Isharat al-I’jaz fi Mazan al-Ijaz is one of the most advanced pieces of tafsir scholarship in the 20th century, in which Said Nursi dealt with the problem of religious understanding, and described the very spiritual roots of the revelation where the faith in one God was so obvious that even the differences in approaching religious systems were mentioned as “signs” of the Unity. In this relation, Said Nursi has not been limiting religious understanding to the problem of social relations between various religions, but proposed a model of tolerant and just attitude as a result of the internal spiritual efforts towards positive action: we are recognizing other beliefs not because we are doubt in our own, but just in order to convey what we perceive as a Truth. This kind of the “intellectual humility” considered along with the positive action ideology is one of the most copious intellectual trends in the thought of Said Nursi. Hopefully new studies will bring new light on his explanation of
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GOOD DEEDS AS POSITIVE ACTIONS IN NURSI'S WORK: HUMAN COMMUNICATION PERSPECTIVE
In various parts of the Resale-i Nur Collection, Said Nursi elaborates on the issue of good deeds, addressed from a number of angles. More precisely, the objective of the present paper is the analysis of Qur'anic verses dealing with human communication elements of the taqwa concepts (al-Baqarah (2): 1-5, 177; Ali Imran (3): 134; al-Dzaryat (51): 15-17; al-Anbiya’ (21): 48-49), emphasizing the horizontal aspects of human interactions. The questions we want to answer are: How does Nursi enunciate both concepts? What are the arguments of Nursi on the meaning of good deeds, the benefits of good deeds and the need to perform good deeds, among others? In order to answer these, seven specific factors associated with good deeds will be examined from the above Collection: caring for others; commitments; patience; forgiving others and controlling one’s emotions; realizing and avoiding previous mistakes; and persistence to excel. This paper contends that through his writings, Said Nursi indeed pr
NURSI’S CRITIQUE OF FARABI AND IBN SINA IN AGREEMENT WITH AL-GHAZALI
As commonly known, Ibn Sina and Farabi, two prominant philosophers and scholars in Islamic history, were well affected from the thoughts of the Greek philosophers, Aristotle and Plato. It is seen that in their famous books, Ibn Sina and Farabi tried to harmonize the ideas of Aristotle and Plato with Islamic way of thinking and interpret even some basic Islamic elements according to their philosophical understanding. However, two other effective Islamic scholars, who lived in different ages than each other, Hujjatu’l Islam al-Ghazali and Bediüzzaman Said Nursi, strictly criticized their ways of thinking and interpretations because these were found not to parallel the Islamic belief from various aspects. Although the level of their criticism is not the same, the points they criticized are similar.
APPROACHES OF IMAM GAZZALI AND SAID NURSI IN THE EDUCATIONAL REVIVAL OF MUSLIM COMMUNITY: A COMPARATIVE STUDY
Education had occupied great significance in society since time immemorial. The means and ways of the mechanism have varied from time to time. Perhaps, it was subject to the transformation from the primitive period to the medieval age and from the medieval age to the modern age. Educational doctrines and ideas proposed by the two eminent scholars Imam Gazzali and Said Nursi paved the way for the development of Muslim community in their age. This paper is an attempt to draw a comparison between the reformative, positive actions proposed by Imam Gazzali and Said Nursi in the educational revival of Muslim community of their periods.
JOB IN THE RISALE-I NUR: SAID NURSI’S PASTORAL THEOLOGY
Job’s (pbuh) story has been studied from many different per-spectives: from the point of view of psychology; family health; sociology and theology. This paper claims that ‘pastoral theology’, as a recognised theological discipline within Christian tradition, can also be found within Muslim tradition. Hence, the paper at hand is an attempt to re-examine the story of Job from the point of view of pastoral theology, manifest in the Qur’an Exegesis of the contempo-rary Muslim scholar Said Nursi. To facilitate our discussion, our ex-amination of Nursi’s interpretation of the respective Job-verses of the Qur’an will be organised according to Richard Osmer’s notion of the four key questions and tasks of the pastoral theologian, cover-ing a) the descriptive-empirical task; b) the interpretative task; c) the normative task and d) the pragmatic task.