Books

Islam at the Crossroads
On the Life and Thought of Bediuzzaman Said Nursi
Modern Islamic intellectual history boasts of some important figures, such as Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Muhammad ‘Abduh, Rashid Rida, and Muhammad Iqbal. However, none reflected in his career and thought the enormous changes that took place in the last phase of the Ottoman Empire and at the beginning of the Turkish Republic better than Said Nursi (1876-1960).' Although he was not an historian in a professional sense, Nursi’s career and writings provide us with deep insights into the history of the post-Tanzimat period in the Ottoman Empire,” the predicament of the traditional class of the ulama, the failure of the Islamic reform movement of the nineteenth century to provide ‘an Islamic solution’ to the encroachment of Westernization, the deep philosophical and political reasons behind the rise of secular nationalism in Turkey, the abolition of the Ottoman caliphate in 1924, and the state of religion in Kemalist Turkey.’ Nursi’s complex life and his resistance to the attempts of the Turkish state to circumvent the role of religion in society represent clear proof of the resilience, if not vitality, of modern Islamic intellectual discourse, even in times of severe crisis. As a matter-of-fact, it is impossible to fully grasp modern Islamic discourse, in its many articulations, without the crisis or set of crises that produced it in the modern period.* Perhaps the most interesting part of Nursi’s career, as we look at it retrospectively several decades after his death, was his sustained intellectual and religious challenge to the secularist and nationalist system built by Kemal Ataturk, a challenge that is at the heart of his magnum opus, the Risale-i Nur’ [henceforth referred to as the Risale].

Author: Abu Rabi, Ibrahim M.

Publisher: State University Of New York Press
Publication Year: 2003

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Abu Rabi [2003] Islam at the Crossroad.pdf