gas. The mention of iron in the Qur’an (Q. 34:10), which had been “softened for David”, becomes a sign of the future significance of iron and steel for modern industry. In its popular and cruder version, Said Nursi’s encounter with modern science has led his followers to establish one-to-one correspondences between new scientific findings and Qur’anic verses. His practice of using science as the decoder of the sacred language of nature has influenced numerous Turkish students, professionals, and lay persons who are making similar attempts. Nursi’s followers try to show the miracle of creation through comparisons between the cosmological verses of the Qur’an and new scientific discoveries. Every new scientific discovery is quickly adopted as yet another proof for the miraculous nature of the Qur’an. This has led to a gross profanation of the text of the Qur’an and a great injustice to the scientific data. These trends also gave birth to formal works of Qur’an interpretation in which modern science appears as the most important subject matter.
Nursi was followed by a large number of young people who were seeking spiritual fulfillment in a society where religion had been under attack. This characteristic Turkish dilemma has given birth to a society which is divided and at war with itself. Thus the Islam and science discourse in Turkey is not a calm academic discourse; it is a matter of life and death.
Muzaffar Iqbal
October 31, 2002
[1]. For this number and the above information, see, Nursi, Bediuzzaman (1995), The Flashes Collection (From the Risal-i Nur Collection 3), trans. from Turkish by Sukran Vahide,Sozler Nesriyat A. S., Istanbul, pp. 480-6).
[2]. Nursi, Said Bediuzzaman (1998), The Words, being the English translation of the Turkish Sözler, new revised edition, Sözler Neşriyat Ticaret ve Sanayi, Istanbul, p. 806.
[3]. As stated in the Publisher’s Preface to the second revised English translation, see Nursi, Bediuzzaman Said (1989), The Damascus Sermon, tr. from the Turkish by Şükran Vahide, Sözler Neşriyat ve Sanayi A. Ş, Istanbul.
[4]. Q. 36: 42.
[5]. Nursi (1998), p. 261.
[6]. Q. 34:12.
[7]. Nursi (1998), pp. 262-3.
Friday, May 2, 2008
Bediüzzaman Said Nursi
The Risale-i Nur collection is a six-thousand-page commentary on the Qur'an written by Bediuzzaman Said Nursi in accordance with the mentality of the age. Since in our age, faith and Islam have been the objects of the attacks launched in the name of so called science and logic, Bedizzaman Said Nursi therefore concentrated in the Risale-i Nur on proving the truths of faith in conformity with modern sciences, through rational evidence and by manifesting the miraculous aspects of the Qur'an that relate primarily to our century. This collection now has millions of readers both in and outside Turkey. Thanks to the Risale-i Nur, the Turks managed to maintain their religion despite the most despotic regimes of the past decades; although its author faced unbearable torments, prisons and exiles and no effort was spared to put an end to his service to faith, he was able to complete his writings comprising the Risale-i Nur and raise a vast group of believers who courageously opposed the oppression and preserved the dominance of Islam in the country.
WONDER OF THE AGE
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi was born a century ago, in 1873, in a village in eastern Anatolia, Nurs, from which he received the name Nursi. He received his basic education from the best-known scholars of the district. The extraordinary intelligence and capability of learning that he showed at a very early age made him popular with his teachers, colleagues and the people. When he was sixteen years old, he silenced the distinguished scholars who had invited him to a debate (debate was then a popular practice among scholars). This later recurred several more times with various groups of soholars, and he thereby began to be called Bediuzzaman (Wonder of the Age).
The time he spent in education paved the way in his mind for the thought that at a time when the world was entering a new and different age, where science and logic would prevail, the classical educational system of theology would not be sufficient to remove doubts concerning the Qur'an and Islam. He concluded that religious sciences should be taught at modern schools on the one hand, and modern sciences at religious schools on the other. "This way," he said, "the people of the school will be protected from unbelief, and those of the madrasa from fanaticism."
With this idea, he twice went to Istanbul-once in 1895, the second time in 1907-where he sought to convince the Sultan to establish a university in Anatolia, one that would teach religious and modern sciences together. But the sharp words in his conversation with the Sultan caused him to be court-martialed, and during his trial too he did not hesitate to use the same sharpness. Alarmed by this, the military judges thought it best to send him to a mental hospital, but the phisician who examined him reported, "If there is a grain of insanity in Bediuzzaman, then there must be no sane person in the whole world"
FIRST ACQUITTAL
To be the object of accusations contrary to his aim and intention was, in fact, an invariable feature of Bediuzzaman's fate. When the uproars of March 31, 1909, took place, he was arrested and court-martialed on the charge of inciting the uproar, although he had tried, and to a degree managed, to calm down the events. While the hanging bodies of the convicts executed were seen through the windows of the court-martial room, Bediuzzaman made a heroic defense and in the end was acquitted.
After the first of a series of acquittals, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi returned to eastern Anatolia, visited the remote proviences and explained to the people that the movement freedom that was beginning to emerge in the country was not contrary to Islam. He told them that all kinds of dictatorship were rejected by the Sacred Law, which would be nourished and would manifest its virtues in a free atmosphere. Her later collected these speeches in a book entitled the Debates.
In the winter of 1911, Bediuzzaman went to Damascus and gave a sermon at the Umayyad mosque to an audience including one hundred well-known scholars, explaining that the true civilisation contained in Islam would dominate the modern world. Afterwards he went to Istanbul once again, to continue his efforts to have a, university established in eastern Anatolia. As the representative of the Eastern provinces, he escorted Sultan Reþad on his journey in Rumelia and, when they were in Kosovo Metohija, where the Sultan was planning to establish a university, Bediuzzaman told him, "The East is in more need of a university, for it is the centre of the Muslim world." He thus convinced Sultan Resad to earmark a sum of nineteen thousand gold liras, and then went to Van and laid the foundation of the university. Unfortunately, the construction was not completed because of the World War which soon broke out.
THE FEAR OF THE RUSSIANS
In World War I, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi served as a commander of a volunteers' regiment on the Caucasian front and in eastern Anatolia. The heroism he demonstrated in battle was highly admired by the generals of the Ottoman army, including Enver Pa=FEa, Minister of Defense and Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Ottoman Armed Forces. Together with his volunteers known as "the Felt Caps," he struck terror into the Russian and Armenian forces. In the meantime, he wrote his celebrated commentary on the Qur'an in the Arabic language, sometimes on horseback, sometimes on the front line and sometimes in the trench. This commentory, entitled the Signs of Miraculousness; received immense appreciation from eminent scholars.
In one of the battles against the invading Russian forces, Bediuzzaman and ninety other officers were captured. He was sent to a prisoners' camp in Kostroma, Northwestern Russia, where he spent over two years and once appeared before a firing squad, as a result of his insulting the Russian general Nicola Nicolaevich, the Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasian front and the Czar's uncle. One day the general came to the camp for inspection and, as he passed by Bediuzzaman, he did not stand up before the general. When asked, Bediuzzaman explained the reason why he had not stood up in these words:
"I am a Muslim scholar and have belief in my heart. Whoever has belief in his heart is superior to the one who does not. I cannot act against my belief."
He was court-martialed, sentenced to death, and, when the sentence was to be executed, he began his last duty, prayer, in front of the firing squad. The general witnessed the scene and came to Bediüzzaman, this time with an apology. He said that he had now realized that the act of Bediuzzaman was the result of his adherence to his faith; and that the sentence was withdrawn, and apologized to Bediuzzaman because he had bothered him. Sadly, this virtuousness of a Russian, the long-standing enemy of the Muslims, was never shown to him in his homeland by those who caused him a life full of torments of all kinds.
AGAINST THE BRITISH FORCES
Amid the uproars caused by the communist revolution, Bediuzzaman found a way of escaping and, after a long iourney, came back to Istanbul in 1908 He was rewarded with a war medallion and Enver Paþa, Minister of Defense, offered him some positions in the government. He refused all these offers; however, upon the suggestion of the army and without his knowledge, he was appointed to Dar-al-Hikmat al-Islamiya, the religious academy of the time. He did not object to this appointment, as it was a pure scientific position.
When the country was invaded by imperialist forces after the defeat in World War I, Bediuzzaman challenged the invading British in Istanbul with bitter attacks that almost cost him his life. He addressed them in his articles in daily newspapers with phrases such as, "O dog doggified from the atmost degree of dogness!" and "Spit at the shameless face of the damned British" These attacks made him the target of the British, but, with the help of God Almighty, he escaped all the plans against him and ran toward the new services that were awaiting him. In 1922, upon the invitations of the government that recurred eighteen times, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi went to Ankara and was received at the Grand National Assembly with a ceremony. However, he could not find in Ankara what he had anticipated; rather he saw the most of the representatives negligent in their religious obligations. On January 19, 1923, he issued a declaration to the representatives. Upon this declaration fifty to sixty of them began prayer.
Bediuzzaman spent eight months in Ankara and then left for Van. For two years he lived there in seclusion and was occupied only with meditation and prayer. Meanwhile the unfortunate events known as "the Eastern rebellion" broke out. The rebels sought Bediuzzaman's help, as he had a strong influence over people, but Bediuzzaman refused their requests, saying, "Sword is to be used against the outside enemy; it is not to be used inside. Give up your attempt, for it is doomed to failure and may end up in the annihilation of thousands of innocent men and women because of a few criminals." But once again Bediuzzaman was charged falsely and sent into exile in Burdur, western Anatolia. There he was kept under strict surveillance and oppression, but this did not prevent him from teaching the truths of faith to the people around him and from collecting his writings secretly in a book. His activities were reported to Ankara , and then a plan was prepared to silence him. They sent him to Barla, an out-of-the-way place in central Anatolia surrounded by mountains, with the thought that Bediuzzaman would eventually die there from impotence and loneliness.
THE EMERGENCE OF THE RISALE-I NUR
In reality, the dissemination of the truths of faith was nothing to be alarmed about, nor was it a crime that would be the cause of plots against a man's life. However, it was an unforgiveable crime under the circumstances of the time! For those were the days when despotism had fallen down over the nation with all its darkness and awesomeness; a ban had been put over adhan; hundreds of mosques were being used for nonreligious purposes; the plans to cut off all that connects the nation with its past and its moral values were in process; and the mere mention of religion was a matter of great courrage. The head of the press department of the government could order the editors of newspapers to cut within ten days all the serials that directly or indirectly. mentioned religion, as "it was considered harmful to lead to the emergence of the concept of religion in the minds of youths."
Such were the circumstances under which Bediuzzaman Said Nursi entered the second part of his life which he called the New Said and which was dedicated to the waiting and dissemination of the truths of faith. Taking as the aim the revival of faith, which is the first and most important truth of the cosmos, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, "I will demonstrate to the world that the Qur'an is a spiritual sun that shall never set and shall never be extinguished." And indeed so he did. Bediuzzaman did not die in Barla, where he had been sent to die alone, but a new Said emerged there, and with it emerged a sun over the world of science and culture, .one that has since been illuminating millions. In Barla too, an awesome oppression and surveillance were waiting for Bediuzzaman. It appeared that his enemies had not yet come to know him, who, in the World War had been the fear of the Russians, in Istanbul had spat at the face of the British who were in his pursuit, and had several times returned from the gallows. Nevertheless, they later had enough time to know him and in the end found themselves having to say, "Despite all we have done in the past twenty-five years, we have not been able to prevent Said Nursi from his activities." During the eight years and a half that he spent under absolute oppression in Barla, Bediuzzaman wrote three quarters of the Risale-i Nur collection: The treatises were being multiplied by handwriting, as neither the author nor his students could afford the printing costs. Even if they had been able to, then again they did not have the freedom. Handwriting was also a dangerous task, for the scribes were being tortured in prisons and police stations, and every attempt was being made to prevent people from contact with Bediuzzaman.
600.000 COPIES WRITTEN BY HAND
Here it must be noted that at that time the writing or dissemination of even a single religious treatise was not anything that anybody dared try, let alone the firm, courageous and continuous struggle that Bediuzzaman Said Nursi and his students carried out. When these circumstances under which the Risale-i Nur was written and spread all over Anatolia are taken into consideration, one cannot find difficulty in realizing how right was Maryam Jameelah, the well-known American Muslim writer, when she said, "It is no exaggeration to claim that whatever Islamic fait h remains in Turkey is due to the tireless efforts of Bediuzzaman Nursi." Indeed, those instructed by the Risale-i Nur in lessons of the faith of realization strengthened, in so doing, their beliefs and attained an impregnable Islamic courage and heroism. With Bediuzzaman, who represented in his person the spiritual personality of the Risale-i Nur, as their leader, those hundreds of thousands-now millions-of students of Nur set a pattern for other Muslims and constituted a support for them in those perilous days like brave commanders encouraging an army with their states. The strength of their beliefs and their continuous struggle against irreligion had wide effects on people, and they thus removed the fears and misgivings from the hearts, rallied the morale of the nation, brought about hope and relief and delivered the Muslims from desperation.
Bediuzzaman was arrested in 1930 with 125 students of his and tried at the Eskiþehir Criminal Court. In Eskiþehir prison where they spent eleven months during the trial, they had to put up with unbearable torments. They were released the next spring but not Ieft in peace. This time, ,again escorted by gendarmes, Bediuzzaman was sent into exile in another city , Kastamonu. There he spent the first three months at a police station, then was transferred to a house opposite to the police station.
Bediuzzaman lived in Kastamonu for seven years and countinued to write and disseminate the Risale-i Nur. Because he and his students were deprived of almost all kinds of freedom, they therefore formed their own postal organization called the "Nur postmen." Through the "Nur postmen," 600,000 copies of treatises were multiplied by handwriting.
In 1943, he was arrested again and tried at the Denizli Criminal Court together with 126 students of his. The main reason for this was that Bediuzzaman had recently had a treatise concerning the existence of God printed secretly in Istanbul. In prison too he did not shrink from continuing his service, just as he never did when he was in exile. He was now reforming the criminals who were considered lost for society. He was also writing new treatises.
Paper and pen were not allowed into the prison, so the treatises were written on small pieces of paper torn from paperbags and smuggled out in matchboxes: This way Fruits from the Tree of Light came out. The trial ended in a unanimous acaquittal. But that did not mean that Bediuzzaman would be given back his freedom-upon an order from Ankara, he was sent to another town, Emirdað.
THE ACQUITTAL THAT CAME TOO LATE
For him Emirdað was just the same as it had been elsewhere again pursuits, pressures and plots, and despite these, a continuous, tireless service of faith... This period, in the usual fashion, ended in arrest. Together with fifty-three students, Bediuzzaman was sent to Afyon Criminal Court and spent twenty months in Afyon prison. The cruelties they encountered there were even worse than all those before. Bediuzzaman was then seventy-five years old and suffering from various illnesses. Yet he was isolated in a cell with broken windows where he spent two severe winters. And, as if it were not enough to leave him to die alone, he was poisoned too. When he was suffering from the effect of the poison, the students of his who dared to approach him in order to help him were ruthlessly bastinadoed. The sentences given were annulled by the Supreme Court; the court, however, took its time in deciding whether to withdraw the sentence or not. After Bediuzzaman and his students had spent in prison the terms specified in the annulled conviction, the court finally made up its mind and decided that they should be released. And eight years later came the final decision in 1956, the court announced that those who had under unbearable conditions spent almost two years in prison had now been found innocent!
When the first free and fair elections were held in Turkey in 1950 and the multiparty system was established, the despotism of the Republican People's Party which was known, and still is, for its hostile attitude toward religion-ended, and thereby freedoms began to be recognized. Thus a new era opened in the history of the Turkish Republic in the very first session of the new parliament, the ban over adhan was lifted. During the years that followed, Bediuzzaman had only one trial-the only one in which he was not arrested in Istanbul and was acquitted with a unanimous decision.
WITH HONOR, DIGNITY AND VICTORY
And, after completing a lifetime of almost a century, with every minute spent in the service of faith, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi departed from this world on the morning of March 23, 1960, with complete honor, dignity and victory, leaving behind him a work that would illuminate this and the forthcoming centuries and a love that would be handed over from generation to generation until eternity.
WONDER OF THE AGE
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi was born a century ago, in 1873, in a village in eastern Anatolia, Nurs, from which he received the name Nursi. He received his basic education from the best-known scholars of the district. The extraordinary intelligence and capability of learning that he showed at a very early age made him popular with his teachers, colleagues and the people. When he was sixteen years old, he silenced the distinguished scholars who had invited him to a debate (debate was then a popular practice among scholars). This later recurred several more times with various groups of soholars, and he thereby began to be called Bediuzzaman (Wonder of the Age).
The time he spent in education paved the way in his mind for the thought that at a time when the world was entering a new and different age, where science and logic would prevail, the classical educational system of theology would not be sufficient to remove doubts concerning the Qur'an and Islam. He concluded that religious sciences should be taught at modern schools on the one hand, and modern sciences at religious schools on the other. "This way," he said, "the people of the school will be protected from unbelief, and those of the madrasa from fanaticism."
With this idea, he twice went to Istanbul-once in 1895, the second time in 1907-where he sought to convince the Sultan to establish a university in Anatolia, one that would teach religious and modern sciences together. But the sharp words in his conversation with the Sultan caused him to be court-martialed, and during his trial too he did not hesitate to use the same sharpness. Alarmed by this, the military judges thought it best to send him to a mental hospital, but the phisician who examined him reported, "If there is a grain of insanity in Bediuzzaman, then there must be no sane person in the whole world"
FIRST ACQUITTAL
To be the object of accusations contrary to his aim and intention was, in fact, an invariable feature of Bediuzzaman's fate. When the uproars of March 31, 1909, took place, he was arrested and court-martialed on the charge of inciting the uproar, although he had tried, and to a degree managed, to calm down the events. While the hanging bodies of the convicts executed were seen through the windows of the court-martial room, Bediuzzaman made a heroic defense and in the end was acquitted.
After the first of a series of acquittals, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi returned to eastern Anatolia, visited the remote proviences and explained to the people that the movement freedom that was beginning to emerge in the country was not contrary to Islam. He told them that all kinds of dictatorship were rejected by the Sacred Law, which would be nourished and would manifest its virtues in a free atmosphere. Her later collected these speeches in a book entitled the Debates.
In the winter of 1911, Bediuzzaman went to Damascus and gave a sermon at the Umayyad mosque to an audience including one hundred well-known scholars, explaining that the true civilisation contained in Islam would dominate the modern world. Afterwards he went to Istanbul once again, to continue his efforts to have a, university established in eastern Anatolia. As the representative of the Eastern provinces, he escorted Sultan Reþad on his journey in Rumelia and, when they were in Kosovo Metohija, where the Sultan was planning to establish a university, Bediuzzaman told him, "The East is in more need of a university, for it is the centre of the Muslim world." He thus convinced Sultan Resad to earmark a sum of nineteen thousand gold liras, and then went to Van and laid the foundation of the university. Unfortunately, the construction was not completed because of the World War which soon broke out.
THE FEAR OF THE RUSSIANS
In World War I, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi served as a commander of a volunteers' regiment on the Caucasian front and in eastern Anatolia. The heroism he demonstrated in battle was highly admired by the generals of the Ottoman army, including Enver Pa=FEa, Minister of Defense and Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Ottoman Armed Forces. Together with his volunteers known as "the Felt Caps," he struck terror into the Russian and Armenian forces. In the meantime, he wrote his celebrated commentary on the Qur'an in the Arabic language, sometimes on horseback, sometimes on the front line and sometimes in the trench. This commentory, entitled the Signs of Miraculousness; received immense appreciation from eminent scholars.
In one of the battles against the invading Russian forces, Bediuzzaman and ninety other officers were captured. He was sent to a prisoners' camp in Kostroma, Northwestern Russia, where he spent over two years and once appeared before a firing squad, as a result of his insulting the Russian general Nicola Nicolaevich, the Commander-in-Chief of the Caucasian front and the Czar's uncle. One day the general came to the camp for inspection and, as he passed by Bediuzzaman, he did not stand up before the general. When asked, Bediuzzaman explained the reason why he had not stood up in these words:
"I am a Muslim scholar and have belief in my heart. Whoever has belief in his heart is superior to the one who does not. I cannot act against my belief."
He was court-martialed, sentenced to death, and, when the sentence was to be executed, he began his last duty, prayer, in front of the firing squad. The general witnessed the scene and came to Bediüzzaman, this time with an apology. He said that he had now realized that the act of Bediuzzaman was the result of his adherence to his faith; and that the sentence was withdrawn, and apologized to Bediuzzaman because he had bothered him. Sadly, this virtuousness of a Russian, the long-standing enemy of the Muslims, was never shown to him in his homeland by those who caused him a life full of torments of all kinds.
AGAINST THE BRITISH FORCES
Amid the uproars caused by the communist revolution, Bediuzzaman found a way of escaping and, after a long iourney, came back to Istanbul in 1908 He was rewarded with a war medallion and Enver Paþa, Minister of Defense, offered him some positions in the government. He refused all these offers; however, upon the suggestion of the army and without his knowledge, he was appointed to Dar-al-Hikmat al-Islamiya, the religious academy of the time. He did not object to this appointment, as it was a pure scientific position.
When the country was invaded by imperialist forces after the defeat in World War I, Bediuzzaman challenged the invading British in Istanbul with bitter attacks that almost cost him his life. He addressed them in his articles in daily newspapers with phrases such as, "O dog doggified from the atmost degree of dogness!" and "Spit at the shameless face of the damned British" These attacks made him the target of the British, but, with the help of God Almighty, he escaped all the plans against him and ran toward the new services that were awaiting him. In 1922, upon the invitations of the government that recurred eighteen times, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi went to Ankara and was received at the Grand National Assembly with a ceremony. However, he could not find in Ankara what he had anticipated; rather he saw the most of the representatives negligent in their religious obligations. On January 19, 1923, he issued a declaration to the representatives. Upon this declaration fifty to sixty of them began prayer.
Bediuzzaman spent eight months in Ankara and then left for Van. For two years he lived there in seclusion and was occupied only with meditation and prayer. Meanwhile the unfortunate events known as "the Eastern rebellion" broke out. The rebels sought Bediuzzaman's help, as he had a strong influence over people, but Bediuzzaman refused their requests, saying, "Sword is to be used against the outside enemy; it is not to be used inside. Give up your attempt, for it is doomed to failure and may end up in the annihilation of thousands of innocent men and women because of a few criminals." But once again Bediuzzaman was charged falsely and sent into exile in Burdur, western Anatolia. There he was kept under strict surveillance and oppression, but this did not prevent him from teaching the truths of faith to the people around him and from collecting his writings secretly in a book. His activities were reported to Ankara , and then a plan was prepared to silence him. They sent him to Barla, an out-of-the-way place in central Anatolia surrounded by mountains, with the thought that Bediuzzaman would eventually die there from impotence and loneliness.
THE EMERGENCE OF THE RISALE-I NUR
In reality, the dissemination of the truths of faith was nothing to be alarmed about, nor was it a crime that would be the cause of plots against a man's life. However, it was an unforgiveable crime under the circumstances of the time! For those were the days when despotism had fallen down over the nation with all its darkness and awesomeness; a ban had been put over adhan; hundreds of mosques were being used for nonreligious purposes; the plans to cut off all that connects the nation with its past and its moral values were in process; and the mere mention of religion was a matter of great courrage. The head of the press department of the government could order the editors of newspapers to cut within ten days all the serials that directly or indirectly. mentioned religion, as "it was considered harmful to lead to the emergence of the concept of religion in the minds of youths."
Such were the circumstances under which Bediuzzaman Said Nursi entered the second part of his life which he called the New Said and which was dedicated to the waiting and dissemination of the truths of faith. Taking as the aim the revival of faith, which is the first and most important truth of the cosmos, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, "I will demonstrate to the world that the Qur'an is a spiritual sun that shall never set and shall never be extinguished." And indeed so he did. Bediuzzaman did not die in Barla, where he had been sent to die alone, but a new Said emerged there, and with it emerged a sun over the world of science and culture, .one that has since been illuminating millions. In Barla too, an awesome oppression and surveillance were waiting for Bediuzzaman. It appeared that his enemies had not yet come to know him, who, in the World War had been the fear of the Russians, in Istanbul had spat at the face of the British who were in his pursuit, and had several times returned from the gallows. Nevertheless, they later had enough time to know him and in the end found themselves having to say, "Despite all we have done in the past twenty-five years, we have not been able to prevent Said Nursi from his activities." During the eight years and a half that he spent under absolute oppression in Barla, Bediuzzaman wrote three quarters of the Risale-i Nur collection: The treatises were being multiplied by handwriting, as neither the author nor his students could afford the printing costs. Even if they had been able to, then again they did not have the freedom. Handwriting was also a dangerous task, for the scribes were being tortured in prisons and police stations, and every attempt was being made to prevent people from contact with Bediuzzaman.
600.000 COPIES WRITTEN BY HAND
Here it must be noted that at that time the writing or dissemination of even a single religious treatise was not anything that anybody dared try, let alone the firm, courageous and continuous struggle that Bediuzzaman Said Nursi and his students carried out. When these circumstances under which the Risale-i Nur was written and spread all over Anatolia are taken into consideration, one cannot find difficulty in realizing how right was Maryam Jameelah, the well-known American Muslim writer, when she said, "It is no exaggeration to claim that whatever Islamic fait h remains in Turkey is due to the tireless efforts of Bediuzzaman Nursi." Indeed, those instructed by the Risale-i Nur in lessons of the faith of realization strengthened, in so doing, their beliefs and attained an impregnable Islamic courage and heroism. With Bediuzzaman, who represented in his person the spiritual personality of the Risale-i Nur, as their leader, those hundreds of thousands-now millions-of students of Nur set a pattern for other Muslims and constituted a support for them in those perilous days like brave commanders encouraging an army with their states. The strength of their beliefs and their continuous struggle against irreligion had wide effects on people, and they thus removed the fears and misgivings from the hearts, rallied the morale of the nation, brought about hope and relief and delivered the Muslims from desperation.
Bediuzzaman was arrested in 1930 with 125 students of his and tried at the Eskiþehir Criminal Court. In Eskiþehir prison where they spent eleven months during the trial, they had to put up with unbearable torments. They were released the next spring but not Ieft in peace. This time, ,again escorted by gendarmes, Bediuzzaman was sent into exile in another city , Kastamonu. There he spent the first three months at a police station, then was transferred to a house opposite to the police station.
Bediuzzaman lived in Kastamonu for seven years and countinued to write and disseminate the Risale-i Nur. Because he and his students were deprived of almost all kinds of freedom, they therefore formed their own postal organization called the "Nur postmen." Through the "Nur postmen," 600,000 copies of treatises were multiplied by handwriting.
In 1943, he was arrested again and tried at the Denizli Criminal Court together with 126 students of his. The main reason for this was that Bediuzzaman had recently had a treatise concerning the existence of God printed secretly in Istanbul. In prison too he did not shrink from continuing his service, just as he never did when he was in exile. He was now reforming the criminals who were considered lost for society. He was also writing new treatises.
Paper and pen were not allowed into the prison, so the treatises were written on small pieces of paper torn from paperbags and smuggled out in matchboxes: This way Fruits from the Tree of Light came out. The trial ended in a unanimous acaquittal. But that did not mean that Bediuzzaman would be given back his freedom-upon an order from Ankara, he was sent to another town, Emirdað.
THE ACQUITTAL THAT CAME TOO LATE
For him Emirdað was just the same as it had been elsewhere again pursuits, pressures and plots, and despite these, a continuous, tireless service of faith... This period, in the usual fashion, ended in arrest. Together with fifty-three students, Bediuzzaman was sent to Afyon Criminal Court and spent twenty months in Afyon prison. The cruelties they encountered there were even worse than all those before. Bediuzzaman was then seventy-five years old and suffering from various illnesses. Yet he was isolated in a cell with broken windows where he spent two severe winters. And, as if it were not enough to leave him to die alone, he was poisoned too. When he was suffering from the effect of the poison, the students of his who dared to approach him in order to help him were ruthlessly bastinadoed. The sentences given were annulled by the Supreme Court; the court, however, took its time in deciding whether to withdraw the sentence or not. After Bediuzzaman and his students had spent in prison the terms specified in the annulled conviction, the court finally made up its mind and decided that they should be released. And eight years later came the final decision in 1956, the court announced that those who had under unbearable conditions spent almost two years in prison had now been found innocent!
When the first free and fair elections were held in Turkey in 1950 and the multiparty system was established, the despotism of the Republican People's Party which was known, and still is, for its hostile attitude toward religion-ended, and thereby freedoms began to be recognized. Thus a new era opened in the history of the Turkish Republic in the very first session of the new parliament, the ban over adhan was lifted. During the years that followed, Bediuzzaman had only one trial-the only one in which he was not arrested in Istanbul and was acquitted with a unanimous decision.
WITH HONOR, DIGNITY AND VICTORY
And, after completing a lifetime of almost a century, with every minute spent in the service of faith, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi departed from this world on the morning of March 23, 1960, with complete honor, dignity and victory, leaving behind him a work that would illuminate this and the forthcoming centuries and a love that would be handed over from generation to generation until eternity.
Beyond the ‘Modern’: Said Nursi’s Qur’anic View of Science
The Ottoman architects of the reforms that came to be known as the tanzimat (1839- 1876) were quite impressed by the success achieved by Western Europe, particularly in the military field, in the economy and in the field of science and technology. They, thus, came to be convinced that the very survival of the Ottoman state could only be secured by following the pattern of countries like France or England. With resolve, they had launched a program of modernisation and secularisation of a scope hardly matched by other part of the Muslim World. Indeed, by the 1840’s Turkey, or at least, its capital Istanbul, was a bustling laboratory for western experimentation of a scale hardly witnessed outside Europe if one excluded Russia. The Modernisation that the early reformists hoped to achieve depended heavily on the upward participation of the citizens. For that participation to be effective, it was an imperative that the state took steps towards ‘ameliorating’ the education of its citizens in such ways that it could in turn recruit from their midst cadres to fill in executive positions in the administration, or in the corps of the army. To this end, new institutions of learning, a new concept of education, that of education ‘as a means for progress’, and a new concept of knowledge, that of ma’arif as opposed to the traditional concept of ilm began to emerge.
This bifurcation marked the beginning of a gradual secularisation process of education that continued on unabated well after the tanzimat period. Beginning from the early 1870’s, an intensive publishing activity combined with a more accelerated translation movement contributed to an unprecedented popularisation of modern science as well as modern western philosophy. By the end of the 1890’s, Turkish litterateurs and intelligentsia in the Ottoman capital were inclined to accept the premises of Western scientific thought en masse and unquestioningly, leading to the appearance of a new class of intellectuals, and new trends of thought that were about to mount the most serious challenge to the Islamic culture and values.
As opponents to the ‘westernist’ reforms of the tanzimat (New Regulations), both Young Ottomans and the regime of Sultan Abdulhamid II (1876- 1909) were aware of the growing disdain for religion and carried many attempts to counter the intellectual encroachments of the West. However, neither had any hesitation about acquiring western science and technology, as both did not see any conflict between the principles of Islam and those of modern science. When Said Nursi (1873 - 1960) first stayed in Istanbul from 1907 to 1909, and later during the Young Turk rule, he was often in the thick of these apologetic debates. This early period of his life, he named the ‘old Said’.
Following the fall of the caliphate, and the birth of the New Republic, the process of secularisation that began almost a hundred years ago, had become almost comprehensive, and had taken quite a radical turn by comparison to earlier times. The unprecedented zeal with which the Kemalist regime had gone about implementing its western model of society had far reaching consequences on education. The year 1924 saw the dissolution of the medreses and all other kinds of religious schools, and the proscription of the teaching of religion in all state schools. In 1925, laws were passed to officially close all Sufi orders; the little religious education that remained at the higher level was effectively terminated with the closure of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Istanbul in 1933.[1] In 1928, a prominent thinker of the Kemalist period would thus write:
The function of religion is not to provide men with knowledge but with the will and power to live…The more religion leaves explanation of the events of the universe and the search for the means of influencing them to science, the more it assumes this pragmatic and moral appearance….Then, it is faith which manifests itself as an absolute subjugation to a moral ideal that can develop in harmony with the present-day conditions of civilization and science.[2]
If this trend of secularism had, somewhat, looked askance, at the Islamic intellectual tradition, in other intellectual quarters, though, a kind of atheistic rationalism using the claim of modern science was about to launch a more aggressive onslaught on religion and its scriptures. The very essentials and springs of religion; such as the belief in the existence of God, His power to create, in prophecy, and the ‘Day of Judgment’ began to be painted as mere ‘superstitions’ in many intellectual circles and schools. Said Nursi’s résistance to the western intellectual infringement presented by positivism, materialism, or atheistic rationalism took place against the background of these important transformations and polarized intellectual atmosphere. In what follows, emphasis is placed on some of his arguments against the premises of modern scientific thought, which formed the basis of those philosophies.
Understanding the position of Said Nursi vis-à-vis modern science and philosophy is not a straightforward task and can be quite a source of confusion. Chief among these sources of confusion may arise from oversights related to the development of the intellectual history of the author of the Risale-i- Nur[3] (The Epistles of Light). Nursi had divided his life into two distinct parts: Old Said, a person devoted to ‘politics’ and ‘speculative philosophy’, and ‘New Said: who repudiated the ‘old Said’, taking a new intellectual direction.[4] Another source of confusion might arise from the discourse of the Risale itself. Although, the text of the Risale is replete with the poetry and terminology of the Sufi narrative, it boasts with myriads of proofs, arguments and demonstrations. Nursi warns us against rushing to judge his demonstrative proofs (al burhan al-istidalali) as nazar (speculative thought). He says,
Know that the issues you come across upon studying my work, although they present themselves in the forms of demonstration and proofs, they can hardly be called speculation or ‘nazar’. No! They are but intuitive (hadsiyya) insights which were recorded, bound and then retained by the lights of certitude that overflow from the Generous Qur’an.[5] .
The ‘rational mood’ of the Risale could easily lead one to label its author with a rationalism or for that matter a ‘modernism’ that is far from being accurate.[6] Indeed, this confusion may very well arise from the modern understanding of ’aql (intellect) that has become preponderant in Muslim scholarship, which is generally alien to Nursi’s particular type of intellection i.e. al’aql al - imani.
The Risale is an exegesis and elucidation of the message of the Qur’an during an age in which ‘disbelief and misguidance are advocated in the guise of science and knowledge’[7]. The discourses of Nursi set up arguments with the aim of showing the absurdity and ‘illogicality’ of the modern paradigm and the truth and universality of the Qur’anic worldview. From this point of view, Nursi is really addressing a crisis of meaning. Consequently, his critique of science could not confine itself to an ‘offense’ but had to serve as a means for ‘collective salvation’[8]. Hence, it had to go beyond ‘offence’ and attempt to ‘redeem’[9] this modern scientific mind. This semblance of ‘rational discourse’ Nursi argues, ought not be seen as ‘acquiescence’ to the demands of the modern mind, but rather as a ‘mercy’ and a ‘cure’ to the ills of the ‘modern mind’ caught in the webs of ‘human’ philosophy. Nursi says, ” given that the issues [of the Risale], present themselves in the guise of demonstrative proofs (ke’ennaha muberhana istidlaliyya), they could serve as ‘rescue ladders’, saving those who have erred in the path of thought and knowledge (min jihati al-fikri wa l’ilmi) from slipping into the abyss of philosophy.”[10] Nevertheless, the difference between the ‘offensive’ and the ‘redemptive’ approaches may seem quite blurry in the Risale. Thus, statements such as, “At the end of time, mankind will spill into science and learning. It will obtain all its strength from science (‘ilm).Power and rule will pass to the hand of science (‘ilm),”[11] may be more problematic than meet the eye and deserves careful attention.
The Crucial role of the Universe in the Risale
In one of his early works, Muhakamat first published in 1911, Nursi lays down the methodological principles for understanding the Qur’an. One important principle that is directly related to the issue of science[12] is the role of the universe in confirming the veracity of revelation since imitation in matters of faith is regarded as unacceptable by many quarters in Islam. Nursi, asserts that the Qur’an and the cosmos cannot be understood separately; he describes the Qur’an as “the eternal interpreter of the various tongues reciting the verses of creation” and as “The revealer of the treasuries of the divine names hidden in the heavens and on the earth; the key to the truth concealed beneath the lines of events.”[13] That is, the Qur’an recites the cosmic signs (ayat)[14], which pervade the world, in such a way that it turns the cosmos’ constant motion, changes and renewal, into ‘meaningful’ activities. For Nursi the cosmos is not just a metaphor for the Qur’an: it is the Quran in viva vox. The Risale spares no effort, through proofs and cogent arguments, to demonstrate that the meaningful activities in the cosmos are a kind of speech; each being each event, each change is like a word and their being in constant motion is an infinitable speech glorifying God.[15]
In short, just like the Qur’an is God’s speech through word and discourse, the cosmos is His speech through deed and act.[16] Nursi says that the Creator makes the cosmos speak through the Qur’an, which is “the tongue of the unseen world in the manifest world.” Both have a common origin: the preserved tablet, which contains the heavenly Book, but whereas one proceeds from God’s attribute of speech, the other proceeds from His attribute of ‘will’. In other words, what He says is what He wills in “kun!’ (Be), and what He wills is what He says in ‘qul!’ (Say).
Nursi explains that ‘in order to describe His act to both eye and ear, the Maker describes His act while performing it: as a true artist, He unravels His art as He works it, and as a true Bestower of bounties He displays His boons in the very act of bestowing. As such, His very word constitutes His very act and vice versa. The Creator speaks as He creates; and thus He unites word and act through the ‘audible’ Qur’an and the cosmic Qur’an in one revelation. Following this vision, it can be said that on the one hand the Qur’an interprets or rather translates the speech of the cosmos and its ayat al- takwiniyya (cosmic signs/verses), while on the other, the cosmos witnesses to the truth of the ayat al-tadwiniyya (Qur’anic verses) and reveal their import. Given the importance of the cosmos for Nursi, it is not difficult to understand that up to the First World War, he was favorable to science through which he sought to mediate the revelation of the Qur’an in the hope that it would eventually help uncover the signs of God in the world.[17]
The Old Said and the Islamic Tradition of Knowledge
The Qur’an speaks extensively of the cosmos and invites its readers to seek God’s signs ‘in the horizons,’ that is, in the outer world, ‘and in themselves’ (41:53). Annemarie Schimmel notes that this verse could legitimately be understood as encouraging Muslim scholars and scientists ‘to look deeper and deeper into the marvel of nature, as well as the marvels which the human being contains in himself, and to invent ever new ways for a profounder understanding of the world.”[18] She also mentions al-Ghazzali (1058-1111), who wrote in his Ihya ‘ulum al-din that the real muwahhid (monotheist) is the one who looks at the world because it is created by God, and because it gives him the possibility of seeing God in His signs and worshipping Him.[19]
Al-Ghazzali, a representative of the Ash’ari school of kalam (theology), is well known for his critique of Greek metaphysics because it was incompatible with fundamentals of the Islamic beliefs. Osman Bakar contends that al-Ghazzali disagreed with the Muslim philosophers on some metaphysical issues: he had argued against the use of the philosophical method of the falasifa, which he found wanting particularly when it was brought to bear on issues of a metaphysical order. However, Bakar reminds us that al-Ghazzali warned the Muslims not to oppose science just because it had been associated with the philosophers.[20] Al-Ghazzali thought that the Muslim philosophers’ influence was due to their pragmatic success in the natural sciences. In order to solve this problem, he excluded philosophy from his classification of the sciences.[21]
His approach was to put forward the a priori and a posteriori character of science and establish the speculative character of philosophy. From this stand point, al-Ghazzali maintained that the philosophers were right as far the mathematical and natural sciences were concerned but wrong in the field of philosophy. In his Munqidh min al- dalal, al-Ghazzali accepted science on the ground that it can be useful to mankind, and referred to the services of medicine to make his point. Hence, in his classification, science fell under the category of ‘fard al-kifaya’, i.e. a knowledge that a section of the population was required to acquire. As opposed to philosophy, he viewed the pursuit of this knowledge as ‘harmless’, in that science was inherently relative (i’tibari) with no claim to ultimate knowledge of reality or haqiqa. What is noteworthy though is that al-Ghazzali in spite of his criticism of the philosophers, accepted Aristotelian logic as universally valid and most of all neutral. This position casts a different light on al-Ghazzali’s final stance on science particularly from the vantage point of the modern era.
Al-Ghazzali’s position on logic continued to have a significant influence over the intellectual development of the Muslim world, despite the important critique of Ibn Taymiyya. Indeed, its epistemological traces can be gleaned from Nursi’s early works.[22] The end of the First World War and that of the Ottoman Caliphate terminated the first part of Nursi’s life[23], the period of the “Old Said”, as he himself called it later. For many reasons that exceed the scope of this paper, Nursi entered a completely new phase in his life; he was as he himself confessed, a ‘New Said.’ New Said admits that Old Said was not very aware of the philosophical underpinnings of modern science, and like al-Ghazzali, had taken its logic prima facie. Unwittingly, he came to view science as a ‘candid student’ of the universe and hence as potentially helpful in uncovering the cosmic signs and verifying the veracity of the cosmic reality of tawhid. Like the Muslim philosophers Old Said too, took the principle of combining human philosophy with Qur’anic wisdom for granted.[24]
Nursi describes one of his spiritual awakenings right after the First World War. He searched the Islamic sciences and also philosophy and the sciences he had learned up to that time for consolation and hope. He describes the sciences and Western philosophy as “in part misguidance and in part trivia or superfluous.” He says,
“Quite in error I had imagined those philosophical sciences to be the source of progress and means of illumination. However, they had sullied my spirit and been an obstacle for my spiritual development. Suddenly, through God’s mercy and munificence, the sacred wisdom of the Qur’an came to my assistance. As is explained in many parts of the Risale-i Nur, it washed away and cleansed the dirt of those philosophical matters. The spiritual darkness arising from science had drowned my spirit into the universe. Whichever way I looked seeking a light, I could find not a gleam in those matters, I could not breathe. And so it continued until the instruction in divine unity (tawhid) given by the Qur’anic phrase ‘There is no deity but He’ dispersed all those layers of darkness. ”[25]
It is here that the New Said starts. Nursi had by then “shed his old philosophical guise, and put on a new one, the robe of wisdom. Here we see the death of Nursi the philosopher and the birth of Nursi the sage”[26].
One of the radical changes that New Said had undergone has a direct bearing on his views on modern science. He now felt the need to get deeper at the roots of the philosophy underpinning this science. Al-Ghazzali’s stance on science coupled with his convictions about Aristotelian logic might have constituted a, somewhat, ‘acceptable’ position in an intellectual climate in which medieval science was at least searching for an anchor in religion. Eight centuries later, however, in an age where secular modern science became the dominant paradigm, science, as it developed in the West, has been in the main identified with ‘truth and objective reality’ and religion with ‘superstitions and subjective faith’. Al-Ghazzali’s approach to logic and by extension to science needed, therefore, an overhaul revision. As for the approaches professed by such philosophers as al- Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Rushd, they needed to be ‘repudiated’. Although abstract rational inquiry allowed for the combination of philosophy and wisdom at some point in history, the social and political upheaval that shook history and undermined society with a shocking effect on humanity refuted the possibility of such combination.
Nursi was aware that this sociopolitical upheaval was but an effect of the impact on Western societies of the intellectual revolution carried out by modern philosophy against religion. Taha ‘Abdel Rahman says that:
Such strange contradiction between reason’s permission for the combining of philosophy and wisdom and the refutation of this possibility by the lived reality preoccupied Nursi’s thought for a long time, prompting him to review his philosophical position and, consequently, to reconsider the established view among Islamic philosophers that philosophy and wisdom are connected interpenetratively like sisters or associatively like friends.[27]
One of the major merits of New Said’s new intellectual journey is his impeccable refutation of the very logic of modern science and the cognitive claims of its philosophy[28]. His critique of causation[29] on which the ontology of modern science rested is unique. [30]
The Weight of Science in the Scales of the New Said
Historically, the horizontal dimension of life refers to the point in time when Man has forsaken his vertical dimension: heaven, to realize his ‘earthly’ utopia instead. The horizontal dimension, whose origin may be traced back to the renaissance, marks the time when human fulfilment was seen as no longer above the cosmos but ‘down here’ in time and space. The way nature has been studied and understood in the context of this ‘horizontal’ dimension typifies the modern mind whose main characteristics are “its going ahead in the world which is determined by time and space, causality and substance…indefinitely, without any termination”, and its endless attempt at “controlling nature… without ever asking about the purpose of this controlling.” Typical of this mind are also its obsession with “making everything into calculable objects which can be described in terms of numbers, [so that] they can be managed, divided, and put together again… it is a calculating reason…a tool [in the hand] of the business man, the technician, or of scientific analysis.” [31] Hence, for the modern mind nature is not to be contemplated, but coerced. Things that lie therein this ‘open Book of Nature’ are truncated and cut off from their vertical connection, causing them disfiguration and loss of their ‘symbolic’ meaning.
Nursi argued that the modern scientific formulation and vision of reality is anchored in a faulty understanding which delivers a distorted meaning of being. As early as 1926 the New Said took the hermeneutical dimension of science to task. Commenting on the verse, “And he who has been given wisdom has been given great good.” (2: 269), he compared ‘sacred Qur’anic wisdom’ with the philosophy of science at an ontological level and used a parable to illustrate the great difference between the knowledge imparted by ‘human’ philosophy and the one diffused by revelation. A king, he relates, showed one day an artistically bejewelled ‘heavenly’ book to a ‘philosopher’ and a ‘sage’ and asked them to both write a paper about its value and wisdom. As the ‘philosopher’ in the parable had hardly any knowledge of the language in which the book was written, he confined his deliberations to the shapes of the letters, their numbers, their inter-relationships, and to the chemical composition of the ink and paper and so on.[32]
The upshot of Nursi’s parable is that unlike the sage, the student of ‘human’ philosophy does not realize that words are symbols and views them as ‘words’ per se, or as essences pointing to their selves. In this way, it does not even dawn on him that he is before a ‘Book’ whose words convey meanings beyond their apparent shape, size and so forth. Having failed to be aware that ‘words’ have significations, let alone grasping their meaning, whatever ‘human’ philosophy advances, it cannot be said that it has knowledge of the ‘Book of Nature’. Hence, for Nursi
‘Human’ philosophy, [be it natural philosophy, the philosophy of life, existentialism or modern science], looks at things from that aspect that pertain to their essences and their causes. It regards them as objects or concrete beings bearing meaning in themselves (ma’na ismi). Wisdom [the knowledge revealed by God] on the other hand, perceives beings as bearing the meaning of another (ma’na harfi): they are collocations or ‘letters’ of a ‘mighty Book’. Confined to its ismi method, modern science ‘sunk’ into the ‘decorations’: the external and literal meaning of the cosmic text. Eventually, it veered away from the path of the truth.”[33]
For Nursi then a philosophy that is not guided and ‘reigned in’ by Divine wisdom “is a sophistry divorced from reality and an insult to the Universe.”[34]
During that period which saw him fall into a deep existential and spiritual crisis, the old Said had often revisited modern science and philosophy to see if he could find a light or a cure. But, in the end he deplored the utter poverty of these branches of learning, as they hardly addressed the ‘ultimate’ questions facing mankind or if they did they soon fell into the quagmire of doubts, making his struggles even more difficult.[35] “Astronomy”, he says, “ is busy with ‘learning what the rings around Saturn are like’, while statistics frets over ‘how many chickens there are in America’,[36] and so are other branches of knowledge according to Nursi engrossed in the same vein in other non-essential issues. However, to the primordial questions that arise from our existential predicament such as: ‘What is the meaning of my being and of all being which I am surrounded by? Where do I come from and where am I ultimately going? How can I save my self and brake free from the mechanic chain of causes and their determinacy? Modern science and the philosophies that embrace it are utterly bankrupt, offering neither solace nor human perfection.[37]
Nursi says that in older times misguidance came from ignorance and hence it was easy to eliminate. In modern times, misguidance is not easy to eradicate because it arises from science and learning, and so he felt the need to expound the truths of belief at great length with many comparisons “proceeding from the effulgence of the Qur’an”. The Qur’an urges the intellect to investigate the signs in the universe and calls on the heart to testify to the divine messages they bear.[38]
The darkness and ‘nihility’ of ‘human’ philosophy is often for Nursi the most effective contrast to bring into relief the light of the wisdom of revelation, therefore it is no surprise to find in the Risale numerous comparisons between those two avenues of knowledge. How each views and understands being is often the main theme of this type of expositions. For example, the Qur’an, he says, speaks of the sun as a revolving lamp; it does not speak of the sun for itself, but as center of a system, that mirrors the Maker’s attributes of perfection. By declaring, “And (We) set the sun as a lantern” (71: 16) the Qur’an depicts the world as a home prepared for man and the living-created beings. It infers that the sun is a subjugated servant, and thus reveals the mercy and bestowal of the Creator. As for the ‘foolish and prattling’ philosophy and science, it speaks of the sun as “a vast burning liquid mass that storms through the universe, causing the planets which have been flung off from it to revolve around it. Its mass is such-and-such. It is this, it is that.”[39] Apart from terrible dread and bewilderment, Nursi wonders whether the human spirit can derive anything else from such ‘delirious’ expositions.
As we will see, Nursi does not so much object to the subject of science as he does to the way it deals with it. Modern Science just misses the meaning of the world and that is why, despite all ‘its pretentious claims, its inside is hollow’.[40] For Nursi only revelation can impart on man knowledge of the reality of the world. Human reason is not a source of knowledge but a tool only, as to the sound intellect, ‘the intellect of faith’, it commands that revelation be followed because all that revelation says is ‘reasonable’ since what its witnesses can be observed in the universe, and attested by the heart[41].
The Way of Prophethood vs. The Way of Human Philosophy
For Nursi there have always been two main avenues to knowledge, two main currents in the world, from the time of Adam up to now: one which he calls the way of prophethood and religion, the other the way of human philosophy in its various forms: Whenever those two ways have been in agreement and united, that is to say, whenever philosophy sought refuge with religion and obeyed it, humanity has experienced happiness and a blissful social life. But whenever the gap between them widened and they reached a bifurcation and separated, all the light and goodness rallied around the way of Prophethood, religion and wisdom on the right side, and all evils and misconceptions gathered to follow the way of ‘human’ philosophy on the left.[42]
From Nursi’s works it is understood that philosophy or science become wisdom when they serve the line of prophethood, that is when they study the universe in accordance with the purpose of creation as taught in revelation. Nursi contends that given the limitations of human reason, there is no other way to reach reality. The line of prophethood teaches that man’s ownership of his life is only apparent and temporary. The continuance of his existence depends on the creativity of another. When one accepts that the essence of his existence has a harfi (symbolic)[43] meaning, he understands that his being does pertain to his ‘self’ but carries the meaning of another. Consequently, he realizes that all things have a harfi meaning; they are like mirrors to the attributes of the ‘wholly-other’. As darkness is the mirror to light, so beings act in many respects as mirrors to the Maker attributes due to the contrast of opposites; they reflect His power through their intrinsic powerlessness, and His perfection through their deficiency.[44]
No sooner than Man listens to the ‘cosmic prayers of inherent powerlessness’ that these beings immaculately murmur in concert, he witnesses how these prayers are instantly and constantly answered to with ‘cosmic sustenance and mercy’. He himself is then beckoned to open up to ‘the grace of the Divine Names’, and begins to prepare himself to hand over all things to their real owner and attain true affirmation of tawhid.[45] Whoever is blessed with this ‘living faith’ understands the reality of divine unity in the cosmos and in the Qur’an because that one lives it and witnesses it.
To be sure, the harfi meaning is no mere cogitation, nor is it a produce of speculative thought, although, as we mentioned at the beginning, the Risale often appears in the garb of demonstrative arguments and proofs. Harfi meaning is an outcome of ‘fruitional tastes’ (fuyudhat qur’aniyya) unbossomed from the Qur’an whose lights have shun on ‘impotent intellect of one who accepts one’s intrinsic weakness’. It is an outcome of divine ‘grace’, and not ‘genius’, for the intellect that is candidate to witness to the truths of the harfi meaning is not the intellect that knows ‘by and of itself’ but one that ‘knows by and from God’. Not only does this intellect follow the guidance of the revelation, it is in constant experience and witnessing of its lights.
The way of philosophy, which has not melted into the way of prophethood, represents him who forgets the wisdom behind his creation, and assumes his existence purports strictly to an ismi (nominative) meaning. This one claims that he owns his existence and his life and imagines himself to be the real master in his sphere of disposal. This second attitude echoes Heidegger‘s Dasein who is unable to stand the thought that he is not his ‘own’ creation. Richard Rorty explains that when Heidegger says that Dasein is guilty, he has in mind the fact that it speaks somebody else’s language rather than one of its own, and lives in a world it never made, a world, which, for this reason, is not his home. Dasein knows it is only contingently there, ‘thrown’ in the universe as it were, where it is ‘not meaning’ what it is speaking.[46]
Nursi explains that when one does not accept to surrender to this reality and pretends that one’s existence is independent of one’s sustainer, one is bound to compare everything to oneself and claims that everything owns itself. This one assumes that beings have an ismi (nominative function); they carry no meaning other than themselves. Dasein estrangement in the world stems from this self-understanding and essentialism. He fails to see their divine origin and vertical connection, he cannot but see them as objects ‘thrown’ in the world, left to their own devices, like orphans having to fight for their own survival. This represents for Nursi the typical predicament of the Man of shirk (i.e. ascribing partners to God and dividing His sovereignty among things), which leads Man to fall in great darkness committing not only “a great transgression” (91:10) against himself but against the whole of creation by relegating them to meaninglessness. Under the sway of his delusion, Man is in absolute ignorance even if one knows ‘thousands of branches of sciences.’ For, whatever lights one’s senses and thoughts may yield from the cosmos while in this state, “those lights are soon extinguished because one does not find anything within oneself by which to confirm, illuminate and perpetuate them [47]Even if one encounters pure wisdom as claimed, that ‘wisdom’ takes the form of futility, due to its ascribing partners to God or denying Him”.[48]
Comparing the ‘great genius’ of modern science and the ‘guidance of revelation’, Nursi asserts that they cannot be reconciled, for their different origins:
“Guidance descended from the heavens, genius emerged from the earth. Guidance enlightens the heart, which then releases the intellect to work. Genius works in the mind and confuses the heart. Guidance illumines the spirit, making its seeds sprout and flourish; dark nature is illumined by it. Its potentiality for perfection suddenly advances; it makes the carnal soul a docile servant; it gives aspiring man an angelic countenance. As for genius, it looks primarily to the soul (nafs) and material being, it plunges into nature, making the soul an arable field. Under its sway, the animal potentialities develop and flourish; it subjugates the spirit, desiccating its seeds; and brings up the evil in mankind. As to guidance, it gives happiness to life, it spreads light in this life and the next; it exalts mankind.[49]
If Old Said had sought to establish a connection between human philosophy and divine wisdom, the Qur’anic inspiration of the New Said brought him to see their ‘disjunction or subordinatory separation’ as Taha ‘Abdel Rahman puts it. The New Said makes philosophy subservient to wisdom in cases where they agree and wisdom the substitute for philosophy when they contradict each other.[50] Nursi’s critique of ‘human’ philosophy has three dimensions: logical, moral, and figural for the reason that the sage is not content with logical criticism alone.[51] In the following, however, the focus will be on the logical aspect of Nursi’s arguments since allusions to the other dimensions have been touched upon in the previous sections.
Nursi and the Classical and Contemporary Muslim Philosophical Debates
Know O Dear friend! There is an important difference between the path I have followed in the epistle “droplet”, a boon unbosomed from the Qur’an, and the path of those professing ‘thought’ and ‘human’ philosophy. In my way, that most precious water of life is urged to gush out whenever and wherever I choose to dig and beat my staff, while those who are besotted by the glitter of philosophy cling to the idea of putting up pipes and aqueducts to bring in the water from the confines of the universe if not beyond. To this end, they tie up chains and set up ladders and more: having succumbed to the principle of causation, they are compelled to erect and post millions of waterproofs to protect their hush proofs against the destructive attacks of doubts and misgivings. Praise be to God, the Qur’an has given to us the equivalent to the “staff of Moses”, and taught us how to use it that we may extract that aqua vita from anywhere, even from underneath a rock. Hence, the proof of the Qur’an has saved me from undertaking that futile journey beyond the world. It has exempt me from the impossible task and officious chore of ensuring the up-keep of those long pipes and has removed from my heart the fear of falling from braking ladders or jagging pipes in that long and winding road.[52]
Nearly a thousand years ago, the Muslim world was confronted with philosophical and scientific views that seemed to reduce the role of God to a prime mover, a view of Deity that was far from being compatible with the Qur’anic notion of deity. The Muslim philosophers were dedicated to Greek philosophy, which depicted the world as a system operating on natural principles.[53] The God described by al-Farabi and Ibn Sina (Avicenna) is very unlike the God of Islam. The God of the Muslim philosophers is “not capable of listening to his creatures or even knowing what they do, he does not resurrect the dead.”[54]
Leaman compares the role of this God to that of a monarch in a constitutional monarchy who has no significant power to influence events. “No law in Britain is a law unless the Queen signs the necessary documents, but the Queen always signs whatever has been approved by the parliament.”[55] The philosophers believed in a deterministic view of the world, which left little for God to do. Majid Fakhry notes that the determinism of Ibn Rushd (Averroes) “can hardly leave any scope for the belief in an effective providence of God. Averroes, it is true, concedes that God plays the role of Author and Preserver of the universe; but it is difficult to see how this role can be interpreted in any but deistic terms.”[56]
The Ash’ari theologians and among them al-Ghazzali reacted strongly to the philosophers understanding of the world and therefore of God. They refuted horizontal causation because it is incompatible with the omnipotence of God as stated in “God is powerful over all things”[57] a phrase that appears in the Qur’an many times. They rejected that causes had an efficient role in creation but they did not deny causality and order in the world.[58] They endorsed a kind of vertical causation, according to which, every thing is directly related to an effective agent who creates both the cause and the effect in an orderly way.[59]
Ash’arism, “not only survived all criticism levelled at it, but succeeded in attaining a key position in Sunni Islam”[60]: admittedly, it based its doctrines primarily on Qur’anic precepts. What Ash’arism had done though was to merely project the Qur’anic conclusions onto the world without justifying them. They did not engage in a parallel reading of the cosmic signs even though the Qur’an constantly refers the interlocutor to the world and teaches how it should be looked at in order to gain knowledge of the cosmos, himself and God. Unwittingly, in their drive to assert God’s sole agency, the occasionalism that Ash’arism erected as a counter to causation served to undermine knowledge of God that can be gained through knowledge of ‘causal relations’.
Nursi, following the Ash’arite tradition states that to attribute the effects[61] to causes (i.e. created things) is to ascribe them the power to create and thus to associate partners with God. However, Nursi does not refute causation and determinism merely on the ground that they are incompatible with divine unity and omnipotence. Rather, he moves to show that the very horizontal logic of causation is unsubstantiated and that it is in fact a corollary dogma of the ismi approach, which ventures to act as a pressio veri to the ‘speech of the universe’. In doing so, he does not feel the need to abandon knowledge (ma’rifa) that can be gained through the eliciting of causal relations, nor does he feel the need to bestow ‘agential power’ to causes. His, is not about imposing a logic on the cosmos, but ‘listening’ to its logic: the harfi logic. Although, the ismi attitude ventures to act as a blind to the harfi logic, this in the end ransacks it and illumines its dark chains with the bursting light of the vertical ‘lightenings’ of the meta-cosmic text. Nursi’s harfi approach is based on a parallel reading of the world under the light of revelation, which is the light that supplies the intellect with intuitions which in the case of Nursi are unravelled proofs. The conclusions of the Qur’an are not taken for granted but verified through observation of the world.[62]
Nursi establishes that the uniformity of causal sequences is evidence for the significative, symbolic quiddity of things; it does not justify belief in a horizontal causal nexus. The proponents of the ismi approach among contemporary Muslims thinkers react vehemently to the refutation of causation. Their reason is exactly the same as that of Ibn Rushd’s who objected to al-Ghazzali some eight centuries earlier under the alleged reason that knowledge was the necessary concomitant of causation. A contemporary Muslim scholar, Mehdi Golshani contends that the negation of causation, which he identifies as the corollary of determinism, implies that “nothing would be the requisite of another, and anything could be derived from anything, so there would be no room for science.”[63]
Golshani’s view is that God creates through intermediary causes. But if the world operates on natural principles, and if causes are necessarily connected to the effects, where does God fit in except as prime mover or first cause? If causes produce the effects naturally, necessarily, and immutably, how are then things in the world to lead us to witness to the reality and ‘Life’ of their Creator? In other words, if things do not function as signs and symbols to the constant renewal of the divine reality, as in this ismi model of the world, how can we then turn and say that ‘everything’ is a sign of God as held by Golshani? If we say ‘because the Qur’an says so’, there is then some difficult reconciling to do? The harfi meaning of things is not an inherent feature of the ismi model, unless it is introduced ad hoc with no precise role to fulfil[64].
The Muslim proponents of the ismi approach recognize the significance of causality in connection with knowledge, but they, too, like the falasifa start, according to Nursi, with their pre-conceived notion of causation and interpret experience and the world accordingly. But Nursi believes that such interpretation is akin to putting the cart before the horse, since we cannot say anything about the status of causation before we observe the world. Observation however, does not seem to suggest that causation is true. That is why attempts to reconcile causation with the Qur’anic concept of divine unity and omnipotence involve great difficulties and remain conjectural and paradoxical.
‘Allamah Sayyid Tabataba’i writes that “whatever is caused by natural causes is really caused by Allah…The causes do have causality (which he defines as natural causation) because Allah has given it to them…Every cause has been given the power to create the relevant effect; but the real authority is yet in the hands of Allah.”[65] From Nursi’s harfi perspective this last statement is paradoxical: if a cause has the power to create an effect, it has necessary properties with which it produces the effect. But if something is necessary, it exists of itself and from itself; it has not been given existence at any point in time i.e. it is not contingent. However, all observed causes are contingent.[66]
The harfi approach does not deny causality and the order in the world, which is one of the major designata of unity, but it refutes the fact that a cause could create anything, i.e. causation, as groundless. It does not dismiss causes but employs them as signs in attaining knowledge, in the way revelation teaches. It is concerned with showing how every cause and effect and particularly their relationships are signs pointing to the knowledge of the divine attributes and to the laws of the manifestation of those divine names in this world. In other words it is by showing that causation is untrue because unfounded, that Nursi’s approach reveals the harfi nature of things and hence the truth of the teachings of the Qur’an. For Nursi things are not signs (ayat) just because the Qur’an states so, rather the Qur’an says so because things actually function as signs as it can be verified through observation.
Nursi’s Analysis of Ismi Science
Know that most of Man’s ‘earthly’[67] cogitations, his incontrovertible and even self-evident truths are built on ‘customariness’ (ulfa), the source of compounded ignorance. A corruption of serious consequences therefore resides in the very foundations of his knowledge. It is owing to this almost perpetual state of affair, that the Qur’an constantly directs the gazes of mankind towards the recurrent vicissitudes (‘adiyat), beckoning them fervently to look closer at the veils of the ‘ordinary’. For the recurrent, the ordinary and the mundane conceal beneath that ‘extra-ordinary’ activity transiting the very vicissitudes (‘adiyat) of life and the world. Indeed, it is through these that the lights of the Qur’anic stars pierce the dark vaults and tenebrous shrouds of the mind succumbed to ‘customariness’ (ulfa).[68]
Know that due to ‘customariness’, many have ceased to mull over the recurrent vicissitudes (‘adiyat’)[69] of the world, although, these are but inroads of the miracles of Divine power. Having instead confined their gazes to the surface of these perpetually flowing manifestations, they have taken an attitude similar to those who upon perusing the surface of the ocean have failed to bring themselves to see in the sea anything beyond the mere undulations brought about by the caressing of the air and the twinklings of the sunshine. How can they relying only on these superficial observations reach conclusions about the depth of the ocean, the might of its Owner and Creator whose tremendum reins the heavens and the earth and all that lies between?[70]
To be sure, understanding and interpretation of the world for Nursi is a mode of being. Ismi science, i.e. science that proceeds from the intellect of philosophy is based on a flawed understanding of being, dictated by the whims of the soul and cannot lead to reality. Its so-called scientific knowledge is ignorance masquerading as knowledge.[71] Scientific knowledge is based on causation, which is a corollary dogma of ismi (the nominative) meaning. Causation is neither elicited by experience, nor logically justifiable. While dealing primarily with the ‘ills’ of his own soul, Nursi argues extensively against its intellectual claims, demonstrating in various contexts and from many perspectives that there are challenging difficulties in accepting both its claims to ‘divinity’ and its consequent teaching, namely, causation: knowledge presupposes universality, but there can be no universality if the horizontal line of causation is assumed.
Causation is taken to mean that the existence of an effect is necessitated by its causes; it is more than just causality. The ismi meaning takes it for granted that causes are efficient i.e. they produce the effect and sustain its existence. However, Nursi argues that the occurrence of one effect calls for the existence of the whole cosmos and not only its apparent causes, because things are inseparable and inter-related in the cosmos.
Know that an atom may bear the sun and run with it while it could not, in essence, accommodate another atom as attested by evidence. Being similar to the rain drizzles blazing in the sun, atoms of these living beings and their compounds are fit to become vessels for the flashes of the manifestations of the luminous, pre-eternal, absolute, and encompassing power of His pre-eternal infinite knowledge and absolute will. Or else, how could an atom of one of the cells in your eye be the source and origin of the potency, the sensibility and the volition enabling it to carry out its ever-increasing duties in the complex arenas of its operations? Particularly, as we bear in mind that atoms carry out numerous functions and duties. Indeed! Doesn’t it travel in the sensing nerves of the eye, in the veins, and the arteries, and is involved in the operations of visualizing, and intercepting visuals and many more bewildering activities like these? Seeing this wonderful and precise work, this orderly and adorned sculpting, this profound and far-reaching wisdom one is left with the following question. Either every atom and every compound in creation are the origin, and the source for this comprehensive, and perfectly consummate attributes, or else they are the locus and mirrors to the rays of the manifestations of the ‘Pre-eternal Sun’ to whom appertain these Attributes? The first consideration entails difficulties by the number of atoms and their compounds in the world.[72]
In other words, the production of the tiniest effect requires a knowledge, power, will and so on that encompass the whole world, not only in space but also in time. “The one who created the mosquito created both the sun and the Milky Way; and the one who ordered the flea’s stomach clearly set in order the solar system.”[73] If it is not accepted that causes and effects are being made and cannot produce anything[74] it has to be accepted that within each contingent cause there reside infinite creative power, knowledge and will, which is nonsensical and contradictory because each cause being also an effect would have to be both dominant and subjective to all the rest of beings.[75]
From another point of view, Nursi refers to the countless events (creative acts) occurring in countless places all at the same time and without intermediaries, e.g. spring, hatching of eggs and so on. These events, these creative acts proceed from a law of creativity that encompasses all those events. That is the one who gives life to an insect must be the one who creates and gives life to all insects and animals, and whoever spins particles must be the one who sets the celestial bodies in motion, for the law of creativity is a chain and creative acts are tied to it. Nursi concludes that each thing ascribes every other thing to its own Maker, and each creative act attributes all acts to its author.[76]
In respect to the ismi meaning beings in themselves are transitory and accidental. They do not possess in themselves anything that can perpetuate and sustain their existence. But in respect to the harfi meaning, the existence of every thing is directly connected to its Maker and through that connection it is related to all other things in space and in time: each particular gains universality through that vertical connection. Nursi affirms that it is through its connection to the Creator that ‘a fly did away with Nimrod, an ant destroyed Pharaoh’s palace, and a fig seed bears the load of a fig tree.’[77] Within the context of the harfi approach, we may say that universality exists only in relation to the Creator. Were it not for that connection, things would all be like orphans, alien to all the rest of beings and they all would become ‘estranged particulars’ and ‘logically nothings’.[78] The so-called causes and effects would have been horizontally related to each other if they had been necessarily related i.e. if it had been possible to deduce the effect from its cause(s) through a purely rational process, without referring to past observation, which is obviously not possible.
In science, universal statements are inferred from particular ones inductively, while from a logical point of view, universal statements cannot be inferred from particular ones, no matter how numerous and ubiquitous. Inductive inferences could have been justified if the empirical relation between a cause and effect were necessary i.e. a purely logical truth. Inductive logic conjectures that induction is valid, and then concludes that horizontal causation is true; whereas, induction can only be justified if causation i.e. the relation between cause and effect is true. According to Karl Popper, the difficulties of inductive logic are insurmountable. To justify induction, inductive inferences should be employed, and then these will have to be justified by invoking a new principle of induction, and so on ad infinitum. The attempt to base the principle breaks down since it leads to infinite regress.[79] This means that science has no valid method to move from the particular to the universal. A scientific law is the recurrence of particular events, but there is no reason why a collection of contingent particulars should result in a universal law. One of the most important results of the problem of induction is that the cognitive claims of inductive logic, in other words the scientific method, are unjustifiable.
The point Nursi makes is not only that scientific laws are unjustifiable, but more importantly, that every single statement of the form ‘A causes B’ is also unjustifiable. This, nevertheless, neither leads him to deny ‘causes’ and ‘effects’, nor their relations. His concern and arguments are against the nature and interpretation of such relations: the uniformity and order in the universe is wrongly attributed to causation. What is observed is causality, the principle that nothing happened without being caused, and not causation i.e. causes produce the effects.
For Nursi an ‘ordered’ and ‘orderly’ act indicates a proficient agent, but it is not evident at all how unconscious, conflicting, deaf and blind causes can be the agents of effects full of meaningful art and adornment, whilst maintaining le hazard and a theory of chaos at the same time. The wise aims and benefits in effects dismiss causes from ability to create, and instead reveals them as the aqueducts[80] of His mercy and will, handing them over to a Wise Maker Who wants to make Himself known and loved through His ‘cosmic personal and intentional mercy’.[81] Although causes seem adjacent to effects, they are far from reaching one another although they reach out to each other through His mediation. Effects have been tied to causes so that great numbers of Divine Names may be manifested along the distance that separates them, when it is ‘realized’ that causation is an illusion of the ismi vision. Then, it becomes clear that infinite essential power, knowledge, will, compassion, and many other Divine Names are manifestly involved in those relations. [82]
Nursi repeatedly states that causes and things are not efficient, and that to maintain the contrary amounts to attributing a kind of divinity to them[83]. Moreover, horizontal causation is an impediment to the true knowledge, which is the knowledge of God and not the detailed knowledge of the things themselves. But as mentioned earlier, Nursi’s harfi approach is not in favor of abandoning the search for causes. On the contrary, it is in uncovering the relations between causes and effects that one may witness to the Divine Names and obtain knowledge of God, which is according to the Qur’an the aim in the creation of humanity. Nursi often quotes “Read and ponder carefully the lines of this creation;
For, they are sent to you as missives from the supreme heavenly realm.”[84]
The ismi meaning looks to things in their horizontal relations and thus ignores the many other levels of existence. The harfi meaning looks at the ‘effects’ of beings as windows to infinity, to the infinitable Divine Names and Attributes of their Maker. [85]
The Qur’an does not bring out the conditions of the things in existence insofar as they point to their ‘selves’, but in so far as they point to the One who endows them with existence: what is of ‘essence’ in its eyes are those conditions in which they are looking up to their endower. ‘Human’ philosophy and modern science, on the other hand, exploit them for their own dead end, and masquerade them as ‘reals’, objects and nomen agentis, so much, that what gains utmost importance in the eyes of their devotee, ought to be devoted to the conditions in which they are pointing to their own essences. What a world of difference is there between the two schools! [86]
Qur’anic wisdom teaches that an atom or a bee or a flower are signs bearing the meaning of another and therefore they should be looked at on account of that ‘wholly-other’ according to the meaning of “There is nothing but extols His limitless glory and praise” (17: 44).
The Qur’an Reveals the meanings of the Cosmic Recitation
Among the signs of His absolute universal divinity and mercy towards mankind are the inscriptions of a word, or a locution or even a book in a large or a small letter in order that it becomes a ‘manifest’ sign for the thoroughness and comprehensiveness of His knowledge and caring. Take for instance, the creating of the fish in the large letter of the ocean, and the creating of the small ant in the lines of the trees, or the creating of the animal in this dot: the earth. So much so, you find the ants in places one would otherwise consider lifeless, unattended, and totally abandoned. Really, some of the Maker’s creatures bring to mind the calligraphy of the letters ‘Ya’ and ‘Sin’ within which is inscribed in miniature the whole of the Qur’anic verse Yasin. [87]
According to Nursi, the Qur’an interprets the cosmic speech in a way that is congenial to its interlocutors. The Qur’anic verses not only refer to the meanings of the signs in the universe but they also teach how to uncover those meanings. For Nursi, the true meaning of the universe can only be understood through a universal view that the Qur’anic verses and signs reveal. Reflection (tafakkur) for Nursi is not so much on the verses- but essentially by means of the verses (tafakkur bil-ayat). [88] In his view the interpretation of the cosmic signs should proceed under the guidance of the very logic of Qur’anic verses, and is effected by the operations and effulgence of its cosmic signs. Man reaches self-understanding and that of the beings around him when his intellect is in the ‘mode of listening’ to the Qur’an’s cosmic revelations.
The Risale does not claim that God is the creator of beings because the Qur’an says that ‘He is the Creator of everything’ (verses 6: 102; 13: 16; 39: 62; 40: 62). To use the conclusions of the Qur’an to support one’s views, which may or not be compatible with the messages of the Qur’an, is different from confirming the truth of the Qur’an. Although such claim refers to the Qur’an, it does not follow a Qur’anic approach but Aristotelian logic.[89] Similarly, to say that God creates ‘all’, without witnessing how ‘every single’ being is proclaiming to that reality, is no safeguard against the heedlessness (ghafla) and the nonchalance of the soul. Man’s primordial duty consists of “experiencing the meaning of the words concerning the Creator’s Unity and Maker’s Lordship uttered by each of the beings in the world in its particular tongue.”[90]
Nursi insists that true affirmation of divine unity requires that one sees the seal of divine power and lordship (rububiya) on every single thing, and opens up from every thing a window directly onto the light of the divine attributes of perfection or the divine names and thus attain to perpetual awareness of the divine presence.[91] Some of the salient arguments of this affirmation of tawhid as mentioned already are, “Nothing can exist without everything else,”[92] and “Without holding the universe in one’s hand, one cannot create a single particle.”[93] Moreover, Nursi appeals that his teachings on the nature tawhid are consistent not only with the spirit of the Qur’an, but with the path of walaya inaugurated by the Prophet. Commenting on the mi’raj, he says:
“There is within this particular journey a general one and universal ascent during which the prophet heard and saw the Dominical Signs and wonders of Divine Art that encountered his eyes and ears within the universal degrees of the Divine Names…”[94]
He adds further that this was an invitation by way of which God “made [the prophet] journey through both the external face of the world of existence and the face that looks to its Creator.”[95]
The world occupies a vital place in Nursi’s hermeneutical approach to the Qur’an: the world is referred to – in the manner the Qur’an itself instructs and not according to one’s pre-conceptions – in order to understand the Qur’an and confirm its truth. There are signs in every single thing, in every event in the universe; each thing recites through its mode of being, “Say, he is God, the One, the Besought”[96] (112:1-2) and glorifies God (17:44). The whole world recites the Qur’anic verses and express that “there is no deity but He” (9: 31)[97]. Therefore, to witness to the truth of tawhid is not without witnessing that reality in the cosmos.
Let us reiterate, nonetheless, that Nursi urges his readers not to interpret this cosmic text as mere ‘thinkers’ but as ‘witnesses’ (shuhada’). He urges them open with the ‘keys’ of faculties placed in their primordial nature, the secrets of the Divine names, of consciously witnessing the tasbihat and the takbirat of the living beings to their Creator, as they transit in and out of existence respectively, and of observing their worship of the Bestower of life and joining them. Surely this joining is not without worship and humility of heart and intellect, nor is the reading of this cosmic Qur’an possible and accessible without the effulgence of the ‘ideal reader’: the excellent Man of mi‘raj, to whom ‘all beings send their blessings and greetings of peace’. Ultimately, the tawhid journey that Nursi wants to evince reaches its peak through this tazkiya (purification) and awareness of the Prophet’s cosmic reality. Only then the objects of observation are no longer the outward ismi things,
but the soul of the experimenter itself. Nursi explains that through the insight of belief and one’s union with all beings through the connection to the Eternal One, one experiences a boundless existence apart from one’s personal existence.[98]
Harfi Science: Towards a Science of the Future
It is often argued that science explains how things occur in terms of causation but it cannot explain why they exist the way they are. Everything depends for its ultimate explanation on something outside the universe and that is God. Thus, the story goes that things are the way they are because God has so willed. To answer ‘how’ is the domain of science and ‘why’ is that of religion. Within the harfi attitude, we are part of the cosmos and hence we can learn only by asking ‘how’ questions. In order to answer a ‘why’ question that cannot be reduced to a ‘how’, we either have to go outside the universe and investigate it and that is impossible, or we have to accept that God has so willed, given that we know Him.
Since the harfi approach seeks knowledge of God by means of His signs in the world, it is concerned with answering ‘how’ questions. It proceeds in agreement with the Qur’anic verses, which repeatedly bid the reader to consider how things are created,
“Do they never gaze at the clouds pregnant with water, (and observe) how they are created? And at the sky, how it is raised aloft? And the mountains, how firmly they are reared? And the earth, how it is spread out?” (88: 17-20)
“Do they not look at the sky above them- how We have built it and made it beautiful and free of faults?” (50: 6)
The harfi approach is concerned with how things are being made for, as pointed out earlier, it is by establishing the relations between causes and effects that the divine names can be witnessed and knowledge of God reached. Belief in God as taught in the Qur’an is a confirmation of His attributes of perfection in every cause – effect relationship observed. The Qur’an does not restrict the realm of religion to the ‘unseen’ or ‘hidden’ so that belief in ghayb entails belief in the ‘unknowable’. Agreed ‘ghayb’ pertains in many ways to that which transcends human perception and the categories of speculative thought, but the Qur’an is not for blind faith, since in some other ways aspects of ghayb look to our condition, and there is a way ‘from God to humans’ (whether through the Qur’an, the cosmos or the prophets) called wajh Allah. In this sense, there is no bar between this world and ‘the transcendental world’.
The Qur’anic speech is described by Nursi as lisan al-ghayb fi ‘alam al-shahada i.e. ‘the tongue of the world of the unseen in the manifest world’. It clearly shows that there are cosmic evidences for the ‘matters of faith’ such as belief in resurrection. For instance, the Qur’an says,
“Behold, then, the signs of God’s grace - how He gives life to the earth after it had been lifeless! Verily, this Selfsame (God) is indeed the One that can bring the dead to life: for He has power to will anything!” (30: 50)
“And He it is Who sends forth the winds as a glad tiding of His coming grace - so that, when they have brought heavy clouds, We may drive them towards dead land and cause thereby water to descend; and by this means do We cause all manner of fruit to come forth. Even thus shall We cause the dead to come forth: (and this) you ought to keep in mind.” (7: 57)
In the context of the harfi approach there is no distinction between physics and metaphysics as it is the case with the ismi attitude. All attainments, all learning, all progress, and all sciences have for Nursi an eminent reality, which is based on at least one of the divine names, which are the ‘weft and warp’ of the tapestry of the cosmic text. Science finds its perfection and becomes reality when it serves the sacred aims of revelation and makes known the divine names that should constitute its roots matrix.
For instance, medicine fulfills its reality and embodies wisdom when it is based on the name Healer, and Man becomes a student of this science when he is seeking the grace and the healing of that lofty Name. Nursi says that “through observing that name’s compassionate manifestations in the vast pharmacy of the earth, medicine finds its perfection and becomes reality.”[99] Nursi emphasizes that ‘without these perfections, science, as that of today, is transformed into superstition and trivia, or else it gives rise to misguidance like the one spread by naturalist philosophy.’[100] Harfi science - whatever its subject, physics, anthropology or religion - instigates wisdom and perfection; ismi science in opposition, yields superstition and misconception.
At this point, we can safely conclude that science is not a neutral phenomenon for New said, neither is the cosmos as a matter of fact. So what did Nursi mean when he said to high school students who complained to him that their teachers did not mention God, “The sciences you study speak of God and make Him known, each with its own particular tongue. Do not listen to your teachers, listen to them.”[101]? As is clear from all he said to them, Nursi was actually inviting the students to forgo the ismi interpretation of the cosmic signs often force- fed to them by the academy. Indeed, he went on explaining to them how to ‘listen to science’, he was initiating them to the harfi science; he wanted to show them how to look critically with the harfi logic at the so-called natural phenomena and see that they are signs pointing to their Maker and glorifying Him. Given his critique of the very foundations of modern science, Nursi cannot have thought that ismi positive science speaks of God. He himself says, “Through the lights of belief, I have razed the sturdy bastions they call positive sciences and Nature.”[102]
Harfi science as Nursi understands it is an activity within the universal scope of religion.[103] It is not an alternative to religion but an integral part of it. Indeed, Nursi suggests that the Qur’anic verse, “And He taught Adam the names, all of them.” (2: 31) indicates that the greatest miracle upon which the supreme vicegerency of mankind revolves was the gift of true knowledge that can be gained by means of the grace of the Names. Hence, humanity’s most pressing duty is to rise to the heights of divine wisdom by means of spiritual progress and the harfi sciences. In his commentary Nursi argues the above Qur’anic verse addresses our age in the most particular terms, it is as if it were urging us to renounce our ways of understanding knowledge and beckoning us to other worthier directions:
Come on, step forward, adhere to all My Names and rise [it says]! Your forefather (i.e. Adam) was once deceived by Satan, and temporarily fell to the earth from a position like Paradise. Beware! In your progress, do not follow Satan and from the heaven of divine wisdom thus fall into the misguidance of ‘Nature.’ Continuously raising your head and studying carefully My beautiful names, make your sciences and your progress steps by which to ascend to those heavens. Then you may rise to My divine names, which are the realities and sources of your sciences and attainments, and you may look to your Sustainer with your hearts through the telescope of the Names.[104]
Nursi, it may be added, is inviting us to contemplate anew to reach a new understanding of ‘being’. The progress, which he now calls us to, is none other than ‘spiritual progress’ that leads Man towards fulfilling his perfections and raison d’etre. Science is not modern science but that ‘ilm which yields yaqin (certitude), dispels doubt, leading Man to the presence of the Divine and His ma‘rifa. The merit of Said Nursi in this task is his use of an intellectual discourse that is commensurate to our present predicament and cultural condition. This should not lead us in the end to see him as one who was mesmerised by the ‘modern Mind’, but as an intriguing ‘modern’ enigma, fittingly known by the sobriquet of Bediuzzaman, “the non-pareil of his time”.
[1] M. Pacaci; Y. Aktay, “75 Years of Higher Religious Education in Modern Turkey”, The Muslim World, vol. LXXXIX, No. 3-4, Jul-Oct 1999, 389.
[2] Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (London: Hurst & Co, 1998), 497, quoting Mehmet Izzet, Yeni Içtimaiyat Dersleri (2nd ed.; Istanbul, 1928), .278
[3] Risale-i- Nur is the title Said Nursi has given to his Qur’anic commentary. Henceforth, it will be referred to as Risale.
[4] About fifty years ago, Old Said who had been steeped too deeply in intellectual and philosophical sciences tried to find the ultimate truth following the teachings of the great Sufis as well as that of the investigators of ultimate reality from among the philosophers (ahl al-tariqah ,ahl al haqiqah). He could not be satisfied like most of the followers of tariqah with an impetus coming from the heart because he was already under the spell of the ‘intellect’ of philosophy. He was confused as to which path to follow and had to be cured….The Imam al-Rabbani (Sirhindi) transmitted to him an encrypted message, urging him to ‘unify his qiblah’ and find a single master. The old Said surmised: “the true master is the Qur’an.”…Soon, His soul (al-nafs al ammarah) with its knack for refractoriness forced him to a spiritual and intellectual showdown. He confronted it not with his eyes closed; rather, he journeyed through his ordeal with his eyes open just as the Imam al Ghazali, Mewlana Jelaluddin, and the Imam al-Rabbani had journeyed with the eyes of their heart and intellect open in the places where others had closed them. Praise be to God…he found an unfrequented path to truth through the guidance of the Qur’an.
B. S. Nursi,, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri (Istanbul: Sozler Yayinevi, 1999), 29
[5] Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 318
[6] Professor Taha Abdel-Rahman argues that an erroneous differentiation is often made between al-hads al-’aqliyy (‘rational intuition) and al-hads al-mitafiziqiyy (metaphysical intuition), in that the latter could also be of a ‘rational’ nature, relying on peculiar forms of demonstration he calls al-istidlal al-matwiyy (a pregnant demonstration). The latter being a form of demonstration that does not lay out all the premises that are concomitant to that intuition. Intuition, he maintains, depend on the condition and intellectual ability of the interlocutors. While some might understand them without the mediation of premises and demonstrations, others would be in need of them, until these turn, in their case, into intuitions. Thus, he says, “if someone asked what was intuition, my answer to him would be: ‘it is an istidlal matwiyy (a pregnant demonstration), and if he then asked me: ‘what is dhawq (fruitional taste), my answer would be ’aql matwiyy (pregnant intellect), and if he went on asking what is istidlal in this instance? I would say: al-istidlal hads manshur (demonstrative proof is an unraveled or unpacked intuition), similarly, should he ask what is ‘aql, I would retort: al-‘aql dhawq manshur (the intellect is intuition in the mode of unraveling). On this point see, Taha Abdel-Rahman, Hiwarat min ajli l’Mustaqbal (Casablanca: Matba‘at Al-Najah Al-Jadida, 2000), 107-109.
[7]B. S. Nursi, The Supreme sign: The observations of a Traveller Questioning the Universe Concerning his Maker, Trans. By H. Algar (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 2002) 102-103.
B.S. Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati (Istanbul: Nesil Basim Yayin, 1996), 711; 1683.
[8] As opposed to personal salvation only since the misguidance spread in the name of science has become a collective issue. Nursi writes that, “the Risale-I Nur is not only repairing some minor damage or some small house; it is repairing vast damage and the all-embracing citadel which contains Islam, the stones of which are the size of mountains. And it is not striving to reform only a private heart and an individual conscience; it is striving to cure with the medicines of the Qur’an and belief and the Qur’an’s miraculousness the collective heart and generally-held ideas, which have been breached in awesome fashion by the tools of corruption prepared and stored up over a thousand years, and the general conscience, which is facing corruption through the destruction of the foundations, currents, and marks (sha ‘air) of Islam which are the refuge of all and particularly the mass of believers.” Nursi, the Supreme sign, 96.
[9] Here, ‘offense’ refers to that ‘offensive critique’ in which something like science is attacked and nullified, but without presenting the student of science or the age of science for that matter, with remedies and ways of ‘picking up the pieces’, as it were, resulting from the critique. As for ‘redemptive’, it is used in the sense that although Nursi’s concept of science is completely different from that of modern science, he still uses an intellectual discourse and displays a demonstrative ability, striving for ‘universality’ as contributions that can help science change its course because in some ways he addresses the issues it has failed to resolve in a way it ‘may’ understand.
[10] Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 226.
[11] B. S. Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 107.
It is important to highlight here a confusion that might arise as a result of relying solely on translation when dealing with Nursi. His use of the word ‘ilm, which is usually understood as knowledge, is often translated as science, whereas Nursi himself would use the word fen for modern science.
[12] Not necessarily modern western science for as we will see Nursi has his own Qur’anic understanding of science beyond the modern.
[13] B. S. Nursi, The Words, Trans. S. Vahide (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 2002), 376-377; 728.
B. S. Nursi, Isharat al-i’caz (Istanbul: Sozler Yayinevi, 1999), 22.
[14] The Qur’an refers to its verses as well as to beings and events with the same word ‘aya’, which means sign The word aya and its plural form ayat occurs in the Qur’an 380 times, mostly referring to the creation, beings and events in it.
[15]B. S. Nursi, The Letters, Trans. S. Vahide (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 2001), 339-340.
There is a verse in the Qur’an that says, “They will reply: God, who gives speech to all things, has given speech to us (as well).” (41: 21).
[16] B. S. Nursi, The Rays, Trans. S. Vahide (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 199 8) , 146-149.
[17] Nursi, Isharat al-i’jaz in Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 1216.
[18] A. Schimmel, Reason and Mystical Experience in Sufism, in Intellectual Traditions in Islam Ed. F. Daftary (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000), 143.
[19] Ibid.
[20] O. Bakar, History of Islamic Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1996), Ed. S.H. Nasr and O. Leaman, Vol.II, 938-939.
[21] Al-Ghazzali, The Book of Knowledge,of Ihya’ ‘Ulum al-Din, Trans. N.A. Faris (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1962), 36-37.
[22] Ta’liqat, an early work of Nursi, is in fact a commentary on Aristotelian logic.
[23] The years of destruction caused by the First World War, followed by the momentous demise of the Ottoman Caliphate pushed Nursi into an acute spiritual crisis that prompted the overall transformation of his intellectual outlook. The parallels between Nursi’s intellectual journey and that of al-Ghazzali are indeed beyond the scope of this paper, but is worth noting here that both had undergone a long spiritual crisis as a result of their accepting some of the precepts of philosophy. In both one takes notice of that spiritual struggle, that ‘dark night of the soul’, which ends in their case with the victory of the ‘heart’ over the ‘soul (nafs)’, culminating in a birth of a ‘new’ intellect, as it were, and a new Qur’anic Man.
[24] In a treatise written sometimes between 1928 and 1932, the New Said explains why his style differed from that of the Old Said as follows:
“The Old Said and certain (Muslim) thinkers in part accepted the principles of man-made Western philosophy. For even when they argued against the proponents of this philosophy they used their weapons, thus accepting those principles to a degree. They submitted to some of their principles in the form of the physical sciences, believing them to be unshakable and therefore could not demonstrate the true worth of Islam. It was quite simply as though they were grafting Islam with philosophy, the roots of which they supposed to be very deep; as though strengthening it.” Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 560-561
[25] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 711.
[26]T. ‘Abdel Rahman, The Separation of Human Philosophy from the Wisdom of the Qur’an in Said Nursi’s Work, in Islam at the Crossroads, Ed. I. M. Abu Rabi’ (Albany: SUNY, 2003), 202.
[27] T. ‘Abdel Rahman, The Separation of Human Philosophy from the Wisdom of the Qur’an in Said Nursi’s Work, in Islam at the Crossroads, Ed. I. M. Abu Rabi’ (Albany: SUNY, 2003), 201-202.
[28] One of the salient features of Nursi’s critique of science is that it does not confine itself to the ‘destruction’ (and deconstruction) of modern science. By showing that logic and the very processes of creation, for instance, point themselves to the Divine and to the truth of revelation, since it alone could explain creation. Nursi’s ‘offense’ combines an attempt to ‘redeem’ science and cure what Paul Tillich called the ‘schizophrenic split in our consciousness’.
[29]The Ash’ari tradition of refuting causation has been held not only by the scholars of kalam but also by the great Sufis like Ibn ‘Arabi and Rumi. The latter argued in his Mathnawi, that the main mission of the prophets had always been their resistance against the worship of apparent causes, since this delusion opened the gates of polytheism and ungratefulness.
[30] It should be made clear that a number of Muslim and non-Muslim scholars had been aware of the limits of the modern scientific mind and argued eloquently against a number of its claims. Aside of Nursi, we are not aware, however, that the ontology of the modern scientific mind, has ever been debunked on the basis of its very premises and on its own turf as concisely and as cogently. See for example Nursi’s treatise on ‘Nature’ and See also Y. B. Mermer, ‘Induction, Science and Causation: Some Critical Reflections’, in Islamic Studies, Vol 35, Autumn 1996, No3. Y. B. Mermer, The Muslim World, vol. LXXXIX, No. 3-4, Jul-Oct 1999, 270-296.
[31] Paul Tillich, The Irrelevance and Relevance of the Christian Message. Ed, Durwood Foster (Ohio: The Pilgrim Press, 1996), 24-25.
[32] Nursi, The Words, 143-145.
Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 456-457.
[33] Nursi, The Words, 145. Italics added.
[34] Ibid
[35] For a detailed auto-biographical account of these intellectual showdowns and spiritual struggles of Said Nursi, see his Al- Mathnawi al-’Arabi al-Nuri
[36] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 111.
[37] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 96; 711.
[38] Nursi, The Supreme Sign, 102-103.
Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 1683.
[39] Nursi , Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 96. The Words, 252.
[40] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 96; The Words, 252.
[41] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 171; 1963.
[42] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 242.
[43] To the extent that words serve to convey a meaning they are symbols like characters in musical notation. Thus, what is meant by ‘symbolic’ in this paper does not relate to what is conveyed by ‘token’ nor is it in any way related to symbolic logic or symbolism. Nursi borrowed the term ‘ma‘na harfi’ from the glossary of Arabic grammar. There, a preposition such as a harf jarr, like a collocation or an isolated letter, has no meaning in itself, but serves to point to a meaning beyond itself (Al-harf ma dalla ‘ala ma’na fi ghayrihi). Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 270.
Nursi uses harfi to allude to both the aspects of things, which looks to their Maker, as well as to the intellect, which as a result of its being cleansed of its ismi vision is made to witness their ‘symbolic’ activity. By contrast, ‘ma‘na ismi’, pertaining to ‘ism’ (noun), bears a meaning in itself and points to itself (ma dalla ‘ala ma’na fi nafsihi). Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 270.
As in the English language the nominative ‘ I’, for instance, is a pronoun denoting a case expressing the ‘subject’ of the verb, one may, in the figurative sense at least, propose ‘nominative mood’ as an English equivalent to ma‘na ismi’. Nursi uses ma‘na ismi or ‘nominative mood’ to allude to the view that holds that Man does actually exert power over things and produces effects. A view, which according to Nursi, leads Man to either ascribe some ‘divinity’ to himself or to the things in his horizon. Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 221. Thus in Nursi’s usage ma‘na ismi is often used to convey ‘ego-philosophy’, speculative thought (nazar), Greek philosophy and the like, all of which cause Man to view beings as independent agents or ‘essences’ contained within concrete objects.
[44] Nursi, The Letters, 286-287.
[45] Nursi, The Words, 557-559.
[46] R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 108-111.
[47] While the things in the book of nature and the horizons are open, they are locked if the receptacle, the ‘I’ in Man remains hostage to the grip of ‘essentialism’. Nursi, The Words, 557-569. The secret for Nursi lies in unlocking this talisman through worship and prayers. He says: “Know that knowledge received from the horizon of the ‘outer world’ is not free from doubts and delusions. Only when it is remitted to the scanning filters of the heart and the fundus anima (wijdan) is it purified from the disturbing scruples and ascertained. Therefore, as you contemplate this world, perceive it from the centre to the circumference and then the outskirts, and be aware of the reverse, lest you retrogress.” Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 226.
[48] Nursi, The Words, 550.
[49] Nursi, The Words, 747.
[50] ‘Abdel Rahman, The Separation of Human Philosophy from the Wisdom of the Qur’an in Said Nursi’s Work, 206- 209.
[51] Abdel Rahman, The Separation of Human Philosophy from the Wisdom of the Qur’an in Said Nursi’s Work, 202.
[52] Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 170. Italics added.
[53] O. Leaman, Averroes and His Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 1-42. .
[54] O. Leaman, Nursi’s Place in the Ihya’ Tradition, The Muslim World, vol. LXXXIX, No. 3-4, Jul-Oct 1999, 315.
[55] Ibid.
[56] M. Fakhry, Islamic Occasionalism and its Critique by Averroes and Aquinas, (Great Britain: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1958), 121.
[57] There are other verses that attribute the creation to God, “Say: God is the creator of all things” (13: 16), and “Surely His is the creation and the command.” (7:54)
[58] R. M. Frank, The Structure of Created Causality According to al-Ash’ari: An Analysis of the Kitab al-Luma’ 82-164, in Studia Islamica XXV 1969, 14.
[59] M. Fakhry, A History of Islamic History, (New York & London: Columbia University Press, 1970), 234.
[60] H. Corbin, History of Islamic Philosophy, Trans. L. Sherrad (London: Islamic Publications Ltd, 1993), 120.
[61] Note that each effect is also a cause and vice versa
[62] Nursi describes the proofs he expounds in his Risale to be at the degree of knowledge of certainty (fi martabati ‘ilm al-yaqin) at the level of witnessing (shuhud) and certainty. The resulting confirmation (tasdiq) of the truths of belief is the outgrowth of both the mind and the emotions of the heart which in this scheme unite and become one i.e. the Qur’anic intellect. B. S. Nursi, al- Malahiq fi Fiqh Da’wa al- Nur , Trans. I. Q. al-Salihi (Istanbul: Sozler Yayinevi, 1995), 112.
[63] M. Golshani, Philosophy of Science from the Qur’anic Perspective, in Toward Islamization of Disciplines ((Herdon: International Islamic Publishing House, 1995), 88.
[64] In relation to this point Nursi writes: “Know dear friend of mine! Sadly, the majority of mankind, it appears, has failed to give this great ‘visible book’, the cosmos, and this highly venerable ‘audible book’, the Qur’an, their due esteem, largely, as a result of ill-conceived thoughts diffused by some of the philosophers, and literati in our midst. Infatuated and absorbed by their ‘I am ness’, as is often the case, philosophers tend to accord “the Necessary Being” only the thin husk of His entire creation. Then, following this ‘wishful thinking’, and absurd ‘tokenism’ they overreach themselves daring to stretch their hands to divide the remains of His Kingdom among imaginary, if not impossible causes, and contrived names and shares that refer back to no real nominee“. Nursi, al-Mathnaw al- ‘Arabi al-Nuri, 307
[65] M. H. Tabataba’i, Al-Mizan: An Exegesis of the Qur’an vol. I, Trans. S.S. Akhtar Rizvi (Tehran: WOFIS, 1973), 112-113.
[66] “Know O friend still under the spell of causes! The creation of a cause with its precise determinations as well as its constant supply with the necessary requisites that makes it fit to bring into being the effect, is not at all easier and worthier, nor is it more perfect and loftier than the creation of the effect within the cause in an instant by the order ‘Be’, from He who, before Him stands equal the atoms, as well as, the solar system.” Nursi, al-Mathnaw al- ‘Arabi al-Nuri, 212.
[67] Nursi usually uses ‘Earthly’ to refer to ‘human’ philosophy, which resists the ‘heavenly knowledge’ or revelation.
[68] Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 324.
[69] This is an interesting passage showing that the author was keen to take the challenge of the materialist philosophers of his time into their own grounds, explaining that the Qur’anic appraisals of matter were more conclusive and ‘positive’ than those of the positivists.
Comparing the cognitive value of the wisdom of the Qur’an with that of the philosophy of science, Nursi holds that the Qur’an shatters the veil of customariness instigated by the ismi vision of modern science and makes us wonder at the divine names manifested in things and events. Nursi, The Words, 150-154.
[70] Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 323.
[71] Nursi, The Words, 576.
[72] Nursi, al-Mathnawi-al-‘Arabi al –Nuri, 226.
[73] Nursi, The Words, 732.
[74] The Qur’an says,
“Those they invoke beside God cannot create anything, since they themselves are but being created.” (16: 20-21)
“Will they, then, ascribe divinity, side by side with Him, unto that which does not create anything since they themselves are created?” (7: 191).
“And yet, some choose to worship instead of Him, (imaginary) deities that cannot create anything but are themselves being created, and have it not within themselves to avert harm from, or bring benefit to, themselves, and have no power over death, nor over life, nor over resurrection!” (25: 3).
[75] Nursi, The Words, 303.
Nursi presents this line of argument as a development of the logic of the Qur’anic verse, “Which is more reasonable: belief in the existence of numerous divine) lords, each of them different from the other-or (in) the One who holds absolute sway over all that exists?” (12:39).
[76] Nursi, The Letters, 392-393. al-Mathnawi-al-‘Arabi al –Nuri, 240.
[77] Nursi, The Flashes (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 1995), 241.
[78] Nursi, al-Mathnawi-al-‘Arabi al –Nuri, 107; 271.
[79] K. R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., 1959), 37.
[80] When causation is removed whilst causal relations are maintained, what remains are aqueducts of mercy and will.
[81] Nursi, The Words, 172; 687; 712-713.
[82] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 312-313; 191-192.
[83] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 121; 122; 320; 501; 570; 813; The Letters, 542.
[84] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati,482. al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 227.
[85] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 244; The Words, 565.
[86] Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 74.
[87] al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 323.
It has been reported in many a prophetic tradition that the surah Yasin is the heart of the Qur’an. Many calligraphers have put themselves to the task of writing the full content of this verse in miniature inside a larger Arabic letter ‘Ya’ and ‘Sin’. Through this imagery, the author expresses the fact that as a small surah of the Qur’an may comprehend the whole content of the Book; also a small particular creature from the cosmic Qur’an may contain the whole truth of the universe and be an aya or a major sign of God. This is following the logic that the particulars are in Nursi’s tawhidi system ‘particular universals’ enjoying a value akin, and identical to that of the universal.
[88] Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi an-Nuri , 257.
[89] Nursi believes that Greek philosophy springs from a mythological and speculative worldview, and for this reasons it is essentially alien to the Qur’anic spirit of inquiry and the nature of tawhid (divine unity) that nurtures and enlightens that spirit. For Nursi, Greek thought has been an impediment to Islamic thought and “has opened a way from tahqiq (realisation) to taqlid (imitation)”. He says that, “They (some Muslim thinkers) conjured up a resemblance and compatibility between the true logic of the Qur’an and the Hadith, and this fictitious and false (Greek) philosophy and interpreted the Qur’an accordingly. However, the meaning of the Book of Miraculous Exposition is within it. So seek the meanings of the Qur’an in its luminous words, rather than those gimmicks and artifices you sneak in the back-pocket of your mind.” Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 1989.
[90] Nursi, The Words, 140-141
[91] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 121.
[92] Nursi, The Words, 731.
[93] Nursi, The Words, 733.
[94] Nursi, The Words, 584. Italics added.
[95] Ibid.
[96] Nursi, The Words, 304.
[97] Also, 2: 163; 2: 255; 3: 2; 3; 6; 3: 18; 4: 87; 6: 102; 6; 106; 9: 129; 11: 14; 13: 30; 20: 8; 20: 98; 23: 116; 27; 26; 28: 70; 28; 88; 35; 3; 39;6; 40: 3; 40; 62; 44; 8; 59: 22; 64: 13; 73: 9;
Nursi, The Words, 728.
[98] Nursi, The Rays, 72.
[99] Nursi, The Words, 270-271.
[100] Nursi, The Words, 271.
[101] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 954.
[102] Ibid, 379.
[103] The word for ‘religion’ in Arabic is ‘din’; it means primarily “obedience, in particular obedience to a law or to what is conceived as a system of established usages, i.e. something endowed with moral authority.” In this sense everyone has a ‘din’ of moral law as the Qur’an states when it says, “Unto you your din and unto me my din!” (109: 6)
M. Asad, The Message of the Qur’an (Gibraltar: Dar al-Andalus Ltd, 1980), 981.
[104] Nursi, The Words, 270.
This bifurcation marked the beginning of a gradual secularisation process of education that continued on unabated well after the tanzimat period. Beginning from the early 1870’s, an intensive publishing activity combined with a more accelerated translation movement contributed to an unprecedented popularisation of modern science as well as modern western philosophy. By the end of the 1890’s, Turkish litterateurs and intelligentsia in the Ottoman capital were inclined to accept the premises of Western scientific thought en masse and unquestioningly, leading to the appearance of a new class of intellectuals, and new trends of thought that were about to mount the most serious challenge to the Islamic culture and values.
As opponents to the ‘westernist’ reforms of the tanzimat (New Regulations), both Young Ottomans and the regime of Sultan Abdulhamid II (1876- 1909) were aware of the growing disdain for religion and carried many attempts to counter the intellectual encroachments of the West. However, neither had any hesitation about acquiring western science and technology, as both did not see any conflict between the principles of Islam and those of modern science. When Said Nursi (1873 - 1960) first stayed in Istanbul from 1907 to 1909, and later during the Young Turk rule, he was often in the thick of these apologetic debates. This early period of his life, he named the ‘old Said’.
Following the fall of the caliphate, and the birth of the New Republic, the process of secularisation that began almost a hundred years ago, had become almost comprehensive, and had taken quite a radical turn by comparison to earlier times. The unprecedented zeal with which the Kemalist regime had gone about implementing its western model of society had far reaching consequences on education. The year 1924 saw the dissolution of the medreses and all other kinds of religious schools, and the proscription of the teaching of religion in all state schools. In 1925, laws were passed to officially close all Sufi orders; the little religious education that remained at the higher level was effectively terminated with the closure of the Faculty of Theology at the University of Istanbul in 1933.[1] In 1928, a prominent thinker of the Kemalist period would thus write:
The function of religion is not to provide men with knowledge but with the will and power to live…The more religion leaves explanation of the events of the universe and the search for the means of influencing them to science, the more it assumes this pragmatic and moral appearance….Then, it is faith which manifests itself as an absolute subjugation to a moral ideal that can develop in harmony with the present-day conditions of civilization and science.[2]
If this trend of secularism had, somewhat, looked askance, at the Islamic intellectual tradition, in other intellectual quarters, though, a kind of atheistic rationalism using the claim of modern science was about to launch a more aggressive onslaught on religion and its scriptures. The very essentials and springs of religion; such as the belief in the existence of God, His power to create, in prophecy, and the ‘Day of Judgment’ began to be painted as mere ‘superstitions’ in many intellectual circles and schools. Said Nursi’s résistance to the western intellectual infringement presented by positivism, materialism, or atheistic rationalism took place against the background of these important transformations and polarized intellectual atmosphere. In what follows, emphasis is placed on some of his arguments against the premises of modern scientific thought, which formed the basis of those philosophies.
Understanding the position of Said Nursi vis-à-vis modern science and philosophy is not a straightforward task and can be quite a source of confusion. Chief among these sources of confusion may arise from oversights related to the development of the intellectual history of the author of the Risale-i- Nur[3] (The Epistles of Light). Nursi had divided his life into two distinct parts: Old Said, a person devoted to ‘politics’ and ‘speculative philosophy’, and ‘New Said: who repudiated the ‘old Said’, taking a new intellectual direction.[4] Another source of confusion might arise from the discourse of the Risale itself. Although, the text of the Risale is replete with the poetry and terminology of the Sufi narrative, it boasts with myriads of proofs, arguments and demonstrations. Nursi warns us against rushing to judge his demonstrative proofs (al burhan al-istidalali) as nazar (speculative thought). He says,
Know that the issues you come across upon studying my work, although they present themselves in the forms of demonstration and proofs, they can hardly be called speculation or ‘nazar’. No! They are but intuitive (hadsiyya) insights which were recorded, bound and then retained by the lights of certitude that overflow from the Generous Qur’an.[5] .
The ‘rational mood’ of the Risale could easily lead one to label its author with a rationalism or for that matter a ‘modernism’ that is far from being accurate.[6] Indeed, this confusion may very well arise from the modern understanding of ’aql (intellect) that has become preponderant in Muslim scholarship, which is generally alien to Nursi’s particular type of intellection i.e. al’aql al - imani.
The Risale is an exegesis and elucidation of the message of the Qur’an during an age in which ‘disbelief and misguidance are advocated in the guise of science and knowledge’[7]. The discourses of Nursi set up arguments with the aim of showing the absurdity and ‘illogicality’ of the modern paradigm and the truth and universality of the Qur’anic worldview. From this point of view, Nursi is really addressing a crisis of meaning. Consequently, his critique of science could not confine itself to an ‘offense’ but had to serve as a means for ‘collective salvation’[8]. Hence, it had to go beyond ‘offence’ and attempt to ‘redeem’[9] this modern scientific mind. This semblance of ‘rational discourse’ Nursi argues, ought not be seen as ‘acquiescence’ to the demands of the modern mind, but rather as a ‘mercy’ and a ‘cure’ to the ills of the ‘modern mind’ caught in the webs of ‘human’ philosophy. Nursi says, ” given that the issues [of the Risale], present themselves in the guise of demonstrative proofs (ke’ennaha muberhana istidlaliyya), they could serve as ‘rescue ladders’, saving those who have erred in the path of thought and knowledge (min jihati al-fikri wa l’ilmi) from slipping into the abyss of philosophy.”[10] Nevertheless, the difference between the ‘offensive’ and the ‘redemptive’ approaches may seem quite blurry in the Risale. Thus, statements such as, “At the end of time, mankind will spill into science and learning. It will obtain all its strength from science (‘ilm).Power and rule will pass to the hand of science (‘ilm),”[11] may be more problematic than meet the eye and deserves careful attention.
The Crucial role of the Universe in the Risale
In one of his early works, Muhakamat first published in 1911, Nursi lays down the methodological principles for understanding the Qur’an. One important principle that is directly related to the issue of science[12] is the role of the universe in confirming the veracity of revelation since imitation in matters of faith is regarded as unacceptable by many quarters in Islam. Nursi, asserts that the Qur’an and the cosmos cannot be understood separately; he describes the Qur’an as “the eternal interpreter of the various tongues reciting the verses of creation” and as “The revealer of the treasuries of the divine names hidden in the heavens and on the earth; the key to the truth concealed beneath the lines of events.”[13] That is, the Qur’an recites the cosmic signs (ayat)[14], which pervade the world, in such a way that it turns the cosmos’ constant motion, changes and renewal, into ‘meaningful’ activities. For Nursi the cosmos is not just a metaphor for the Qur’an: it is the Quran in viva vox. The Risale spares no effort, through proofs and cogent arguments, to demonstrate that the meaningful activities in the cosmos are a kind of speech; each being each event, each change is like a word and their being in constant motion is an infinitable speech glorifying God.[15]
In short, just like the Qur’an is God’s speech through word and discourse, the cosmos is His speech through deed and act.[16] Nursi says that the Creator makes the cosmos speak through the Qur’an, which is “the tongue of the unseen world in the manifest world.” Both have a common origin: the preserved tablet, which contains the heavenly Book, but whereas one proceeds from God’s attribute of speech, the other proceeds from His attribute of ‘will’. In other words, what He says is what He wills in “kun!’ (Be), and what He wills is what He says in ‘qul!’ (Say).
Nursi explains that ‘in order to describe His act to both eye and ear, the Maker describes His act while performing it: as a true artist, He unravels His art as He works it, and as a true Bestower of bounties He displays His boons in the very act of bestowing. As such, His very word constitutes His very act and vice versa. The Creator speaks as He creates; and thus He unites word and act through the ‘audible’ Qur’an and the cosmic Qur’an in one revelation. Following this vision, it can be said that on the one hand the Qur’an interprets or rather translates the speech of the cosmos and its ayat al- takwiniyya (cosmic signs/verses), while on the other, the cosmos witnesses to the truth of the ayat al-tadwiniyya (Qur’anic verses) and reveal their import. Given the importance of the cosmos for Nursi, it is not difficult to understand that up to the First World War, he was favorable to science through which he sought to mediate the revelation of the Qur’an in the hope that it would eventually help uncover the signs of God in the world.[17]
The Old Said and the Islamic Tradition of Knowledge
The Qur’an speaks extensively of the cosmos and invites its readers to seek God’s signs ‘in the horizons,’ that is, in the outer world, ‘and in themselves’ (41:53). Annemarie Schimmel notes that this verse could legitimately be understood as encouraging Muslim scholars and scientists ‘to look deeper and deeper into the marvel of nature, as well as the marvels which the human being contains in himself, and to invent ever new ways for a profounder understanding of the world.”[18] She also mentions al-Ghazzali (1058-1111), who wrote in his Ihya ‘ulum al-din that the real muwahhid (monotheist) is the one who looks at the world because it is created by God, and because it gives him the possibility of seeing God in His signs and worshipping Him.[19]
Al-Ghazzali, a representative of the Ash’ari school of kalam (theology), is well known for his critique of Greek metaphysics because it was incompatible with fundamentals of the Islamic beliefs. Osman Bakar contends that al-Ghazzali disagreed with the Muslim philosophers on some metaphysical issues: he had argued against the use of the philosophical method of the falasifa, which he found wanting particularly when it was brought to bear on issues of a metaphysical order. However, Bakar reminds us that al-Ghazzali warned the Muslims not to oppose science just because it had been associated with the philosophers.[20] Al-Ghazzali thought that the Muslim philosophers’ influence was due to their pragmatic success in the natural sciences. In order to solve this problem, he excluded philosophy from his classification of the sciences.[21]
His approach was to put forward the a priori and a posteriori character of science and establish the speculative character of philosophy. From this stand point, al-Ghazzali maintained that the philosophers were right as far the mathematical and natural sciences were concerned but wrong in the field of philosophy. In his Munqidh min al- dalal, al-Ghazzali accepted science on the ground that it can be useful to mankind, and referred to the services of medicine to make his point. Hence, in his classification, science fell under the category of ‘fard al-kifaya’, i.e. a knowledge that a section of the population was required to acquire. As opposed to philosophy, he viewed the pursuit of this knowledge as ‘harmless’, in that science was inherently relative (i’tibari) with no claim to ultimate knowledge of reality or haqiqa. What is noteworthy though is that al-Ghazzali in spite of his criticism of the philosophers, accepted Aristotelian logic as universally valid and most of all neutral. This position casts a different light on al-Ghazzali’s final stance on science particularly from the vantage point of the modern era.
Al-Ghazzali’s position on logic continued to have a significant influence over the intellectual development of the Muslim world, despite the important critique of Ibn Taymiyya. Indeed, its epistemological traces can be gleaned from Nursi’s early works.[22] The end of the First World War and that of the Ottoman Caliphate terminated the first part of Nursi’s life[23], the period of the “Old Said”, as he himself called it later. For many reasons that exceed the scope of this paper, Nursi entered a completely new phase in his life; he was as he himself confessed, a ‘New Said.’ New Said admits that Old Said was not very aware of the philosophical underpinnings of modern science, and like al-Ghazzali, had taken its logic prima facie. Unwittingly, he came to view science as a ‘candid student’ of the universe and hence as potentially helpful in uncovering the cosmic signs and verifying the veracity of the cosmic reality of tawhid. Like the Muslim philosophers Old Said too, took the principle of combining human philosophy with Qur’anic wisdom for granted.[24]
Nursi describes one of his spiritual awakenings right after the First World War. He searched the Islamic sciences and also philosophy and the sciences he had learned up to that time for consolation and hope. He describes the sciences and Western philosophy as “in part misguidance and in part trivia or superfluous.” He says,
“Quite in error I had imagined those philosophical sciences to be the source of progress and means of illumination. However, they had sullied my spirit and been an obstacle for my spiritual development. Suddenly, through God’s mercy and munificence, the sacred wisdom of the Qur’an came to my assistance. As is explained in many parts of the Risale-i Nur, it washed away and cleansed the dirt of those philosophical matters. The spiritual darkness arising from science had drowned my spirit into the universe. Whichever way I looked seeking a light, I could find not a gleam in those matters, I could not breathe. And so it continued until the instruction in divine unity (tawhid) given by the Qur’anic phrase ‘There is no deity but He’ dispersed all those layers of darkness. ”[25]
It is here that the New Said starts. Nursi had by then “shed his old philosophical guise, and put on a new one, the robe of wisdom. Here we see the death of Nursi the philosopher and the birth of Nursi the sage”[26].
One of the radical changes that New Said had undergone has a direct bearing on his views on modern science. He now felt the need to get deeper at the roots of the philosophy underpinning this science. Al-Ghazzali’s stance on science coupled with his convictions about Aristotelian logic might have constituted a, somewhat, ‘acceptable’ position in an intellectual climate in which medieval science was at least searching for an anchor in religion. Eight centuries later, however, in an age where secular modern science became the dominant paradigm, science, as it developed in the West, has been in the main identified with ‘truth and objective reality’ and religion with ‘superstitions and subjective faith’. Al-Ghazzali’s approach to logic and by extension to science needed, therefore, an overhaul revision. As for the approaches professed by such philosophers as al- Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Rushd, they needed to be ‘repudiated’. Although abstract rational inquiry allowed for the combination of philosophy and wisdom at some point in history, the social and political upheaval that shook history and undermined society with a shocking effect on humanity refuted the possibility of such combination.
Nursi was aware that this sociopolitical upheaval was but an effect of the impact on Western societies of the intellectual revolution carried out by modern philosophy against religion. Taha ‘Abdel Rahman says that:
Such strange contradiction between reason’s permission for the combining of philosophy and wisdom and the refutation of this possibility by the lived reality preoccupied Nursi’s thought for a long time, prompting him to review his philosophical position and, consequently, to reconsider the established view among Islamic philosophers that philosophy and wisdom are connected interpenetratively like sisters or associatively like friends.[27]
One of the major merits of New Said’s new intellectual journey is his impeccable refutation of the very logic of modern science and the cognitive claims of its philosophy[28]. His critique of causation[29] on which the ontology of modern science rested is unique. [30]
The Weight of Science in the Scales of the New Said
Historically, the horizontal dimension of life refers to the point in time when Man has forsaken his vertical dimension: heaven, to realize his ‘earthly’ utopia instead. The horizontal dimension, whose origin may be traced back to the renaissance, marks the time when human fulfilment was seen as no longer above the cosmos but ‘down here’ in time and space. The way nature has been studied and understood in the context of this ‘horizontal’ dimension typifies the modern mind whose main characteristics are “its going ahead in the world which is determined by time and space, causality and substance…indefinitely, without any termination”, and its endless attempt at “controlling nature… without ever asking about the purpose of this controlling.” Typical of this mind are also its obsession with “making everything into calculable objects which can be described in terms of numbers, [so that] they can be managed, divided, and put together again… it is a calculating reason…a tool [in the hand] of the business man, the technician, or of scientific analysis.” [31] Hence, for the modern mind nature is not to be contemplated, but coerced. Things that lie therein this ‘open Book of Nature’ are truncated and cut off from their vertical connection, causing them disfiguration and loss of their ‘symbolic’ meaning.
Nursi argued that the modern scientific formulation and vision of reality is anchored in a faulty understanding which delivers a distorted meaning of being. As early as 1926 the New Said took the hermeneutical dimension of science to task. Commenting on the verse, “And he who has been given wisdom has been given great good.” (2: 269), he compared ‘sacred Qur’anic wisdom’ with the philosophy of science at an ontological level and used a parable to illustrate the great difference between the knowledge imparted by ‘human’ philosophy and the one diffused by revelation. A king, he relates, showed one day an artistically bejewelled ‘heavenly’ book to a ‘philosopher’ and a ‘sage’ and asked them to both write a paper about its value and wisdom. As the ‘philosopher’ in the parable had hardly any knowledge of the language in which the book was written, he confined his deliberations to the shapes of the letters, their numbers, their inter-relationships, and to the chemical composition of the ink and paper and so on.[32]
The upshot of Nursi’s parable is that unlike the sage, the student of ‘human’ philosophy does not realize that words are symbols and views them as ‘words’ per se, or as essences pointing to their selves. In this way, it does not even dawn on him that he is before a ‘Book’ whose words convey meanings beyond their apparent shape, size and so forth. Having failed to be aware that ‘words’ have significations, let alone grasping their meaning, whatever ‘human’ philosophy advances, it cannot be said that it has knowledge of the ‘Book of Nature’. Hence, for Nursi
‘Human’ philosophy, [be it natural philosophy, the philosophy of life, existentialism or modern science], looks at things from that aspect that pertain to their essences and their causes. It regards them as objects or concrete beings bearing meaning in themselves (ma’na ismi). Wisdom [the knowledge revealed by God] on the other hand, perceives beings as bearing the meaning of another (ma’na harfi): they are collocations or ‘letters’ of a ‘mighty Book’. Confined to its ismi method, modern science ‘sunk’ into the ‘decorations’: the external and literal meaning of the cosmic text. Eventually, it veered away from the path of the truth.”[33]
For Nursi then a philosophy that is not guided and ‘reigned in’ by Divine wisdom “is a sophistry divorced from reality and an insult to the Universe.”[34]
During that period which saw him fall into a deep existential and spiritual crisis, the old Said had often revisited modern science and philosophy to see if he could find a light or a cure. But, in the end he deplored the utter poverty of these branches of learning, as they hardly addressed the ‘ultimate’ questions facing mankind or if they did they soon fell into the quagmire of doubts, making his struggles even more difficult.[35] “Astronomy”, he says, “ is busy with ‘learning what the rings around Saturn are like’, while statistics frets over ‘how many chickens there are in America’,[36] and so are other branches of knowledge according to Nursi engrossed in the same vein in other non-essential issues. However, to the primordial questions that arise from our existential predicament such as: ‘What is the meaning of my being and of all being which I am surrounded by? Where do I come from and where am I ultimately going? How can I save my self and brake free from the mechanic chain of causes and their determinacy? Modern science and the philosophies that embrace it are utterly bankrupt, offering neither solace nor human perfection.[37]
Nursi says that in older times misguidance came from ignorance and hence it was easy to eliminate. In modern times, misguidance is not easy to eradicate because it arises from science and learning, and so he felt the need to expound the truths of belief at great length with many comparisons “proceeding from the effulgence of the Qur’an”. The Qur’an urges the intellect to investigate the signs in the universe and calls on the heart to testify to the divine messages they bear.[38]
The darkness and ‘nihility’ of ‘human’ philosophy is often for Nursi the most effective contrast to bring into relief the light of the wisdom of revelation, therefore it is no surprise to find in the Risale numerous comparisons between those two avenues of knowledge. How each views and understands being is often the main theme of this type of expositions. For example, the Qur’an, he says, speaks of the sun as a revolving lamp; it does not speak of the sun for itself, but as center of a system, that mirrors the Maker’s attributes of perfection. By declaring, “And (We) set the sun as a lantern” (71: 16) the Qur’an depicts the world as a home prepared for man and the living-created beings. It infers that the sun is a subjugated servant, and thus reveals the mercy and bestowal of the Creator. As for the ‘foolish and prattling’ philosophy and science, it speaks of the sun as “a vast burning liquid mass that storms through the universe, causing the planets which have been flung off from it to revolve around it. Its mass is such-and-such. It is this, it is that.”[39] Apart from terrible dread and bewilderment, Nursi wonders whether the human spirit can derive anything else from such ‘delirious’ expositions.
As we will see, Nursi does not so much object to the subject of science as he does to the way it deals with it. Modern Science just misses the meaning of the world and that is why, despite all ‘its pretentious claims, its inside is hollow’.[40] For Nursi only revelation can impart on man knowledge of the reality of the world. Human reason is not a source of knowledge but a tool only, as to the sound intellect, ‘the intellect of faith’, it commands that revelation be followed because all that revelation says is ‘reasonable’ since what its witnesses can be observed in the universe, and attested by the heart[41].
The Way of Prophethood vs. The Way of Human Philosophy
For Nursi there have always been two main avenues to knowledge, two main currents in the world, from the time of Adam up to now: one which he calls the way of prophethood and religion, the other the way of human philosophy in its various forms: Whenever those two ways have been in agreement and united, that is to say, whenever philosophy sought refuge with religion and obeyed it, humanity has experienced happiness and a blissful social life. But whenever the gap between them widened and they reached a bifurcation and separated, all the light and goodness rallied around the way of Prophethood, religion and wisdom on the right side, and all evils and misconceptions gathered to follow the way of ‘human’ philosophy on the left.[42]
From Nursi’s works it is understood that philosophy or science become wisdom when they serve the line of prophethood, that is when they study the universe in accordance with the purpose of creation as taught in revelation. Nursi contends that given the limitations of human reason, there is no other way to reach reality. The line of prophethood teaches that man’s ownership of his life is only apparent and temporary. The continuance of his existence depends on the creativity of another. When one accepts that the essence of his existence has a harfi (symbolic)[43] meaning, he understands that his being does pertain to his ‘self’ but carries the meaning of another. Consequently, he realizes that all things have a harfi meaning; they are like mirrors to the attributes of the ‘wholly-other’. As darkness is the mirror to light, so beings act in many respects as mirrors to the Maker attributes due to the contrast of opposites; they reflect His power through their intrinsic powerlessness, and His perfection through their deficiency.[44]
No sooner than Man listens to the ‘cosmic prayers of inherent powerlessness’ that these beings immaculately murmur in concert, he witnesses how these prayers are instantly and constantly answered to with ‘cosmic sustenance and mercy’. He himself is then beckoned to open up to ‘the grace of the Divine Names’, and begins to prepare himself to hand over all things to their real owner and attain true affirmation of tawhid.[45] Whoever is blessed with this ‘living faith’ understands the reality of divine unity in the cosmos and in the Qur’an because that one lives it and witnesses it.
To be sure, the harfi meaning is no mere cogitation, nor is it a produce of speculative thought, although, as we mentioned at the beginning, the Risale often appears in the garb of demonstrative arguments and proofs. Harfi meaning is an outcome of ‘fruitional tastes’ (fuyudhat qur’aniyya) unbossomed from the Qur’an whose lights have shun on ‘impotent intellect of one who accepts one’s intrinsic weakness’. It is an outcome of divine ‘grace’, and not ‘genius’, for the intellect that is candidate to witness to the truths of the harfi meaning is not the intellect that knows ‘by and of itself’ but one that ‘knows by and from God’. Not only does this intellect follow the guidance of the revelation, it is in constant experience and witnessing of its lights.
The way of philosophy, which has not melted into the way of prophethood, represents him who forgets the wisdom behind his creation, and assumes his existence purports strictly to an ismi (nominative) meaning. This one claims that he owns his existence and his life and imagines himself to be the real master in his sphere of disposal. This second attitude echoes Heidegger‘s Dasein who is unable to stand the thought that he is not his ‘own’ creation. Richard Rorty explains that when Heidegger says that Dasein is guilty, he has in mind the fact that it speaks somebody else’s language rather than one of its own, and lives in a world it never made, a world, which, for this reason, is not his home. Dasein knows it is only contingently there, ‘thrown’ in the universe as it were, where it is ‘not meaning’ what it is speaking.[46]
Nursi explains that when one does not accept to surrender to this reality and pretends that one’s existence is independent of one’s sustainer, one is bound to compare everything to oneself and claims that everything owns itself. This one assumes that beings have an ismi (nominative function); they carry no meaning other than themselves. Dasein estrangement in the world stems from this self-understanding and essentialism. He fails to see their divine origin and vertical connection, he cannot but see them as objects ‘thrown’ in the world, left to their own devices, like orphans having to fight for their own survival. This represents for Nursi the typical predicament of the Man of shirk (i.e. ascribing partners to God and dividing His sovereignty among things), which leads Man to fall in great darkness committing not only “a great transgression” (91:10) against himself but against the whole of creation by relegating them to meaninglessness. Under the sway of his delusion, Man is in absolute ignorance even if one knows ‘thousands of branches of sciences.’ For, whatever lights one’s senses and thoughts may yield from the cosmos while in this state, “those lights are soon extinguished because one does not find anything within oneself by which to confirm, illuminate and perpetuate them [47]Even if one encounters pure wisdom as claimed, that ‘wisdom’ takes the form of futility, due to its ascribing partners to God or denying Him”.[48]
Comparing the ‘great genius’ of modern science and the ‘guidance of revelation’, Nursi asserts that they cannot be reconciled, for their different origins:
“Guidance descended from the heavens, genius emerged from the earth. Guidance enlightens the heart, which then releases the intellect to work. Genius works in the mind and confuses the heart. Guidance illumines the spirit, making its seeds sprout and flourish; dark nature is illumined by it. Its potentiality for perfection suddenly advances; it makes the carnal soul a docile servant; it gives aspiring man an angelic countenance. As for genius, it looks primarily to the soul (nafs) and material being, it plunges into nature, making the soul an arable field. Under its sway, the animal potentialities develop and flourish; it subjugates the spirit, desiccating its seeds; and brings up the evil in mankind. As to guidance, it gives happiness to life, it spreads light in this life and the next; it exalts mankind.[49]
If Old Said had sought to establish a connection between human philosophy and divine wisdom, the Qur’anic inspiration of the New Said brought him to see their ‘disjunction or subordinatory separation’ as Taha ‘Abdel Rahman puts it. The New Said makes philosophy subservient to wisdom in cases where they agree and wisdom the substitute for philosophy when they contradict each other.[50] Nursi’s critique of ‘human’ philosophy has three dimensions: logical, moral, and figural for the reason that the sage is not content with logical criticism alone.[51] In the following, however, the focus will be on the logical aspect of Nursi’s arguments since allusions to the other dimensions have been touched upon in the previous sections.
Nursi and the Classical and Contemporary Muslim Philosophical Debates
Know O Dear friend! There is an important difference between the path I have followed in the epistle “droplet”, a boon unbosomed from the Qur’an, and the path of those professing ‘thought’ and ‘human’ philosophy. In my way, that most precious water of life is urged to gush out whenever and wherever I choose to dig and beat my staff, while those who are besotted by the glitter of philosophy cling to the idea of putting up pipes and aqueducts to bring in the water from the confines of the universe if not beyond. To this end, they tie up chains and set up ladders and more: having succumbed to the principle of causation, they are compelled to erect and post millions of waterproofs to protect their hush proofs against the destructive attacks of doubts and misgivings. Praise be to God, the Qur’an has given to us the equivalent to the “staff of Moses”, and taught us how to use it that we may extract that aqua vita from anywhere, even from underneath a rock. Hence, the proof of the Qur’an has saved me from undertaking that futile journey beyond the world. It has exempt me from the impossible task and officious chore of ensuring the up-keep of those long pipes and has removed from my heart the fear of falling from braking ladders or jagging pipes in that long and winding road.[52]
Nearly a thousand years ago, the Muslim world was confronted with philosophical and scientific views that seemed to reduce the role of God to a prime mover, a view of Deity that was far from being compatible with the Qur’anic notion of deity. The Muslim philosophers were dedicated to Greek philosophy, which depicted the world as a system operating on natural principles.[53] The God described by al-Farabi and Ibn Sina (Avicenna) is very unlike the God of Islam. The God of the Muslim philosophers is “not capable of listening to his creatures or even knowing what they do, he does not resurrect the dead.”[54]
Leaman compares the role of this God to that of a monarch in a constitutional monarchy who has no significant power to influence events. “No law in Britain is a law unless the Queen signs the necessary documents, but the Queen always signs whatever has been approved by the parliament.”[55] The philosophers believed in a deterministic view of the world, which left little for God to do. Majid Fakhry notes that the determinism of Ibn Rushd (Averroes) “can hardly leave any scope for the belief in an effective providence of God. Averroes, it is true, concedes that God plays the role of Author and Preserver of the universe; but it is difficult to see how this role can be interpreted in any but deistic terms.”[56]
The Ash’ari theologians and among them al-Ghazzali reacted strongly to the philosophers understanding of the world and therefore of God. They refuted horizontal causation because it is incompatible with the omnipotence of God as stated in “God is powerful over all things”[57] a phrase that appears in the Qur’an many times. They rejected that causes had an efficient role in creation but they did not deny causality and order in the world.[58] They endorsed a kind of vertical causation, according to which, every thing is directly related to an effective agent who creates both the cause and the effect in an orderly way.[59]
Ash’arism, “not only survived all criticism levelled at it, but succeeded in attaining a key position in Sunni Islam”[60]: admittedly, it based its doctrines primarily on Qur’anic precepts. What Ash’arism had done though was to merely project the Qur’anic conclusions onto the world without justifying them. They did not engage in a parallel reading of the cosmic signs even though the Qur’an constantly refers the interlocutor to the world and teaches how it should be looked at in order to gain knowledge of the cosmos, himself and God. Unwittingly, in their drive to assert God’s sole agency, the occasionalism that Ash’arism erected as a counter to causation served to undermine knowledge of God that can be gained through knowledge of ‘causal relations’.
Nursi, following the Ash’arite tradition states that to attribute the effects[61] to causes (i.e. created things) is to ascribe them the power to create and thus to associate partners with God. However, Nursi does not refute causation and determinism merely on the ground that they are incompatible with divine unity and omnipotence. Rather, he moves to show that the very horizontal logic of causation is unsubstantiated and that it is in fact a corollary dogma of the ismi approach, which ventures to act as a pressio veri to the ‘speech of the universe’. In doing so, he does not feel the need to abandon knowledge (ma’rifa) that can be gained through the eliciting of causal relations, nor does he feel the need to bestow ‘agential power’ to causes. His, is not about imposing a logic on the cosmos, but ‘listening’ to its logic: the harfi logic. Although, the ismi attitude ventures to act as a blind to the harfi logic, this in the end ransacks it and illumines its dark chains with the bursting light of the vertical ‘lightenings’ of the meta-cosmic text. Nursi’s harfi approach is based on a parallel reading of the world under the light of revelation, which is the light that supplies the intellect with intuitions which in the case of Nursi are unravelled proofs. The conclusions of the Qur’an are not taken for granted but verified through observation of the world.[62]
Nursi establishes that the uniformity of causal sequences is evidence for the significative, symbolic quiddity of things; it does not justify belief in a horizontal causal nexus. The proponents of the ismi approach among contemporary Muslims thinkers react vehemently to the refutation of causation. Their reason is exactly the same as that of Ibn Rushd’s who objected to al-Ghazzali some eight centuries earlier under the alleged reason that knowledge was the necessary concomitant of causation. A contemporary Muslim scholar, Mehdi Golshani contends that the negation of causation, which he identifies as the corollary of determinism, implies that “nothing would be the requisite of another, and anything could be derived from anything, so there would be no room for science.”[63]
Golshani’s view is that God creates through intermediary causes. But if the world operates on natural principles, and if causes are necessarily connected to the effects, where does God fit in except as prime mover or first cause? If causes produce the effects naturally, necessarily, and immutably, how are then things in the world to lead us to witness to the reality and ‘Life’ of their Creator? In other words, if things do not function as signs and symbols to the constant renewal of the divine reality, as in this ismi model of the world, how can we then turn and say that ‘everything’ is a sign of God as held by Golshani? If we say ‘because the Qur’an says so’, there is then some difficult reconciling to do? The harfi meaning of things is not an inherent feature of the ismi model, unless it is introduced ad hoc with no precise role to fulfil[64].
The Muslim proponents of the ismi approach recognize the significance of causality in connection with knowledge, but they, too, like the falasifa start, according to Nursi, with their pre-conceived notion of causation and interpret experience and the world accordingly. But Nursi believes that such interpretation is akin to putting the cart before the horse, since we cannot say anything about the status of causation before we observe the world. Observation however, does not seem to suggest that causation is true. That is why attempts to reconcile causation with the Qur’anic concept of divine unity and omnipotence involve great difficulties and remain conjectural and paradoxical.
‘Allamah Sayyid Tabataba’i writes that “whatever is caused by natural causes is really caused by Allah…The causes do have causality (which he defines as natural causation) because Allah has given it to them…Every cause has been given the power to create the relevant effect; but the real authority is yet in the hands of Allah.”[65] From Nursi’s harfi perspective this last statement is paradoxical: if a cause has the power to create an effect, it has necessary properties with which it produces the effect. But if something is necessary, it exists of itself and from itself; it has not been given existence at any point in time i.e. it is not contingent. However, all observed causes are contingent.[66]
The harfi approach does not deny causality and the order in the world, which is one of the major designata of unity, but it refutes the fact that a cause could create anything, i.e. causation, as groundless. It does not dismiss causes but employs them as signs in attaining knowledge, in the way revelation teaches. It is concerned with showing how every cause and effect and particularly their relationships are signs pointing to the knowledge of the divine attributes and to the laws of the manifestation of those divine names in this world. In other words it is by showing that causation is untrue because unfounded, that Nursi’s approach reveals the harfi nature of things and hence the truth of the teachings of the Qur’an. For Nursi things are not signs (ayat) just because the Qur’an states so, rather the Qur’an says so because things actually function as signs as it can be verified through observation.
Nursi’s Analysis of Ismi Science
Know that most of Man’s ‘earthly’[67] cogitations, his incontrovertible and even self-evident truths are built on ‘customariness’ (ulfa), the source of compounded ignorance. A corruption of serious consequences therefore resides in the very foundations of his knowledge. It is owing to this almost perpetual state of affair, that the Qur’an constantly directs the gazes of mankind towards the recurrent vicissitudes (‘adiyat), beckoning them fervently to look closer at the veils of the ‘ordinary’. For the recurrent, the ordinary and the mundane conceal beneath that ‘extra-ordinary’ activity transiting the very vicissitudes (‘adiyat) of life and the world. Indeed, it is through these that the lights of the Qur’anic stars pierce the dark vaults and tenebrous shrouds of the mind succumbed to ‘customariness’ (ulfa).[68]
Know that due to ‘customariness’, many have ceased to mull over the recurrent vicissitudes (‘adiyat’)[69] of the world, although, these are but inroads of the miracles of Divine power. Having instead confined their gazes to the surface of these perpetually flowing manifestations, they have taken an attitude similar to those who upon perusing the surface of the ocean have failed to bring themselves to see in the sea anything beyond the mere undulations brought about by the caressing of the air and the twinklings of the sunshine. How can they relying only on these superficial observations reach conclusions about the depth of the ocean, the might of its Owner and Creator whose tremendum reins the heavens and the earth and all that lies between?[70]
To be sure, understanding and interpretation of the world for Nursi is a mode of being. Ismi science, i.e. science that proceeds from the intellect of philosophy is based on a flawed understanding of being, dictated by the whims of the soul and cannot lead to reality. Its so-called scientific knowledge is ignorance masquerading as knowledge.[71] Scientific knowledge is based on causation, which is a corollary dogma of ismi (the nominative) meaning. Causation is neither elicited by experience, nor logically justifiable. While dealing primarily with the ‘ills’ of his own soul, Nursi argues extensively against its intellectual claims, demonstrating in various contexts and from many perspectives that there are challenging difficulties in accepting both its claims to ‘divinity’ and its consequent teaching, namely, causation: knowledge presupposes universality, but there can be no universality if the horizontal line of causation is assumed.
Causation is taken to mean that the existence of an effect is necessitated by its causes; it is more than just causality. The ismi meaning takes it for granted that causes are efficient i.e. they produce the effect and sustain its existence. However, Nursi argues that the occurrence of one effect calls for the existence of the whole cosmos and not only its apparent causes, because things are inseparable and inter-related in the cosmos.
Know that an atom may bear the sun and run with it while it could not, in essence, accommodate another atom as attested by evidence. Being similar to the rain drizzles blazing in the sun, atoms of these living beings and their compounds are fit to become vessels for the flashes of the manifestations of the luminous, pre-eternal, absolute, and encompassing power of His pre-eternal infinite knowledge and absolute will. Or else, how could an atom of one of the cells in your eye be the source and origin of the potency, the sensibility and the volition enabling it to carry out its ever-increasing duties in the complex arenas of its operations? Particularly, as we bear in mind that atoms carry out numerous functions and duties. Indeed! Doesn’t it travel in the sensing nerves of the eye, in the veins, and the arteries, and is involved in the operations of visualizing, and intercepting visuals and many more bewildering activities like these? Seeing this wonderful and precise work, this orderly and adorned sculpting, this profound and far-reaching wisdom one is left with the following question. Either every atom and every compound in creation are the origin, and the source for this comprehensive, and perfectly consummate attributes, or else they are the locus and mirrors to the rays of the manifestations of the ‘Pre-eternal Sun’ to whom appertain these Attributes? The first consideration entails difficulties by the number of atoms and their compounds in the world.[72]
In other words, the production of the tiniest effect requires a knowledge, power, will and so on that encompass the whole world, not only in space but also in time. “The one who created the mosquito created both the sun and the Milky Way; and the one who ordered the flea’s stomach clearly set in order the solar system.”[73] If it is not accepted that causes and effects are being made and cannot produce anything[74] it has to be accepted that within each contingent cause there reside infinite creative power, knowledge and will, which is nonsensical and contradictory because each cause being also an effect would have to be both dominant and subjective to all the rest of beings.[75]
From another point of view, Nursi refers to the countless events (creative acts) occurring in countless places all at the same time and without intermediaries, e.g. spring, hatching of eggs and so on. These events, these creative acts proceed from a law of creativity that encompasses all those events. That is the one who gives life to an insect must be the one who creates and gives life to all insects and animals, and whoever spins particles must be the one who sets the celestial bodies in motion, for the law of creativity is a chain and creative acts are tied to it. Nursi concludes that each thing ascribes every other thing to its own Maker, and each creative act attributes all acts to its author.[76]
In respect to the ismi meaning beings in themselves are transitory and accidental. They do not possess in themselves anything that can perpetuate and sustain their existence. But in respect to the harfi meaning, the existence of every thing is directly connected to its Maker and through that connection it is related to all other things in space and in time: each particular gains universality through that vertical connection. Nursi affirms that it is through its connection to the Creator that ‘a fly did away with Nimrod, an ant destroyed Pharaoh’s palace, and a fig seed bears the load of a fig tree.’[77] Within the context of the harfi approach, we may say that universality exists only in relation to the Creator. Were it not for that connection, things would all be like orphans, alien to all the rest of beings and they all would become ‘estranged particulars’ and ‘logically nothings’.[78] The so-called causes and effects would have been horizontally related to each other if they had been necessarily related i.e. if it had been possible to deduce the effect from its cause(s) through a purely rational process, without referring to past observation, which is obviously not possible.
In science, universal statements are inferred from particular ones inductively, while from a logical point of view, universal statements cannot be inferred from particular ones, no matter how numerous and ubiquitous. Inductive inferences could have been justified if the empirical relation between a cause and effect were necessary i.e. a purely logical truth. Inductive logic conjectures that induction is valid, and then concludes that horizontal causation is true; whereas, induction can only be justified if causation i.e. the relation between cause and effect is true. According to Karl Popper, the difficulties of inductive logic are insurmountable. To justify induction, inductive inferences should be employed, and then these will have to be justified by invoking a new principle of induction, and so on ad infinitum. The attempt to base the principle breaks down since it leads to infinite regress.[79] This means that science has no valid method to move from the particular to the universal. A scientific law is the recurrence of particular events, but there is no reason why a collection of contingent particulars should result in a universal law. One of the most important results of the problem of induction is that the cognitive claims of inductive logic, in other words the scientific method, are unjustifiable.
The point Nursi makes is not only that scientific laws are unjustifiable, but more importantly, that every single statement of the form ‘A causes B’ is also unjustifiable. This, nevertheless, neither leads him to deny ‘causes’ and ‘effects’, nor their relations. His concern and arguments are against the nature and interpretation of such relations: the uniformity and order in the universe is wrongly attributed to causation. What is observed is causality, the principle that nothing happened without being caused, and not causation i.e. causes produce the effects.
For Nursi an ‘ordered’ and ‘orderly’ act indicates a proficient agent, but it is not evident at all how unconscious, conflicting, deaf and blind causes can be the agents of effects full of meaningful art and adornment, whilst maintaining le hazard and a theory of chaos at the same time. The wise aims and benefits in effects dismiss causes from ability to create, and instead reveals them as the aqueducts[80] of His mercy and will, handing them over to a Wise Maker Who wants to make Himself known and loved through His ‘cosmic personal and intentional mercy’.[81] Although causes seem adjacent to effects, they are far from reaching one another although they reach out to each other through His mediation. Effects have been tied to causes so that great numbers of Divine Names may be manifested along the distance that separates them, when it is ‘realized’ that causation is an illusion of the ismi vision. Then, it becomes clear that infinite essential power, knowledge, will, compassion, and many other Divine Names are manifestly involved in those relations. [82]
Nursi repeatedly states that causes and things are not efficient, and that to maintain the contrary amounts to attributing a kind of divinity to them[83]. Moreover, horizontal causation is an impediment to the true knowledge, which is the knowledge of God and not the detailed knowledge of the things themselves. But as mentioned earlier, Nursi’s harfi approach is not in favor of abandoning the search for causes. On the contrary, it is in uncovering the relations between causes and effects that one may witness to the Divine Names and obtain knowledge of God, which is according to the Qur’an the aim in the creation of humanity. Nursi often quotes “Read and ponder carefully the lines of this creation;
For, they are sent to you as missives from the supreme heavenly realm.”[84]
The ismi meaning looks to things in their horizontal relations and thus ignores the many other levels of existence. The harfi meaning looks at the ‘effects’ of beings as windows to infinity, to the infinitable Divine Names and Attributes of their Maker. [85]
The Qur’an does not bring out the conditions of the things in existence insofar as they point to their ‘selves’, but in so far as they point to the One who endows them with existence: what is of ‘essence’ in its eyes are those conditions in which they are looking up to their endower. ‘Human’ philosophy and modern science, on the other hand, exploit them for their own dead end, and masquerade them as ‘reals’, objects and nomen agentis, so much, that what gains utmost importance in the eyes of their devotee, ought to be devoted to the conditions in which they are pointing to their own essences. What a world of difference is there between the two schools! [86]
Qur’anic wisdom teaches that an atom or a bee or a flower are signs bearing the meaning of another and therefore they should be looked at on account of that ‘wholly-other’ according to the meaning of “There is nothing but extols His limitless glory and praise” (17: 44).
The Qur’an Reveals the meanings of the Cosmic Recitation
Among the signs of His absolute universal divinity and mercy towards mankind are the inscriptions of a word, or a locution or even a book in a large or a small letter in order that it becomes a ‘manifest’ sign for the thoroughness and comprehensiveness of His knowledge and caring. Take for instance, the creating of the fish in the large letter of the ocean, and the creating of the small ant in the lines of the trees, or the creating of the animal in this dot: the earth. So much so, you find the ants in places one would otherwise consider lifeless, unattended, and totally abandoned. Really, some of the Maker’s creatures bring to mind the calligraphy of the letters ‘Ya’ and ‘Sin’ within which is inscribed in miniature the whole of the Qur’anic verse Yasin. [87]
According to Nursi, the Qur’an interprets the cosmic speech in a way that is congenial to its interlocutors. The Qur’anic verses not only refer to the meanings of the signs in the universe but they also teach how to uncover those meanings. For Nursi, the true meaning of the universe can only be understood through a universal view that the Qur’anic verses and signs reveal. Reflection (tafakkur) for Nursi is not so much on the verses- but essentially by means of the verses (tafakkur bil-ayat). [88] In his view the interpretation of the cosmic signs should proceed under the guidance of the very logic of Qur’anic verses, and is effected by the operations and effulgence of its cosmic signs. Man reaches self-understanding and that of the beings around him when his intellect is in the ‘mode of listening’ to the Qur’an’s cosmic revelations.
The Risale does not claim that God is the creator of beings because the Qur’an says that ‘He is the Creator of everything’ (verses 6: 102; 13: 16; 39: 62; 40: 62). To use the conclusions of the Qur’an to support one’s views, which may or not be compatible with the messages of the Qur’an, is different from confirming the truth of the Qur’an. Although such claim refers to the Qur’an, it does not follow a Qur’anic approach but Aristotelian logic.[89] Similarly, to say that God creates ‘all’, without witnessing how ‘every single’ being is proclaiming to that reality, is no safeguard against the heedlessness (ghafla) and the nonchalance of the soul. Man’s primordial duty consists of “experiencing the meaning of the words concerning the Creator’s Unity and Maker’s Lordship uttered by each of the beings in the world in its particular tongue.”[90]
Nursi insists that true affirmation of divine unity requires that one sees the seal of divine power and lordship (rububiya) on every single thing, and opens up from every thing a window directly onto the light of the divine attributes of perfection or the divine names and thus attain to perpetual awareness of the divine presence.[91] Some of the salient arguments of this affirmation of tawhid as mentioned already are, “Nothing can exist without everything else,”[92] and “Without holding the universe in one’s hand, one cannot create a single particle.”[93] Moreover, Nursi appeals that his teachings on the nature tawhid are consistent not only with the spirit of the Qur’an, but with the path of walaya inaugurated by the Prophet. Commenting on the mi’raj, he says:
“There is within this particular journey a general one and universal ascent during which the prophet heard and saw the Dominical Signs and wonders of Divine Art that encountered his eyes and ears within the universal degrees of the Divine Names…”[94]
He adds further that this was an invitation by way of which God “made [the prophet] journey through both the external face of the world of existence and the face that looks to its Creator.”[95]
The world occupies a vital place in Nursi’s hermeneutical approach to the Qur’an: the world is referred to – in the manner the Qur’an itself instructs and not according to one’s pre-conceptions – in order to understand the Qur’an and confirm its truth. There are signs in every single thing, in every event in the universe; each thing recites through its mode of being, “Say, he is God, the One, the Besought”[96] (112:1-2) and glorifies God (17:44). The whole world recites the Qur’anic verses and express that “there is no deity but He” (9: 31)[97]. Therefore, to witness to the truth of tawhid is not without witnessing that reality in the cosmos.
Let us reiterate, nonetheless, that Nursi urges his readers not to interpret this cosmic text as mere ‘thinkers’ but as ‘witnesses’ (shuhada’). He urges them open with the ‘keys’ of faculties placed in their primordial nature, the secrets of the Divine names, of consciously witnessing the tasbihat and the takbirat of the living beings to their Creator, as they transit in and out of existence respectively, and of observing their worship of the Bestower of life and joining them. Surely this joining is not without worship and humility of heart and intellect, nor is the reading of this cosmic Qur’an possible and accessible without the effulgence of the ‘ideal reader’: the excellent Man of mi‘raj, to whom ‘all beings send their blessings and greetings of peace’. Ultimately, the tawhid journey that Nursi wants to evince reaches its peak through this tazkiya (purification) and awareness of the Prophet’s cosmic reality. Only then the objects of observation are no longer the outward ismi things,
but the soul of the experimenter itself. Nursi explains that through the insight of belief and one’s union with all beings through the connection to the Eternal One, one experiences a boundless existence apart from one’s personal existence.[98]
Harfi Science: Towards a Science of the Future
It is often argued that science explains how things occur in terms of causation but it cannot explain why they exist the way they are. Everything depends for its ultimate explanation on something outside the universe and that is God. Thus, the story goes that things are the way they are because God has so willed. To answer ‘how’ is the domain of science and ‘why’ is that of religion. Within the harfi attitude, we are part of the cosmos and hence we can learn only by asking ‘how’ questions. In order to answer a ‘why’ question that cannot be reduced to a ‘how’, we either have to go outside the universe and investigate it and that is impossible, or we have to accept that God has so willed, given that we know Him.
Since the harfi approach seeks knowledge of God by means of His signs in the world, it is concerned with answering ‘how’ questions. It proceeds in agreement with the Qur’anic verses, which repeatedly bid the reader to consider how things are created,
“Do they never gaze at the clouds pregnant with water, (and observe) how they are created? And at the sky, how it is raised aloft? And the mountains, how firmly they are reared? And the earth, how it is spread out?” (88: 17-20)
“Do they not look at the sky above them- how We have built it and made it beautiful and free of faults?” (50: 6)
The harfi approach is concerned with how things are being made for, as pointed out earlier, it is by establishing the relations between causes and effects that the divine names can be witnessed and knowledge of God reached. Belief in God as taught in the Qur’an is a confirmation of His attributes of perfection in every cause – effect relationship observed. The Qur’an does not restrict the realm of religion to the ‘unseen’ or ‘hidden’ so that belief in ghayb entails belief in the ‘unknowable’. Agreed ‘ghayb’ pertains in many ways to that which transcends human perception and the categories of speculative thought, but the Qur’an is not for blind faith, since in some other ways aspects of ghayb look to our condition, and there is a way ‘from God to humans’ (whether through the Qur’an, the cosmos or the prophets) called wajh Allah. In this sense, there is no bar between this world and ‘the transcendental world’.
The Qur’anic speech is described by Nursi as lisan al-ghayb fi ‘alam al-shahada i.e. ‘the tongue of the world of the unseen in the manifest world’. It clearly shows that there are cosmic evidences for the ‘matters of faith’ such as belief in resurrection. For instance, the Qur’an says,
“Behold, then, the signs of God’s grace - how He gives life to the earth after it had been lifeless! Verily, this Selfsame (God) is indeed the One that can bring the dead to life: for He has power to will anything!” (30: 50)
“And He it is Who sends forth the winds as a glad tiding of His coming grace - so that, when they have brought heavy clouds, We may drive them towards dead land and cause thereby water to descend; and by this means do We cause all manner of fruit to come forth. Even thus shall We cause the dead to come forth: (and this) you ought to keep in mind.” (7: 57)
In the context of the harfi approach there is no distinction between physics and metaphysics as it is the case with the ismi attitude. All attainments, all learning, all progress, and all sciences have for Nursi an eminent reality, which is based on at least one of the divine names, which are the ‘weft and warp’ of the tapestry of the cosmic text. Science finds its perfection and becomes reality when it serves the sacred aims of revelation and makes known the divine names that should constitute its roots matrix.
For instance, medicine fulfills its reality and embodies wisdom when it is based on the name Healer, and Man becomes a student of this science when he is seeking the grace and the healing of that lofty Name. Nursi says that “through observing that name’s compassionate manifestations in the vast pharmacy of the earth, medicine finds its perfection and becomes reality.”[99] Nursi emphasizes that ‘without these perfections, science, as that of today, is transformed into superstition and trivia, or else it gives rise to misguidance like the one spread by naturalist philosophy.’[100] Harfi science - whatever its subject, physics, anthropology or religion - instigates wisdom and perfection; ismi science in opposition, yields superstition and misconception.
At this point, we can safely conclude that science is not a neutral phenomenon for New said, neither is the cosmos as a matter of fact. So what did Nursi mean when he said to high school students who complained to him that their teachers did not mention God, “The sciences you study speak of God and make Him known, each with its own particular tongue. Do not listen to your teachers, listen to them.”[101]? As is clear from all he said to them, Nursi was actually inviting the students to forgo the ismi interpretation of the cosmic signs often force- fed to them by the academy. Indeed, he went on explaining to them how to ‘listen to science’, he was initiating them to the harfi science; he wanted to show them how to look critically with the harfi logic at the so-called natural phenomena and see that they are signs pointing to their Maker and glorifying Him. Given his critique of the very foundations of modern science, Nursi cannot have thought that ismi positive science speaks of God. He himself says, “Through the lights of belief, I have razed the sturdy bastions they call positive sciences and Nature.”[102]
Harfi science as Nursi understands it is an activity within the universal scope of religion.[103] It is not an alternative to religion but an integral part of it. Indeed, Nursi suggests that the Qur’anic verse, “And He taught Adam the names, all of them.” (2: 31) indicates that the greatest miracle upon which the supreme vicegerency of mankind revolves was the gift of true knowledge that can be gained by means of the grace of the Names. Hence, humanity’s most pressing duty is to rise to the heights of divine wisdom by means of spiritual progress and the harfi sciences. In his commentary Nursi argues the above Qur’anic verse addresses our age in the most particular terms, it is as if it were urging us to renounce our ways of understanding knowledge and beckoning us to other worthier directions:
Come on, step forward, adhere to all My Names and rise [it says]! Your forefather (i.e. Adam) was once deceived by Satan, and temporarily fell to the earth from a position like Paradise. Beware! In your progress, do not follow Satan and from the heaven of divine wisdom thus fall into the misguidance of ‘Nature.’ Continuously raising your head and studying carefully My beautiful names, make your sciences and your progress steps by which to ascend to those heavens. Then you may rise to My divine names, which are the realities and sources of your sciences and attainments, and you may look to your Sustainer with your hearts through the telescope of the Names.[104]
Nursi, it may be added, is inviting us to contemplate anew to reach a new understanding of ‘being’. The progress, which he now calls us to, is none other than ‘spiritual progress’ that leads Man towards fulfilling his perfections and raison d’etre. Science is not modern science but that ‘ilm which yields yaqin (certitude), dispels doubt, leading Man to the presence of the Divine and His ma‘rifa. The merit of Said Nursi in this task is his use of an intellectual discourse that is commensurate to our present predicament and cultural condition. This should not lead us in the end to see him as one who was mesmerised by the ‘modern Mind’, but as an intriguing ‘modern’ enigma, fittingly known by the sobriquet of Bediuzzaman, “the non-pareil of his time”.
[1] M. Pacaci; Y. Aktay, “75 Years of Higher Religious Education in Modern Turkey”, The Muslim World, vol. LXXXIX, No. 3-4, Jul-Oct 1999, 389.
[2] Niyazi Berkes, The Development of Secularism in Turkey (London: Hurst & Co, 1998), 497, quoting Mehmet Izzet, Yeni Içtimaiyat Dersleri (2nd ed.; Istanbul, 1928), .278
[3] Risale-i- Nur is the title Said Nursi has given to his Qur’anic commentary. Henceforth, it will be referred to as Risale.
[4] About fifty years ago, Old Said who had been steeped too deeply in intellectual and philosophical sciences tried to find the ultimate truth following the teachings of the great Sufis as well as that of the investigators of ultimate reality from among the philosophers (ahl al-tariqah ,ahl al haqiqah). He could not be satisfied like most of the followers of tariqah with an impetus coming from the heart because he was already under the spell of the ‘intellect’ of philosophy. He was confused as to which path to follow and had to be cured….The Imam al-Rabbani (Sirhindi) transmitted to him an encrypted message, urging him to ‘unify his qiblah’ and find a single master. The old Said surmised: “the true master is the Qur’an.”…Soon, His soul (al-nafs al ammarah) with its knack for refractoriness forced him to a spiritual and intellectual showdown. He confronted it not with his eyes closed; rather, he journeyed through his ordeal with his eyes open just as the Imam al Ghazali, Mewlana Jelaluddin, and the Imam al-Rabbani had journeyed with the eyes of their heart and intellect open in the places where others had closed them. Praise be to God…he found an unfrequented path to truth through the guidance of the Qur’an.
B. S. Nursi,, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri (Istanbul: Sozler Yayinevi, 1999), 29
[5] Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 318
[6] Professor Taha Abdel-Rahman argues that an erroneous differentiation is often made between al-hads al-’aqliyy (‘rational intuition) and al-hads al-mitafiziqiyy (metaphysical intuition), in that the latter could also be of a ‘rational’ nature, relying on peculiar forms of demonstration he calls al-istidlal al-matwiyy (a pregnant demonstration). The latter being a form of demonstration that does not lay out all the premises that are concomitant to that intuition. Intuition, he maintains, depend on the condition and intellectual ability of the interlocutors. While some might understand them without the mediation of premises and demonstrations, others would be in need of them, until these turn, in their case, into intuitions. Thus, he says, “if someone asked what was intuition, my answer to him would be: ‘it is an istidlal matwiyy (a pregnant demonstration), and if he then asked me: ‘what is dhawq (fruitional taste), my answer would be ’aql matwiyy (pregnant intellect), and if he went on asking what is istidlal in this instance? I would say: al-istidlal hads manshur (demonstrative proof is an unraveled or unpacked intuition), similarly, should he ask what is ‘aql, I would retort: al-‘aql dhawq manshur (the intellect is intuition in the mode of unraveling). On this point see, Taha Abdel-Rahman, Hiwarat min ajli l’Mustaqbal (Casablanca: Matba‘at Al-Najah Al-Jadida, 2000), 107-109.
[7]B. S. Nursi, The Supreme sign: The observations of a Traveller Questioning the Universe Concerning his Maker, Trans. By H. Algar (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 2002) 102-103.
B.S. Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati (Istanbul: Nesil Basim Yayin, 1996), 711; 1683.
[8] As opposed to personal salvation only since the misguidance spread in the name of science has become a collective issue. Nursi writes that, “the Risale-I Nur is not only repairing some minor damage or some small house; it is repairing vast damage and the all-embracing citadel which contains Islam, the stones of which are the size of mountains. And it is not striving to reform only a private heart and an individual conscience; it is striving to cure with the medicines of the Qur’an and belief and the Qur’an’s miraculousness the collective heart and generally-held ideas, which have been breached in awesome fashion by the tools of corruption prepared and stored up over a thousand years, and the general conscience, which is facing corruption through the destruction of the foundations, currents, and marks (sha ‘air) of Islam which are the refuge of all and particularly the mass of believers.” Nursi, the Supreme sign, 96.
[9] Here, ‘offense’ refers to that ‘offensive critique’ in which something like science is attacked and nullified, but without presenting the student of science or the age of science for that matter, with remedies and ways of ‘picking up the pieces’, as it were, resulting from the critique. As for ‘redemptive’, it is used in the sense that although Nursi’s concept of science is completely different from that of modern science, he still uses an intellectual discourse and displays a demonstrative ability, striving for ‘universality’ as contributions that can help science change its course because in some ways he addresses the issues it has failed to resolve in a way it ‘may’ understand.
[10] Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 226.
[11] B. S. Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 107.
It is important to highlight here a confusion that might arise as a result of relying solely on translation when dealing with Nursi. His use of the word ‘ilm, which is usually understood as knowledge, is often translated as science, whereas Nursi himself would use the word fen for modern science.
[12] Not necessarily modern western science for as we will see Nursi has his own Qur’anic understanding of science beyond the modern.
[13] B. S. Nursi, The Words, Trans. S. Vahide (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 2002), 376-377; 728.
B. S. Nursi, Isharat al-i’caz (Istanbul: Sozler Yayinevi, 1999), 22.
[14] The Qur’an refers to its verses as well as to beings and events with the same word ‘aya’, which means sign The word aya and its plural form ayat occurs in the Qur’an 380 times, mostly referring to the creation, beings and events in it.
[15]B. S. Nursi, The Letters, Trans. S. Vahide (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 2001), 339-340.
There is a verse in the Qur’an that says, “They will reply: God, who gives speech to all things, has given speech to us (as well).” (41: 21).
[16] B. S. Nursi, The Rays, Trans. S. Vahide (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 199 8) , 146-149.
[17] Nursi, Isharat al-i’jaz in Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 1216.
[18] A. Schimmel, Reason and Mystical Experience in Sufism, in Intellectual Traditions in Islam Ed. F. Daftary (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000), 143.
[19] Ibid.
[20] O. Bakar, History of Islamic Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1996), Ed. S.H. Nasr and O. Leaman, Vol.II, 938-939.
[21] Al-Ghazzali, The Book of Knowledge,of Ihya’ ‘Ulum al-Din, Trans. N.A. Faris (Beirut: American University of Beirut, 1962), 36-37.
[22] Ta’liqat, an early work of Nursi, is in fact a commentary on Aristotelian logic.
[23] The years of destruction caused by the First World War, followed by the momentous demise of the Ottoman Caliphate pushed Nursi into an acute spiritual crisis that prompted the overall transformation of his intellectual outlook. The parallels between Nursi’s intellectual journey and that of al-Ghazzali are indeed beyond the scope of this paper, but is worth noting here that both had undergone a long spiritual crisis as a result of their accepting some of the precepts of philosophy. In both one takes notice of that spiritual struggle, that ‘dark night of the soul’, which ends in their case with the victory of the ‘heart’ over the ‘soul (nafs)’, culminating in a birth of a ‘new’ intellect, as it were, and a new Qur’anic Man.
[24] In a treatise written sometimes between 1928 and 1932, the New Said explains why his style differed from that of the Old Said as follows:
“The Old Said and certain (Muslim) thinkers in part accepted the principles of man-made Western philosophy. For even when they argued against the proponents of this philosophy they used their weapons, thus accepting those principles to a degree. They submitted to some of their principles in the form of the physical sciences, believing them to be unshakable and therefore could not demonstrate the true worth of Islam. It was quite simply as though they were grafting Islam with philosophy, the roots of which they supposed to be very deep; as though strengthening it.” Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 560-561
[25] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 711.
[26]T. ‘Abdel Rahman, The Separation of Human Philosophy from the Wisdom of the Qur’an in Said Nursi’s Work, in Islam at the Crossroads, Ed. I. M. Abu Rabi’ (Albany: SUNY, 2003), 202.
[27] T. ‘Abdel Rahman, The Separation of Human Philosophy from the Wisdom of the Qur’an in Said Nursi’s Work, in Islam at the Crossroads, Ed. I. M. Abu Rabi’ (Albany: SUNY, 2003), 201-202.
[28] One of the salient features of Nursi’s critique of science is that it does not confine itself to the ‘destruction’ (and deconstruction) of modern science. By showing that logic and the very processes of creation, for instance, point themselves to the Divine and to the truth of revelation, since it alone could explain creation. Nursi’s ‘offense’ combines an attempt to ‘redeem’ science and cure what Paul Tillich called the ‘schizophrenic split in our consciousness’.
[29]The Ash’ari tradition of refuting causation has been held not only by the scholars of kalam but also by the great Sufis like Ibn ‘Arabi and Rumi. The latter argued in his Mathnawi, that the main mission of the prophets had always been their resistance against the worship of apparent causes, since this delusion opened the gates of polytheism and ungratefulness.
[30] It should be made clear that a number of Muslim and non-Muslim scholars had been aware of the limits of the modern scientific mind and argued eloquently against a number of its claims. Aside of Nursi, we are not aware, however, that the ontology of the modern scientific mind, has ever been debunked on the basis of its very premises and on its own turf as concisely and as cogently. See for example Nursi’s treatise on ‘Nature’ and See also Y. B. Mermer, ‘Induction, Science and Causation: Some Critical Reflections’, in Islamic Studies, Vol 35, Autumn 1996, No3. Y. B. Mermer, The Muslim World, vol. LXXXIX, No. 3-4, Jul-Oct 1999, 270-296.
[31] Paul Tillich, The Irrelevance and Relevance of the Christian Message. Ed, Durwood Foster (Ohio: The Pilgrim Press, 1996), 24-25.
[32] Nursi, The Words, 143-145.
Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 456-457.
[33] Nursi, The Words, 145. Italics added.
[34] Ibid
[35] For a detailed auto-biographical account of these intellectual showdowns and spiritual struggles of Said Nursi, see his Al- Mathnawi al-’Arabi al-Nuri
[36] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 111.
[37] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 96; 711.
[38] Nursi, The Supreme Sign, 102-103.
Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 1683.
[39] Nursi , Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 96. The Words, 252.
[40] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 96; The Words, 252.
[41] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 171; 1963.
[42] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 242.
[43] To the extent that words serve to convey a meaning they are symbols like characters in musical notation. Thus, what is meant by ‘symbolic’ in this paper does not relate to what is conveyed by ‘token’ nor is it in any way related to symbolic logic or symbolism. Nursi borrowed the term ‘ma‘na harfi’ from the glossary of Arabic grammar. There, a preposition such as a harf jarr, like a collocation or an isolated letter, has no meaning in itself, but serves to point to a meaning beyond itself (Al-harf ma dalla ‘ala ma’na fi ghayrihi). Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 270.
Nursi uses harfi to allude to both the aspects of things, which looks to their Maker, as well as to the intellect, which as a result of its being cleansed of its ismi vision is made to witness their ‘symbolic’ activity. By contrast, ‘ma‘na ismi’, pertaining to ‘ism’ (noun), bears a meaning in itself and points to itself (ma dalla ‘ala ma’na fi nafsihi). Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 270.
As in the English language the nominative ‘ I’, for instance, is a pronoun denoting a case expressing the ‘subject’ of the verb, one may, in the figurative sense at least, propose ‘nominative mood’ as an English equivalent to ma‘na ismi’. Nursi uses ma‘na ismi or ‘nominative mood’ to allude to the view that holds that Man does actually exert power over things and produces effects. A view, which according to Nursi, leads Man to either ascribe some ‘divinity’ to himself or to the things in his horizon. Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 221. Thus in Nursi’s usage ma‘na ismi is often used to convey ‘ego-philosophy’, speculative thought (nazar), Greek philosophy and the like, all of which cause Man to view beings as independent agents or ‘essences’ contained within concrete objects.
[44] Nursi, The Letters, 286-287.
[45] Nursi, The Words, 557-559.
[46] R. Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 108-111.
[47] While the things in the book of nature and the horizons are open, they are locked if the receptacle, the ‘I’ in Man remains hostage to the grip of ‘essentialism’. Nursi, The Words, 557-569. The secret for Nursi lies in unlocking this talisman through worship and prayers. He says: “Know that knowledge received from the horizon of the ‘outer world’ is not free from doubts and delusions. Only when it is remitted to the scanning filters of the heart and the fundus anima (wijdan) is it purified from the disturbing scruples and ascertained. Therefore, as you contemplate this world, perceive it from the centre to the circumference and then the outskirts, and be aware of the reverse, lest you retrogress.” Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 226.
[48] Nursi, The Words, 550.
[49] Nursi, The Words, 747.
[50] ‘Abdel Rahman, The Separation of Human Philosophy from the Wisdom of the Qur’an in Said Nursi’s Work, 206- 209.
[51] Abdel Rahman, The Separation of Human Philosophy from the Wisdom of the Qur’an in Said Nursi’s Work, 202.
[52] Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 170. Italics added.
[53] O. Leaman, Averroes and His Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 1-42. .
[54] O. Leaman, Nursi’s Place in the Ihya’ Tradition, The Muslim World, vol. LXXXIX, No. 3-4, Jul-Oct 1999, 315.
[55] Ibid.
[56] M. Fakhry, Islamic Occasionalism and its Critique by Averroes and Aquinas, (Great Britain: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1958), 121.
[57] There are other verses that attribute the creation to God, “Say: God is the creator of all things” (13: 16), and “Surely His is the creation and the command.” (7:54)
[58] R. M. Frank, The Structure of Created Causality According to al-Ash’ari: An Analysis of the Kitab al-Luma’ 82-164, in Studia Islamica XXV 1969, 14.
[59] M. Fakhry, A History of Islamic History, (New York & London: Columbia University Press, 1970), 234.
[60] H. Corbin, History of Islamic Philosophy, Trans. L. Sherrad (London: Islamic Publications Ltd, 1993), 120.
[61] Note that each effect is also a cause and vice versa
[62] Nursi describes the proofs he expounds in his Risale to be at the degree of knowledge of certainty (fi martabati ‘ilm al-yaqin) at the level of witnessing (shuhud) and certainty. The resulting confirmation (tasdiq) of the truths of belief is the outgrowth of both the mind and the emotions of the heart which in this scheme unite and become one i.e. the Qur’anic intellect. B. S. Nursi, al- Malahiq fi Fiqh Da’wa al- Nur , Trans. I. Q. al-Salihi (Istanbul: Sozler Yayinevi, 1995), 112.
[63] M. Golshani, Philosophy of Science from the Qur’anic Perspective, in Toward Islamization of Disciplines ((Herdon: International Islamic Publishing House, 1995), 88.
[64] In relation to this point Nursi writes: “Know dear friend of mine! Sadly, the majority of mankind, it appears, has failed to give this great ‘visible book’, the cosmos, and this highly venerable ‘audible book’, the Qur’an, their due esteem, largely, as a result of ill-conceived thoughts diffused by some of the philosophers, and literati in our midst. Infatuated and absorbed by their ‘I am ness’, as is often the case, philosophers tend to accord “the Necessary Being” only the thin husk of His entire creation. Then, following this ‘wishful thinking’, and absurd ‘tokenism’ they overreach themselves daring to stretch their hands to divide the remains of His Kingdom among imaginary, if not impossible causes, and contrived names and shares that refer back to no real nominee“. Nursi, al-Mathnaw al- ‘Arabi al-Nuri, 307
[65] M. H. Tabataba’i, Al-Mizan: An Exegesis of the Qur’an vol. I, Trans. S.S. Akhtar Rizvi (Tehran: WOFIS, 1973), 112-113.
[66] “Know O friend still under the spell of causes! The creation of a cause with its precise determinations as well as its constant supply with the necessary requisites that makes it fit to bring into being the effect, is not at all easier and worthier, nor is it more perfect and loftier than the creation of the effect within the cause in an instant by the order ‘Be’, from He who, before Him stands equal the atoms, as well as, the solar system.” Nursi, al-Mathnaw al- ‘Arabi al-Nuri, 212.
[67] Nursi usually uses ‘Earthly’ to refer to ‘human’ philosophy, which resists the ‘heavenly knowledge’ or revelation.
[68] Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 324.
[69] This is an interesting passage showing that the author was keen to take the challenge of the materialist philosophers of his time into their own grounds, explaining that the Qur’anic appraisals of matter were more conclusive and ‘positive’ than those of the positivists.
Comparing the cognitive value of the wisdom of the Qur’an with that of the philosophy of science, Nursi holds that the Qur’an shatters the veil of customariness instigated by the ismi vision of modern science and makes us wonder at the divine names manifested in things and events. Nursi, The Words, 150-154.
[70] Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 323.
[71] Nursi, The Words, 576.
[72] Nursi, al-Mathnawi-al-‘Arabi al –Nuri, 226.
[73] Nursi, The Words, 732.
[74] The Qur’an says,
“Those they invoke beside God cannot create anything, since they themselves are but being created.” (16: 20-21)
“Will they, then, ascribe divinity, side by side with Him, unto that which does not create anything since they themselves are created?” (7: 191).
“And yet, some choose to worship instead of Him, (imaginary) deities that cannot create anything but are themselves being created, and have it not within themselves to avert harm from, or bring benefit to, themselves, and have no power over death, nor over life, nor over resurrection!” (25: 3).
[75] Nursi, The Words, 303.
Nursi presents this line of argument as a development of the logic of the Qur’anic verse, “Which is more reasonable: belief in the existence of numerous divine) lords, each of them different from the other-or (in) the One who holds absolute sway over all that exists?” (12:39).
[76] Nursi, The Letters, 392-393. al-Mathnawi-al-‘Arabi al –Nuri, 240.
[77] Nursi, The Flashes (Istanbul: Sozler Nesriyat, 1995), 241.
[78] Nursi, al-Mathnawi-al-‘Arabi al –Nuri, 107; 271.
[79] K. R. Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd., 1959), 37.
[80] When causation is removed whilst causal relations are maintained, what remains are aqueducts of mercy and will.
[81] Nursi, The Words, 172; 687; 712-713.
[82] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 312-313; 191-192.
[83] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 121; 122; 320; 501; 570; 813; The Letters, 542.
[84] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati,482. al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 227.
[85] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 244; The Words, 565.
[86] Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 74.
[87] al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi al-Nuri, 323.
It has been reported in many a prophetic tradition that the surah Yasin is the heart of the Qur’an. Many calligraphers have put themselves to the task of writing the full content of this verse in miniature inside a larger Arabic letter ‘Ya’ and ‘Sin’. Through this imagery, the author expresses the fact that as a small surah of the Qur’an may comprehend the whole content of the Book; also a small particular creature from the cosmic Qur’an may contain the whole truth of the universe and be an aya or a major sign of God. This is following the logic that the particulars are in Nursi’s tawhidi system ‘particular universals’ enjoying a value akin, and identical to that of the universal.
[88] Nursi, al-Mathnawi al-‘Arabi an-Nuri , 257.
[89] Nursi believes that Greek philosophy springs from a mythological and speculative worldview, and for this reasons it is essentially alien to the Qur’anic spirit of inquiry and the nature of tawhid (divine unity) that nurtures and enlightens that spirit. For Nursi, Greek thought has been an impediment to Islamic thought and “has opened a way from tahqiq (realisation) to taqlid (imitation)”. He says that, “They (some Muslim thinkers) conjured up a resemblance and compatibility between the true logic of the Qur’an and the Hadith, and this fictitious and false (Greek) philosophy and interpreted the Qur’an accordingly. However, the meaning of the Book of Miraculous Exposition is within it. So seek the meanings of the Qur’an in its luminous words, rather than those gimmicks and artifices you sneak in the back-pocket of your mind.” Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 1989.
[90] Nursi, The Words, 140-141
[91] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 121.
[92] Nursi, The Words, 731.
[93] Nursi, The Words, 733.
[94] Nursi, The Words, 584. Italics added.
[95] Ibid.
[96] Nursi, The Words, 304.
[97] Also, 2: 163; 2: 255; 3: 2; 3; 6; 3: 18; 4: 87; 6: 102; 6; 106; 9: 129; 11: 14; 13: 30; 20: 8; 20: 98; 23: 116; 27; 26; 28: 70; 28; 88; 35; 3; 39;6; 40: 3; 40; 62; 44; 8; 59: 22; 64: 13; 73: 9;
Nursi, The Words, 728.
[98] Nursi, The Rays, 72.
[99] Nursi, The Words, 270-271.
[100] Nursi, The Words, 271.
[101] Nursi, Risale-i Nur Kulliyati, 954.
[102] Ibid, 379.
[103] The word for ‘religion’ in Arabic is ‘din’; it means primarily “obedience, in particular obedience to a law or to what is conceived as a system of established usages, i.e. something endowed with moral authority.” In this sense everyone has a ‘din’ of moral law as the Qur’an states when it says, “Unto you your din and unto me my din!” (109: 6)
M. Asad, The Message of the Qur’an (Gibraltar: Dar al-Andalus Ltd, 1980), 981.
[104] Nursi, The Words, 270.
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