too, together with their solutions, have been described in various places. For example, the decline in the field of learning and medrese education, and the solutions he put forward for this which would also heal the deep rifts that had developed between the 'ulema, the Sufi community, and those with a secular, Western educational background; the negligent attitude towards the pillars of Islam mentioned in the dream above; and the various "sicknesses" in the social life of Muslims, and in the field of morality, and the "remedies" offered in his sermon in Damascus. However, rather than attempting a comprehensive analysis of all the reasons Bediuzzaman put forward for the decline and relative backwardness of the Islamic world, we shall just make the following points.

In Muhâkemat, a work written to establish the principles of Qur'anic exegesis and published in 1911, he attributes the decline to the fact that the heart or true meaning of the teachings of Islam had been abandoned for its externals. He wrote:

Abandoning the essence and kernel of Islam, we fixed our gazes on its exterior and shell. And due to misapprehension and ill-manners, we did not afford Islam its right nor pay it the respect it was due. So in disgust, it swathed itself in clouds of illusion and delusion, and concealed itself. And it had the right, for we mixed isra'iliyat [^327] with the fundamentals of belief, and stories with the tenets of faith, and metaphors with the truths of belief, and did not appreciate its value. So to punish us in this world, it left us in abasement and penury, And what will save us is again its mercy. [^328]

[^327]:Isra'iliyat: teachings and stories which with time had been corrupted and become superstitions and were introduced into Islam by scholars of the People of the Book on their becoming Muslim in the early period of Islam.

[^328]:Nursi, Muhâkemat, 7.

Later in the same work, Bediuzzaman expands on this, explaining how some isra'iliyat and a portion of Greek philosophy had been incorporated into Islam, and "appearing in the apparel of religion", had thrown minds into disarray. Explaining how this happened, he concludes that when commenting on the Qur'an, some literalist 'ulema had expounded certain of its verses (nakliyat) by making them fit the isra'iliyat. "Whereas", he wrote. "What will explain and expound the Qur'an is again the Qur'an, and sound Hadiths. Not the Gospels and the Torah, whose ordinances have been superseded, just as their stories are corrupted."

As for Greek philosophy, it had sprung from fables and superstition, and just as it had caused confusion, so also had it opened up a way to mere imitation (taklid) in place of investigative and dynamic scholarship. Sup-