Conclusion
Conclusion
Bediuzzaman Said Nursi emerges from these pages as a unique figure whose service to the Qur'an and belief this century is without equal. The child prodigy from Nurs who at the age of fourteen silenced in debate all the 'ulema of the region and from an even earlier age displayed an instinctive dissatisfaction with the existing educational system went on in his maturity as the New Said to open up a new way of relating the Qur'anic truths which would be the means of reinvigorating the belief of millions of Muslims within the framework of Orthodox Sunni Islam.
Bediuzzaman was born at a time when the fortunes of the Islamic world were at their lowest ebb, yet it was his unwavering conviction that the Qur'an and Islamic civilization would dominate the future and be the means of mankind's salvation, as the lines quoted above foretelling the year of his death illustrate. Forgoing every sort of comfort and personal benefit and undertaking every difficulty, he sacrificed himself to this end, chiefly serving it through his learning, but also as the Old Said through energetic participation in social and political life and in the wars and movements of that time. Realizing at an early age that science also would dominate the future, contrary to other religious scholars, and indeed he received opposition because of it, Bediuzzaman studied and mastered most of the modern physical and mathematical sciences. He also took up the study of philosophy in the belief that it could be made to serve Islam. And while his wide knowledge of both these was reflected in his Qur'anic commentary and "fruit" of his life, the Risale-i Nur, it was his inner struggle to free himself from philosophy which made way for the emergence of the New Said, who took the Holy Qur'an as his "sole guide."
Bediuzzaman's study of science and involvement with philosophy should be seen in the context of the increasing Western influence in the Ottoman Empire at the end of the 19 th and early 20 th centuries and the attacks which were being made on the Qur'an and Islam in the name of